This week, The Heritage Foundation released a monumental policy guide titled “Solutions for America”. For the last year and a half, President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have charged conservatives with having “no ideas” or “old ideas.” The release of “Solutions for America” will stop this false narrative once and for all. The fact is that conservatives have been offering policy solutions for the past two years, and now The Heritage Foundation has combined its research with common sense solutions to give America the answers it needs. Let’s look at a few of them.

Health Care

In March 2010, Democrats in Congress finally passed the health care legislation they had been trying to enact since January 2009. And though we already spend over 17% of GDP on health care, this trillion-dollar plan piles on even more spending. Without listening to the public, Democrats passed this massive government takeover of health care,  creating more spending, expanding bureaucracy, and ensuring that the already confusing health care system will only get worse. All throughout the debate, Democrats in Congress and even President Obama declared that the Republicans offered no alternatives for their health care reform plan. Nothing could have bene further from the truth. Now that Obamacare has passed, what do we do now? The Heritage Foundation offers some solutions.

The first thing Heritage recommends is to repeal Obamacare. Heritage Action for America, the sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, has been leading the charge to repeal Obamacare by presenting Members of Congress who voted against Obamacare with a Discharge Petition that would force Congress to vote on repealing Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation also wants to give citizens control of their health care through Tax Equity, which would give individuals who buy health coverage on their own (separate from their employer) the same kind of tax breaks that people get when they purchase from their employer. Today, they receive no tax breaks. Health Care also needs to be portable, like car insurance to remain cost-effective and efficient.

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A lot of things have gone wrong in the last 72 days since oil started spilling into the Gulf, and very few things have gone right. Unfortunately, the oil spilling into the Gulf is only one of many, many problems in the Gulf. There are the obvious problems of extremely polluted water, the oil soaked animals, the oil soaked beaches, the loss of tourism, the loss of jobs, and the loss of faith in the process that is supposed to ensure things like this never happen. But, why hasn’t the oil been cleaned up? Why is the leak still spewing oil into the Gulf? BP has their fair share of blame, but so does the federal government.

The government has had a lot of missteps. The EPA would not allow ships to skim oil from the water because they couldn’t get 100% of the oil out. They could only get 99% of the oil out. They failed to get rid of the horribly outdated Jones Act that forbids foreign vessels from helping us clean up the gulf. There have been plenty of problems with the way the Federal Government has reacted to the oil spill, but it’s never too late to start getting it right.

The Heritage Foundation has put together a list of things the Obama administration can do to mitigate the damage that the oil slick can still do. These are steps that can be taken immediately, and more items will be added to the list when appropriate. Simple things like waiving the Jones Act (as the Bush Administration did during Katrina), or accepting international assistance. Or allowing ships like the S.S. A-Whale–that has the capability to skim 500,000 barrels a day– to immediately start assisting efforts. It’s in the Gulf now, but it is still not being used.

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Not surprisingly, the EPA thinks regulations are good. What is surprising is that they think everyone else thinks they are just as great as they do. So much so that they are holding a contest. No. Seriously, they are. They want you to make a video telling everyone how great regulations are and to get more people involved in the process.

Getting people involved in the process sounds like a good thing on the surface, but the EPA (and all other Administrative Agencies) are not beholden to public opinion. They offer the public a chance to weigh in on the process by letting you weigh in with comments, but they are unelected officials and, thus, have no reason to listen to anyone and make regulations that could kill the economy. Aren’t they great?

Well, thankfully, not everyone thinks regulations are the “bees knees”. The Heritage Foundation submitted  a video to the contest explaining how awful some regulations can be to economy.

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Liberals in congress are trying to sell the Dodd bill as a bill that would stop the bailouts by regulating Wall Street, but, it actually creates permanent bailouts that will fund corrupt Wall Street executives who make poor decisions. Did I mention that these bailouts will come at the taxpayer’s expense? The Heritage Foundation put together a great video explaining why this bill is a Wall Street Bailout Bill.

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Last Tuesday, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas wrote an op-ed in The Hill claiming the center-right nation was a myth. In the article he points out that it is impossible for it to be a center-right nation due to the fact that there are strong democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. He also cites Gallup polls claiming that even though 40% identify themselves as conservative, it is not a majority. It is unclear if he is trying to convince us, or himself, that we are not a center-right nation.

It is true that there is a strong liberal majority in the House and Senate. However, that cannot be explained to the fact that this nation leans to the left. Moulitsas makes no mention to the fact that without Obama at the top of the ticket, conservatives have done very well. In the special runoff election a month after Obama was elected, Saxby Chambliss was elected with 57 percent of the vote, nearly 10 more percentage points then he had a month earlier in the general election. Or the stunning victory of Scot Brown in MA by 5 percentage points to win a seat that had been  inhabited by a Democrat for 47 years. He also pays no mention to the fact that Virginia, who has two Democrat Senators and voted for Obama in 2008, elected a strong conservative by a margin of 19 points in 2009. He also ignores the fact that in New Jersey they elected a Republican governor.

In the election of 2006 and 2008 voters wanted change, but they did not want the major change that the Obama administration is trying to achieve. Obama won the election by running on conservative ideals like cutting taxes and cutting spending.  In fact, Obama’s plan to tax people that made over $250,000 was a highly contested issue in the election. The American people did not vote a complete government takeover of health care.

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