Michael Tanner
The Archive
When welfare pays better than work
Here’s an offer for you: $38,004 per year, tax free.No work required.Apply at your local welfare office. The federal government funds 126 separate programs targeted towards low-income people, 72 of...
How Detroit failed
Free markets and limited government are to blame for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. That is the new meme to explain Detroit’s plight. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm...
Behind the Times’ ObamaCare ‘news’
Let’s hold off on the celebration for a little while. The Obama administration has been quick to seize on a report last week in The New York Times that the...
ObamaCare: Cuomo, Christie & you
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have taken their states in opposite directions when it comes to implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,...
The 49ers
Shortly after Nov. 6, Zane Tankel, who runs 40 Applebee’s restaurants in the New York City area, announced that his company was freezing employment and would not build any new...
Michael Tanner on the cost of ObamaCare
Health-care reform is generally considered the signature accomplishment of President Obama’s first term. Certainly, it is representative of the president’s approach to government: a costly new entitlement funded by higher...
Your health at stake
Few election issues will have as much impact on our lives as what will happen to America’s health-care system. After all, health care represents a sixth of the US economy...
MediScare returns
Mitt Romney’s naming of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate has moved the debate over Medicare reform back to the political forefront. As everyone in range of a TV...
Costs more, covers less
In the weeks since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the evidence has continued to pile up that, constitutional or not, ObamaCare...
ObamaCare’s now a bigger mess
If the new health care law wasn’t enough of a mess before last week’s Supreme Court decision, that ruling actually added another layer of cost, complexity and political contentiousness to...
‘A Republic — if you can keep it’
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to uphold the ObamaCare law’s individual-health-insurance mandate is far more complex than all the initial cheers and jeers suggest. Here are five things to take away...
NY, NJ: Just hold off
With the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a k a ObamaCare, looking increasingly tenuous after yesterday’s Supreme Court session, officials in New York and New Jersey...
The supreme ObamaCare question
Next week, the Supreme Court will devote six hours over three days to hearing challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a k a ObamaCare. The last time...
The real ‘1 percent’
So just who are those top 1 percent of Americans that we’re all supposed to hate? If you listen to President Obama, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, and much...
Jet levy will put workers up in the err
During his news con ference yesterday, President Obama re peatedly laid out his case by calling for new taxes on "corporate jets." The sound bite is designed to seem extremely...
How ObamaCare strokes the fat cats
When government says it's set to do something for the little guy, hang on to your wallet. The latest evidence for this came in a congressional report released last week,...
Obama's sea of red
In the days and weeks leading up to the release of his budget, President Obama and his spokesmen warned us that it would contain "tough choices" and "painful cuts." Having...
Health-'reform' facts: lame defenses
In the wake of the Arizona shootings, President Obama called for a more "civil and honest" debate on the issues that divide us. That aspiration will receive a significant test...
Kicking the Medicare can -- again
While much of Washington was fo cused on the tax compromise be tween President Obama and congressional Republicans, the Senate was putting together another deal that shows how little both...
What Republicans can — and can’t — do about ObamaCare
In the first hours after Republicans reclaimed the House, the presumptive new dpeaker, John Boehner (R-Ohio), made clear his plans for the health care bill passed last March: "We must...