When I first came to Washington to work for the Heritage Foundation, there were a few think tanks that made the nerd in me stand a little bit in awe. First, of course, was Heritage, but the second was the Cato Institute.
Heritage was conservative and Cato libertarian, but both seem roughly on the same side. They differed as to how far things should go, but they were both always in opposition to the left. Conservatives wanted constitutionally limited government; liber...
Opinion
People don’t feel richer because they’ve gained benefits instead of wages
Recent Gallup polls reflect a historically high 75 percent dissatisfaction with how things are going in America. Some might wonder how that jibes with continued economic growth and higher consumption across all income classes.
Meanwhile, at least since the publication of “What’s The Matter With Kansas,” Democratic pundits have complained that the public is unappreciative of all the economic good that the party has done for them. For their pa...
After Trump’s destruction, how much of the GOP will there be left to save?
There is a silver lining to Donald Trump bulldozing a major political party — Americans get a chance to see inside the wreckage of the old GOP.
Evangelicals claiming to uphold family values were long ago exposed as their principles fell away to allow them to justify support for a candidate known to talk of grabbing women and consorting with pornographic actresses.
But now Trump’s demolition of the GOP is nearly complete with news that he has put an end ...
Biden taints Title IX with gender ideology; women, children, religious freedom hardest hit
Schoolchildren, college students and families wrapping up the school year should enjoy summer while it lasts, because the next school year will be a wild one.
More than 20 states, ranging from Georgia to Idaho, have recently filed lawsuits against the federal government for its overreach in attempting to impose gender ideology in education. The lawsuits contest the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex...
We should plug the safety net’s biggest hole
Over the past half-century, the U.S. safety net has grown considerably stronger for children and elderly adults, substantially reducing poverty among them. But the story is starkly different for another group of Americans that we hear far less about: non-elderly adults, aged 18-64, who aren’t raising children and don’t have a severe enough, or long-lasting enough, disability to meet the stringent criteria for federal disability benefits.
This is no small group. In 2017, the la...
The massive constitutional implications of the Idaho abortion case
The Supreme Court heard oral argument last week in Idaho v. United States, a case that pits state law against federal law in a clash between a strict abortion ban and the protection of women’s health in emergency situations. Unlike Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which addressed whether women have a constitutional right to decide for themselves whether to terminate a pregnancy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, this case is a...
We’re paying off medical debt wrong
Medical debt imposes a crushing burden on millions of Americans. More than 40 percent of Americans owe medical debt, with 18 percent owing $2,500 or more.
Concerned by this issue, states and local governments have passed or are considering programs to fund debt relief. On Monday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced a plan to eliminate $1 billion in medical debt per year. This adds to more than $12 billion in passed or proposed medical debt relief by 20 other states or local ...
Is Trump founding a dynasty?
It makes sense that Donald Trump thinks in terms of dynasties. After all, although he claims to be a self-made man, an investigation by the New York Times in 2018 reported that he had received the equivalent of $413 million from his father Fred, a New York City property developer. He is head of the Trump Organization, based at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where his sons Donald Jr. and Eric are executive vice presidents.
Trump also regards his name as a powerful brand....
Biden’s ‘tax cut’ rhetoric is really just code for benefit increases
President Biden’s rhetoric about his new budget proposal suggests it is full of tax relief for working families. For example, one White House fact sheet is headlined “The President’s Budget Cuts Taxes for Working Families and Makes Big Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share.”
Taking from the rich to give more to working (and even non-working) families is a familiar theme in Democrats’ income redistribution playbook. But the Biden administra...
It’s too easy to get the wrong idea about rural rage
“White Rural Rage” is a book version of a clickbait article written by two people who don’t seem to engage with rural Americans regularly and who used other people’s data to come up with their conclusions about why rural Americans lean right. I am not an academic or journalist, like the two authors, but I am the only Democrat at the state level or higher among 32 counties in Northwest Iowa and someone who ran for Congress in 2018 in a district Trump won by 27 points in 2016 and...