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Health Care
Corbett’s Medicaid Expansion “Waiver” Strikes Bad Deal for Pennsylvanians
In this Heartlander piece, Kristina Ribali of the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) discusses Pennsylvania’s “HealthyPA” Medicaid expansion plan and how the legislators who supported it were fooled into believing the national government was interested in compromise. The FGA’s experts predicted that any positive provisions of the plan that manage costs would be stripped. They were right: “Corbett’s application requested 24 waivers of 15 different federal law provisions. How many were approved? Technically, zero, as no single waiver was approved without conditions.” Read more
Energy & Environment
Research & Commentary: Endangered Species Act Repeal and Replace
In 1973, Congress passed and President Richard M. Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Despite the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stating the “law’s ultimate goal is to ‘recover’ species so they no longer need protection under ESA,” only 56 species have been delisted in the law’s 40-year history. Of those, 10 are extinct and 18 were mistakenly listed in the first place. Regarding the remaining 28, the government hasn’t presented any evidence showing ESA specifically led to their recovery. Policy Analyst Taylor Smith advocates Congress repeal the Endangered Species Act and replace it with a federal biological trust fund. Read more
Education
No Benefits, Big Costs to Common Core
Common Core supporters from Wisconsin’s state legislature are fighting Gov. Walker’s call for a repeal and replacement plan by saying that there’s no widely known reason to believe the standards are deficient, that the state had significant input on the its creation, and that unifying standards across state lines would be a step forward for education reform. Policy Analyst Taylor Smith responds to a column written by a Wisconsin state senator making those exact claims with a letter to the editor rebutting those charges. Read more
Budget & Tax
United States, France among Worst Countries for Tax Competiveness
In this Heartlander article, Alexander Anton examines the Tax Foundation’s annual International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) report. The report revealed some telling, but unsurprising, results. Among the study’s rankings, the United States was ranked as the third-worst country in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), out of 34 measured countries. “Using the Tax Foundation’s metrics, only Portugal and France were found to have tax structures and systems more antagonistic to free-market competiveness and neutrality.” Read more
Telecom
Decompetition, Decompetition, Decompetition
In this Somewhat Reasonable piece, originally published in the Daily Caller, Scott Cleland argues that while the FCC’s new professed mantra is “competition, competition, competition,” their actions appear to be pursuing a de facto policy of decompetition rather than competition. Cleland argues that this decompetitive trend springs from the FCC’s desperate push to remain relevant. “It’s what one gets when one combines an obsolete communications law and regulators nostalgic for the regulatory power of a bygone era. The FCC is increasingly acting like a 20th century regulator searching for relevance in a 21st century marketplace.” Read more
From Our Free-Market Friends
The Moral Case for School Choice
In this issue of Policy Perspective, the Texas Public Policy Foundation illustrates how school choice would both preserve liberties and rights and promote greater equality. “Morality requires the protection of our rights and liberties. Morality also requires the promotion of a greater equality. Only school choice can provide both for the next generation of Texans.” Read more
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