Almost 60 state and local elected officials agree: Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for lobbyists who advocate for higher taxes, more spending, and bigger government. As a concrete show of support, these officials have put their names to a new pledge to ban lobbying funded by taxpayers. The pledge to end this practice—which allows...
President-elect Joe Biden says that workers are “entitled” to a $15 minimum wage, despite widespread business closures and pervasive joblessness. A new bill filed by a progressive member of the Texas Legislature may beat Biden to the punch, though, taking the state in a direction that it has resisted for more than 10 years. House...
More and more people agree—local governments should not spend public money to hire registered lobbyists to push for higher taxes, more spending, and bigger government at the statehouse. The latest organization to join the club seeking to ban lobbying funded by tax money is Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a nonprofit advocacy group founded at...
With President Joe Biden in the White House, progressives are pushing for universal student loan forgiveness. New data from the Department of Education provides an excellent snapshot of how badly targeted student loan forgiveness would be. This new data gives us the most detailed view into the roughly $86 billion in student loans taken out by students who graduated...
What does virtually every Austinite carry around in their pocket 24/7? A cell phone! In spite of this, a recent audit found that the city of Austin is spending tons of money on employee pagers. And in many cases, those devices are going unused and those employees are nonexistent. According to the Office of the...
The more you spend, the more you save. Heard that one before? That’s the tortured logic some are now using to convince Texas legislators to expand Medicaid coverage to healthy, able-bodied individuals. Sound fishy? You’re right. They point to a recent study that uses a lot of wishful thinking and dubious assumptions to suggest that spending...
A Los Angeles Times article entitled “Make America California Again? That’s Biden’s plan” asserts that the Biden-Harris administration is looking to California as its “de facto policy think tank” and an “incubator of innovation, premier laboratory of democracy (and) land of big ideas.” This is a very bad plan. How bad does it have to be in California,...
Would the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognize the civil rights movement of today —92 years after his birth, and more than 57 years after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech? I don’t believe he would. The just goals he fought for, equal opportunity for all and a color-blind society, have been set aside by...
The coming inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States sets the stage for a policy agenda that openly and proudly demonizes the affordable, reliable energy resources we all rely upon. Biden’s energy plans are bad for our national security, economy, public health, and overall quality of life. But the American people’s ingenuity and creativity...
The presidential election was close. Only 84 Electoral College votes separated the contenders. Widespread allegations of ballot fraud were claimed by national party chairmen in 11 states, with court challenges lasting into the middle of the year following the election. Changing the results in just two states would flip the election. The fraud allegations were...
Democrats accidentally showed their hand by voting for a new loophole to the U.S. House of Representatives budget rules. The “pay as you go” rule, which imposes a modicum of fiscal restraint by requiring spending increases to be accompanied by spending cuts to keep the national deficit from growing, now specifically excludes climate change-related bills....
Property rights matter to Texans. For more than a century, the Texas Supreme Court has held that the Texas Constitution protects each individual’s right to use and develop his or her property in any way that doesn’t cause a nuisance or harm the neighbors. While other states and federal courts have taken an increasingly narrow...