How the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan Would Benefit Utah

It is estimated that 62 bridges and more than 2,064 miles of highway in Utah are in poor condition

Looking around our communities, it’s not uncommon to see roads, bridges and other infrastructure in need of serious repair. And as one of the country’s fastest growing states, Utah is also in need of additional infrastructure. For years — decades, even — elected officials have asserted that we needed to turn our attention toward our nation’s aging infrastructure. Yet various challenges and disagreements have resulted in little progress.

When he first took office, President Joe Biden proposed an...

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The sacrifices of the fallen can remind us we must work together to heal the divisions among us

On the 20th anniversary of D-Day in 1964, Dwight D. Eisenhower led Walter Cronkite through the cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach where 9,388 headstones honor the Americans who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy during World War II. The former president, reflecting on his tenure as Supreme Allied Commander, observed: “these young boys, so many of them over whose graves we have been treading, looking at, and contemplating their sacrifices, they were cut off in their prime…they have...

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We can’t look away from China’s existential threat.

When President James Garfield was shot in 1881, the wound should not have been fatal. Doctors who rushed to examine the president probed first with unwashed fingers and then with unsterilized instruments. Years before, Joseph Lister had discovered that sterilization could prevent fatal infection. But the doctors attending Garfield either hadn’t read Lister’s work or ignored it, and sepsis and infection ultimately set in.
  
Today, our country is at risk of consequences both dire and...
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Family Policy Shouldn’t Penalize Married and Stay-at-Home Parents

To leave behind a plan that lasts, Biden needs to reach across the aisle.

The U.S. birthrate reached its lowest level ever in 2020, according to data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Young people are marrying less and having fewer kids in part because they don’t feel confident about their job prospects and financial security. As everyone knows, raising kids is expensive. Health-insurance premiums are 55% higher than they were a decade ago. Home prices are rising at the fastest pace in 15 years, and a median starter home now costs...

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On management of Utah public lands, Biden should pursue an accountable legislative process

On March 22, 2021, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that: “The creation of a national monument is of no small consequence.” We agree, as would all those who have argued for, or against, such designations. Monument decisions immediately impact ranching, energy, and recreation industries, in addition to local and tribal governments who rely on the land for their livelihoods. In fact, many of our friends and neighbors are still bitterly divided over the creation of some of Utah’s biggest monuments...
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The Right Way to Boycott the Beijing Olympics

The United States can repudiate Chinese policy without unfairly punishing our athletes
As the Beijing Olympic Games approach, it is increasingly clear that China, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party does not deserve an Olympic showcase. Because it is too late to move the Winter Games scheduled for Beijing next February, some have proposed, understandably, that the United States boycott the Games.
       
China deserves our condemnation. The Chinese Communist Party has reneged on its agreement to allow Hong Kong self rule; it has brutally suppressed peaceful...
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Biden’s Stimulus Bill Is a $1.9 Trillion Clunker

Democrats are anxious for any excuse to blow up the Senate filibuster, the last procedural hurdle to one-party government. Their latest is that Republicans oppose the president’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Despite having passed five bipartisan Covid-19 relief bills to date—including one barely seven weeks ago—they claim our opposition demonstrates historic intransigence.
             
No, it demonstrates that the $1.9 trillion bill is a clunker. It would waste hundreds of billions of...
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Romney and Manchin: How We Compromised on COVID-19 Relief

Mitt Romney is a Republican senator from Utah. Joe Manchin is a Democratic senator from West Virginia.

Coming off the most bitter, divisive presidential election (and post-election) in modern American history, expectations have been understandably low for Congress’s ability to agree on anything — even another round of covid-19 relief. Progress has been nonexistent for several months, with talks at an impasse between a comprehensive $2.2 trillion stimulus package put forth by Democrats and a...

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How to get the next COVID-19 relief package right

If drafted with Americans and not politics in mind, the next rescue package can provide critical support for workers, families and employers

We need to get the next CARES Act right. Not that the first one was so bad; despite its flaws, the emergency required rapid action. Now more careful crafting is called for: many small businesses that employ millions of Americans are permanently closing, bigger businesses that employ additional millions are facing strong headwinds, local governments are preparing for layoffs and the federal checking account is badly overdrawn. We need to take additional action at the federal level to weather the...

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America is awakening to China. This is a clarion call to seize the moment.

America is awakening to China. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that, to a great degree, our very health is in Chinese hands; from medicines to masks, we are at Beijing’s mercy. Embarrassed by the revelation of this vulnerability, politicians in Washington will certainly act to remedy our medical dependence — with the usual fanfare and self-congratulation. But China’s stranglehold on pharmaceuticals is only a small sliver of its grand strategy for economic, military and geopolitical domination...
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