Federal Government

The full results of a national study that favors abstinence education is being withheld from researchers and the public.

The taxpayer-supported survey from 2008 found that around 70 percent of parents and their teenagers believed that teens should wait until marriage to have sex. Despite release of the study's summary and its highlight at two major public health conferences last year, the Department of Health and Human Services is withholding the full results according to Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Foundation.

"When a researcher [Dr. Lisa Rue] asked the HHS for the full results, she [was told it] is not public information and it has not been released to the public and so you don't have access to it," relates Huber. "[I find that] a little incredulous since it was shared publicly at two different venues"...

Two federal agencies have joined the "boycott Arizona" trend and nixed conferences there out of concern over the state's immigration law, a Democratic Arizona congresswoman said, calling the development "very troubling."

The cancellations by the Department of Education and the U.S. Border Patrol may have been more out of a desire to steer clear of controversy than outright protest of the law. But Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has written to dozens of cities and groups in a campaign to persuade them to end their boycotts, said it was disturbing to learn that the federal government would withdraw from the state over the issue.

"It is very troubling when the federal government becomes involved in a boycott against our state," Giffords said in a written statement. "Although I personally disagree with the immigration law, it came about because of growing frustration over the federal government's unwillingness to secure the border.  read more »

Members of Congress have received requested information from the General Accounting Office on how abortion organizations spend federal tax dollars.

Former Colorado Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who is now a spokesperson for the Susan B. Anthony List, takes a look at the pro-abortion groups.

"These individuals from these organizations say that they give choice to women," she remarks, "but when you look at these agencies that advocate for abortion or provide abortion, they received almost a billion dollars [in federal funds] from 2002 through 2009...."

Musgrave focuses on just one year of Planned Parenthood's spending of the money...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has spent the past week and half fighting to get working barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. By Thursday morning, against the governor's wishes, those barges still were sitting idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.

"It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor told ABC News while visiting Buras, La. "Literally, [Wednesday] morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges"...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department gave a group called the New York Agency for Community Affairs a grant of $135,130 in fiscal year 2005 to “provide youth leadership training to students at select New York City schools, form ‘ACORN Youth Union’ chapters, and coordinate student campaigns to address issues such as school funding, neighborhood safety, and school governance,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.

The GAO report says that in fiscal years 2005 through 2009 the federal government gave ACORN and what the GAO calls “potentially related organizations” more than $40 million in federal funds.  read more »

With the midterm election just five months away, American voters are angry at incumbents, distrustful of the federal government, dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country and feeling gloomy on the economy.

A Fox News poll released Friday shows voters are angry at everyone in Washington. When chatting about the election, 32 percent of voters say their friends and neighbors are most angry with all members of Congress. Ten percent say people are mostly angry with Republicans and 9 percent say mostly with Democrats. Another 19 percent say their neighbors are angry with President Obama. Only 9 percent say their friends aren't angry at all.

Before the 2006 midterms, 44 percent said their friends and neighbors were angry at President Bush, and 20 percent said all incumbents (26-27 September 2006)...

The federal government is now $13 trillion in the red, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday, marking the first time the government has sunk that far into debt and putting a sharp point on the spending debate on Capitol Hill.

Calculated down to the exact penny, the debt totaled $13,050,826,460,886.97 as of Tuesday, leaping nearly $60 billion since Friday, the previous day for which figures were released.

At $13 trillion, that figure has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That's almost three times the daily average of $1.7 billion under the previous administration, and led Republicans on Wednesday to place blame squarely at the feet of Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats...

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they can't trust Washington and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation's ills, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center that shows public confidence in the federal government at one of the lowest points in a half-century.

The poll released Sunday illustrates the ominous situation facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall's elections. Midterm prospects are typically tough for the party in power. Add a toxic environment like this and lots of incumbent Democrats could be out of work.

The survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively effects their daily lives, a sentiment that's grown over the past dozen years...

Taxpayers have a nasty surprise coming. More and more future tax dollars will go to pay off old bills and old promises the federal government made, but couldn’t pay.

The money borrowed by the federal government will result in a national debt of some $20 trillion by the end of this decade and taxpayers will have to pay almost $1 trillion a year, just in interest.

The chaos and danger of such a predicament is evident in Greece, which is so deep in debt - its economy is in chaos with national strikes, violent street protests and pensions on the verge of collapse - all because Greece owes so much money abroad. The country is now forced to beg for even more loans at higher interest rates just to stay afloat...

A union watchdog group believes an Obama administration plan for government contracting would be harmful to small businesses and lead to further compulsory unionism.

President Obama is proposing some new rules for government contracting that the White House claims will help expand the middle class. However, critics warn the plan would increase the cost of contracting and the size of bureaucracy.

According to the New York Times, by altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental, or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions, and other benefits....