On Saturday, August 8, President Donald Trump signed four executive actions in response to a Congressional stalemate on the next round of COVID-19 relief. This brief covers the memorandum allocating federal Disaster Relief Funds (DRF) to enhance state unemployment insurance (UI). Background on UI: The federal-state UI system was created in 1935 as a form...
On Saturday, August 8, President Trump signed four executive actions in response to a Congressional stalemate on the next round of COVID-19 relief. This brief covers the memorandum deferring some employees’ payroll taxes to Social Security without affecting the program. Background on payroll taxes: There are two types of payroll taxes: Social Security rate is...
In America’s season of unrest, calls for police reform have too often been met with sloganeering rather than considered debate illuminated by fact and data. Unfortunately, one major city in Texas isn’t immune to this phenomenon: Austin. Of Texas’ six most-populous cities, five plan to increase their law enforcement budgets: Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth,...
To quote Right on Crime’s director, Derek Cohen, “prison is for the people we’re scared of, not the people we’re mad at.” However, this is not always the case in Louisiana, where a person who commits multiple felony offenses can lose their freedom for extended periods of time — even life — regardless of how...
People passionate about public policy don’t aspire to make a dollar. They strive to make a difference. And having an impact is almost always deeply satisfying. That was certainly the case with Pflugerville this week. On Tuesday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation hosted Senator Paul Bettencourt and Representative Dustin Burrows to talk taxes and the...
Congress should scrap what’s currently being discussed in the next round of COVID-19-related recovery efforts. Instead, it should focus on getting businesses operating and workers working again after governments’ lockdowns severely disrupted the lives and livelihoods of Americans. This can be done with the Foundation’s proposal of the Rehire America Workplace Recovery Act that includes the essential...
School supply lists are an annual tradition; parents know that every August, they’ll start filling backpacks with pencils and paper and three-ring binders. This year is different: It includes masks, hand sanitizer, and an awful lot of uncertainty. That uncertainty isn’t good for families. For our children’s sake, we must reopen schools for in-person learning. President Trump’s...
This week, the Harris County Commissioner’s Court met to discuss the possibility of raising taxes next year. The reason? “People need more of us,” according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Judge Hidalgo is partially right—people are in need. The government lockdown and oil market chaos has unleashed a wave of human suffering. Consider that...
The government lockdowns due to COVID-19 over the past several months have devastated American families. And that means Medicare is in trouble. According to the recent jobs report, the unemployment rate fell to 10.2%, almost triple the unemployment rate in February before the lockdowns began. In July, the number of insured unemployment was 16.2 million and the four-week...
The joyful response from anti-pipeline organizations to the recent news about the scrapping of the Atlantic Coast pipeline and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to permit delay of the Keystone XL pipeline project demonstrates the need for anti-pipeline groups to take a refresher course on energy. For the foreseeable future, fossil fuels will remain by necessity our primary energy...
Some Texans have simply given up. Mick Larkin in Wichita Falls, Texas, has closed down his karaoke club for good. The Lone Star State’s COVID-19 lockdown rules were changed again June 26; Mr. Larkin and his partner dumped the $1,000 in perishable goods they’d just purchased for the weekend and walked away. No decision to...
It now looks unlikely that Austinites will get to make their voices heard this November in the controversy over the city’s homelessness policies. The Austin city clerk recently rejected a petition that would have allowed voters to reinstate the camping ban the City Council dismantled last year. Save Austin Now, a nonprofit that supported bringing back the...