Title X, Medicaid, and the Eisenstadt Decision In a 1972 decision widely hailed by the political classes, the Supreme Court opined in Eisenstadt v. Baird, “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusions into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to […]
Read MoreThe Folly of the McNamara Approach to Family Planning When Robert S. McNamara, the secretary of defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, passed away in 2009, the media recounted achievements that few in his generation could match. While charting his rapid rise in the Ford Motor Company and his leadership of […]
Read MoreThe Promise of Family-Centric Tax Reform The weeks leading up to Tax Day, April 15, have always triggered a lot of groaning about the complexity and burden of the U.S. income tax, but in recent years the criticism has taken a new tack: that increasing numbers of Americans pay no income tax. The lament is […]
Read MoreHow the Pursuit of ‘Diversity’ Places the Military at Risk Americans who admire the United States military usually think of it as a conservative, traditional institution that maintains high standards, discipline, and core values unlike those of any institution in the civilian world. They might even think that the American military is a family-friendly institution. […]
Read MoreWhy ObamaCare Delivers the Wrong Family Medicine “When it comes to the cost of health care,” President Obama declared in 2009, “this much is clear: the status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government. America spends nearly 50 percent more per person on health care than any other country.” Americans indeed heard a great […]
Read MoreHow Debt Weakens Family Formation among Generation X The Federal Guaranteed Student Loan program represents an almost pure example of the “law of unintended consequences” in public policy. Initiated in the mid-1970s as a modest supplement to means-tested federal (later, Pell) grants, it has grown into a massive program involving a majority of students at […]
Read MoreWhy a Little-Noticed Crisis Portends Economic Disaster This list of adjectives the media used to characterize the economic meltdown of 2008 runs long: grim, catastrophic, unprecedented, stunning, devastating, unexpected, confusing . . . . The adjective no news writer or broadcaster has used to describe the economic crisis is unnoticed. With the exception of the […]
Read MoreRepublicans and Democrats differ on a wide range of issues, but almost all elected officials in Washington, D.C., believe that a key responsibility of both the White House and Congress is keeping the economy running at full-speed, providing an ever-increasing number of jobs, products, and services for the American people. Elections are won or lost […]
Read MoreWhat Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln The Republican victories in Massachusetts (Scott Brown), New Jersey (Chris Christie), and Virginia (Bob McDonnell), coupled with growing disenchantment with President Obama’s initiatives, has the Republican party feeling bullish about its prospects for congressional elections this fall. Many strategists are predicting a repeat of 1994, where the […]
Read MoreIs the Political Economy of Gender-Based Affirmative Action Good for the Home Economy? George Steven Swan, S.J.D. When the new governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was on the campaign trail last summer, the Washington Post expressed alarm about his 1989 master’s thesis that had noted, among other things, the impact of rising rates of labor-force […]
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