Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues
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Biden’s
Irresponsible ‘Build Back Better’ Tax-and-Spend Scheme Risks Higher Inflation <[link removed]> – By recklessly adding to the deficit, Build Back Better would push America closer to a reckoning with our large and growing national debt. When
debts and deficits get out of hand, creditors worry and ultimately demand a higher return for the risk they bear. That means interest rates will tend to rise unless the Federal Reserve doubles down on measures that risk future inflation, like buying back its own securities. With almost $29 trillion of debt, even a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates means trillions of dollars more in interest owed each decade. Unless lawmakers and the Federal Reserve learn restraint, they risk putting the nation through a vicious cycle of more debt, higher interest rates, and soaring inflation. The United States cannot afford to let deficit spending go unchecked, and it cannot afford the higher prices hiding in liberals’ massive tax-and-spending
plan. Heritage expert: Joel Griffith <[link removed]>
Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates <[link removed]> – Defenders of the mandate will note that OSHA has established standards regulating bloodborne pathogens like HIV and various forms of hepatitis. Nurses, medical technicians, and others must follow those standards when they draw blood or start IVs, for example. Those are distinguishable from the proposed vaccine mandates in at least two ways. First, OSHA followed a notice-and-comment rulemaking process and did not resort to an emergency temporary standard. Second, Congress took the extraordinary step of rewriting the regulation in 2001, leaving no doubt that it intended for the agency to exercise that authority. The bloodborne pathogen standard requires health care facilities to offer free hepatitis B vaccines to employees at risk of contracting that illness from needle sticks. Health care workers can decline those hepatitis B vaccines. Thus, even where Congress has given OSHA authority to issue narrowly targeted standards dealing with bloodborne pathogens, the agency did not mandate that workers be immunized. In short, Congress has not given OSHA license to mandate COVID-19 vaccines. Lawmakers needn’t prohibit OSHA from imposing a
mandate that they never authorized the agency to issue in the first place. Heritage expert: Doug Badger <[link removed]>
The ‘Prisoners’ Dilemma’ in Biden’s Title IX Policies <[link removed]> – Obama and Biden’s Title IX policies lead to students being punished without due process, and they trivialize genuine sexual assault. While protecting students from sexual assault and
harassment is essential, the policy the Biden administration seeks to restore misses the mark. To protect all students, Title IX policy must uphold reasonable standards that do not preemptively condemn the accused. Lowering the bar is not “survivor-centered,” as so many progressives claim. It’s a regressive and authoritarian attempt to strip college students of their fundamental right to due process. So long as colleges and universities continue to put students in a prisoners’ dilemma with their Title IX policies, they coerce students into unnecessary opposition and undermine justice. Heritage expert: GianCarlo Canaparo <[link removed]>
Not Your Grandmother’s ERA: Why Current Equal Rights Amendment Strategies Will Fail <[link removed]> – When the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was born a century ago, supporters claimed that men and women
would never be treated equally without it. Legislatures, however, have eliminated discriminations—and even the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw “no practical difference” between the ERA and how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment. Each of three current ERA strategies will fail. First, the ERA that Congress proposed in 1972 cannot be ratified because its deadline expired. Second, proposing the original ERA again will fail because its risks far outweigh any potential benefits. Third, a radical new ERA, with a different concept of rights, has been introduced to promote an agenda that includes unrestricted abortion and LGBT+ policies. Heritage
expert: Tom
Jipping <[link removed]>
Justice Clarence Thomas’ Long Career Has Had a
Profound Impact on Our Liberty <[link removed]> – Thomas brings this understanding of the judicial job description to each case. He is not satisfied with the court reaching the right result, but insists on reaching that result in the right way. In 1988, years before becoming a judge, Thomas even dared question how the Supreme Court reached its result (with which Thomas agreed) in Brown v. Board of Education. That opinion was, he wrote, a “missed opportunity” because it was based more on sociological or psychological evidence about the effects of segregation than on the constitutional principle of equality. This is one of many ways in which Thomas shows he is more about substance than
form. Supreme Court observers, for example, have noted that Thomas asks few questions during oral arguments. National Public Radio, for example, made it a banner headline in February 2016: “Clarence Thomas Asks 1st Question From Supreme Court Bench in 10 Years.” Heritage expert: Tom
Jipping <[link removed]>

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