Phil Kerpen

Phil Kerpen Policy Director, Americans for Prosperity
- FOXNews.com
- June 23, 2009

Democrats will apparently move forward with their enormous tax-and-spend bill known as Waxman-Markey this week and it's all concealed in a cloak of green political correctness. The real purpose of the plan is to dramatically enhance the power of Washington politicians by giving them control over vast swaths of the U.S. economy.

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June 10, 2009 4:00 AM
The Supreme Court nominee’s track record reveals an antagonism toward private industry.

By Phil Kerpen

Supreme Court nomination battles tend to focus on the more emotional, hot-button constitutional issues of the day. But the most sweeping — and frightening — implications of a Sotomayor tenure on the Supreme Court may be in the realm of business.

Business cases make up a large and growing portion of the Roberts Court’s docket. They represent a third of the total cases and a majority of the civil cases the Court hears. In short, business is big business for the Supreme Court, a fact that makes Sonia Sotomayor’s anti-business track record extremely troubling.

June 9th, 2009 12:43 PM Eastern
By Phil Kerpen

Lie Number 1: I Won’t Tax Your Health Benefits

What Obama said on the campaign trail (Newport News, Va., October 4, 2008):

“So here’s John McCain’s radical plan in a nutshell: he taxes health care benefits for the first time in history… Well, I don’t think that’s right.”

What Obama says now:

Obama ally Sen. Max Baucus told the Washington Post that Obama is now willing to tax employer-provided health benefits. Baucus said: “Yeah, it’s something that he might consider. That was discussed. It’s on the table.”

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June 1st, 2009 12:45 PM Eastern
PHIL KERPEN: What’s Good for GM Is NOT Good for Our Country

By Phil Kerpen
Director, Americans for Prosperity

I cautiously cheered the Obama administration’s announcement 60 days ago that GM was on a path to bankruptcy court, because I was hopeful that it would represent an end to political manipulation of the company and a chance to get a clean balance sheet and a new shot as a private company. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead GM heads to bankruptcy court with a prepackaged deal that almost completely politicizes the company, with the U.S. government the new majority shareholder.

Expect that, like Amtrak, GM will be government-run and subsidized to the tune of billions of taxpayers dollars for decades to come.

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By Phil Kerpen • June 1, 2009
Washington wants to hand Tennesseans a huge new tax bill, and U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon wants to help them.

The "cap-and-trade" scheme would have an enormous negative impact on the state. Tennessee could lose more than 80,000 jobs, and families could lose thousands of dollars in disposable income. Even with those effects on his home state, Rep. Gordon caved in to party leadership in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. But the real fight probably will be in the Senate, and Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker — two Republicans who have at times been friendly to new energy taxes — need to learn from Gordon's mistake and vote no.

May 27th, 2009 5:15 PM Eastern

By Phil Kerpen
Policy Director, Americans for Prosperity

In today’s Washington Post, the White House floats a really scary trial balloon—a new national Value-Added Tax (VAT) to pay for out-of-control spending and a Washington take over of health care. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad appears to be on board. So does Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, who has been hired by the White House budget office to help design the health care plan and whose book on health care uses a VAT to fund the new government program. Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker is also on-board the VAT-train.

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