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It’s no secret American leadership in the world is growing weaker. Our decreasing influence can be traced to the Obama Doctrine.

With his goal to make the United States “an equal partner” rather than an “exceptional” nation, President Obama has sought to remake American foreign policy. For years, The Heritage Foundation has explored and tracked the Obama Doctrine. Heritage’s Helle Dale explains the four main tenets identified by authors Kim Holmes and James Carafano. They are:

1. Ratification of more treaties and reliance on international organizations more often to deal with global crises and security concerns like nuclear weapons, often before turning to our traditional friends and allies;
2. Emphasis on diplomacy and “soft power” instruments such as summits and foreign aid to promote its aims and downplay military might;
3. Adoption of a more humble attitude in state-to-state relations; and
4. Playing a more restrained role on the international stage.

Becoming weaker in the world’s eye is not advantageous for the U.S..  Dale explains:

Soft power has not advanced the cause of political reform or peace in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings. And regimes like those of Syria, North Korea, and Iran display little fear of consequences from a U.S. in global retreat.

While the Obama Doctrine has made America weaker abroad, he has pushed for a stronger and more intrusive government at home. Recent scandals aside (IRS, AP spying, Benghazi), Obamacare is a prime example of a power-grab. As Heritage president  Jim DeMint wrote in yesterday’s Morning Bell, Obamacare is a means by which President Obama can jockey for more power through the IRS: “ Obamacare grants it (IRS) massive new authority.”

Do you think President Obama needs to reevaluate his policy priorities?

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint was named to Washington Life’s “Power List,” an annual ranking of the power-players in the nation’s political scene. Read the full list here.

Heritage President Jim DeMint’s expansion of The Heritage Foundation’s “‘can do’ approach offers conservatives the hope that empirical evidence and good ideas can actually win the day, so right reason can find its way into law,” columnist Quin Hillyer writes in the American Spectator.

Hilyer chatted briefly with DeMint about Heritage’s future:

“We’re not going to change the scholarly approach to research and development of policies,” he said. “That’s not going to change. But Heritage can become more of an emissary, so to speak, of those policies. We will be doing more to energize the grass roots.” Specifically, he said, Heritage would be partnering with the conservative state policy think tanks which “are really a key to our approach to turning Washington around.” He wants to help “give them the muscle… to push their initiatives.” It’s all part of what he called, during his formal speech, an emphasis on “competitive federalism,” to take policy decisions out of Washington and let states “compete for the best business environment, the best tax code, the best education system.”

In other words, yes and no. Yes, Heritage — and its sister, the more overtly political Heritage Action 501(c)(4) organization — will be more activist in terms of trying to mobilize or catalyze political action. But no, it “won’t change our core mission” of policy research.

Do you think Heritage’s approach can beat the liberals and help enact conservative solutions?

Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint and Heritage expert Robert Rector shed light on the real cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants in today’s Washington Post:

For centuries immigration has been vital to our nation’s health, and it will be essential to our future success. Yet immigrants should come to our nation lawfully and should not impose additional fiscal costs on our overburdened taxpayers. An efficient and merit-based system would help our economy and lessen the burden on taxpayers, strengthening our nation.

A properly structured lawful immigration system holds the potential to drive positive economic growth and job creation. But amnesty for those here unlawfully is not necessary to capture those benefits . . .

An exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found that after amnesty, current unlawful immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay more than $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes. That leaves a net fiscal deficit (benefits minus taxes) of $6.3 trillion. That deficit would have to be financed by increasing the government debt or raising taxes on U.S. citizens.

Do you think our nation’s taxpayers can afford to cover the $6.3 trillion cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants?

Politico says The Heritage Foundation is among the five players who could stop the push for amnesty for illegal immigrants:

This is the kind of policy fight for which Jim DeMint was hired.

The former South Carolina GOP senator and tea party hero took over last month as president of the 40-year-old conservative think tank, and got straight to work. He has blasted the Gang of Eight’s proposal as “amnesty,” criticized negotiators for drafting the bill in secret and is trying to highlight the bill’s potential costs if millions of undocumented immigrants are made eligible for federal benefits.

If DeMint and Heritage — with its policy analyses and feisty advocacy arm — can help keep the right unified on immigration, it could force Democrats and the White House to accept amendments they don’t like in order to get something through — or simply kill the bill.

Heritage has been here before. The group helped sink previous immigration efforts by focusing on costs. Senior research fellow Robert Rector released a study in 2007 saying that immigration legislation could cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion.

Monday, Heritage said immigration reform could cost $6.3 trillion on new spending on entitlements and social programs.

DeMint appeared on Fox News this morning to explain the costs of granting amnesty:

Do you think lawmakers will balk at the costs of this plan?

The proposed Gang of Eight immigration bill is unfair and costly, Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week.

The study you’ll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country and the detrimental effects long-term that will have. There’s no reason we can’t begin to fix our immigration system so that we won’t make the problem worse.

But the bill that’s being presented is unfair to those who came here legally, it will cost Americans trillions of dollars, it will our unlawful immigration system worse. …

Heritage is the only organization that has done an analysis of the cost. Unlawful immigrants make up about 2 percent of our GDP, and they consume most of that. If you consider all the factors of amnesty and unlawful immigration, the cost will be in the trillions of dollars over the lifetime of these unlawful immigrants.

And he warned that the contents of the bill aren’t as advertised: “I think if people read the bill, that it will be blocked. Because once you get into it, just like Obamacare, it is not the way it’s been advertised.”

What do you think? Is the immigration plan similar to Obamacare?

Jim DeMint

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint will appear Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He plans to discuss Heritage’s research on the cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants under the Gang of Eight proposal.

Click here see when to tune in in your area.

The “Gang of Eight” immigration proposal is “unfair, it costs too much, and it’s going to make the problem worse,” Heritage President Jim DeMint told Larry Kudlow last night on CNBC.

Not only does the plan not secure the borders, but it opens the door to massive new spending. The plan’s backers argue that it won’t grant benefits to unlawful immigrants at first. But we’ve heard these kinds of promises before. Continue Reading »

President Obama yesterday endorsed a Senate bill that would allow states to tax online purchases. Under this proposal, anything you buy online would be subject to new state and local sales taxes based on where you live.

This would impose onerous new burdens on both consumers and companies that sell online. The Heritage Foundation’s T. Elliot Gaiser explains the plan’s consequences:

The burden on businesses would be immense and would skew the playing field against online businesses and online consumers. “This means quizzing purchasers about their location, looking up the appropriate rules and regulations in more than 9,600 taxing jurisdictions across the country, and then collecting and remitting sales tax for that distant authority,” writes Andrew Moylan, senior fellow with the R Street Institute. “No brick-and-mortar shop has to do this for in-store sales, and yet every online retailer would have to do it for remote sales.”

The plan amounts to “taxation without representation,” Heritage President Jim DeMint wrote last year. Under the proposed arrangement, business owners would be subject to taxes over which they have no say.

Heritage Foundation expert David Addington elaborates: Continue Reading »

Congress should slow down its consideration of the Gang of Eight immigration bill and evaluate the plan’s costs, Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto today.

Speaking to Cavuto by phone, DeMint urged lawmakers to reconsider the amnesty-first Senate proposal. The way this bill works, he said, amnesty is enacted first and “then we have to hope that the President and the Congress actually carry through on fixing our immigration system.”

What do you think of the Gang of Eight plan? Tell us in the comments.