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About the Foundation
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan research institute. The Foundation’s mission is to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach.
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Highlighted Research

| 12 Steps for Overcoming Overcriminalization | |
| In 2010, TPPF published "Analyze Before You Criminalize.” Policymakers have since asked: "This checklist guards against new unnecessary and overly broad criminal laws that erode liberty, but how do we reverse overcriminalization?” Here are some answers. |
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| EPA's Pretense of Science | | Regulating Phantom Risks |
| The EPA’s regulatory agenda is a perilous pipe-dream precluded by the laws of math and physics—relying instead on implausible assumptions about health risks from exposure to trace background levels of the single pollutant known as particulate matter. |
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| Reforming Texas’ Tax System | | Testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee |
| Texas is generally well-regarded for its low taxes, but there is always room for improvement. Here are 10 ideas to improve Texas’ tax system and make the state a more attractive environment for jobs and investment. |
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| Victim-Offender Conferencing | | A Solution for Empowering and Restoring Victims, Reducing Recidivism, and Lowering Costs |
| Victim-offender conferencing offers the opportunity for the victim to be restored while the offender learns the impact of the crime on the victim. |
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| Update: Trends in Texas Government | | State Government Spending |
| In the latest installment of this series, the Foundation looks at the growth of state government spending over the past two decades and compares it to how state spending might have looked had it been limited to the growth of population plus inflation. |
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| Update: Trends in Texas Government | | Local Government Spending |
| This updated Policy Brief examines the growth of local government spending in Texas between 1990 and 2009 compared to the growth of population and inflation. |
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Visit the Publications section for all of our reports.
| Latest Commentaries

Texas Beaches Will Remain Open and Accessible The recent Texas Supreme Court decision in Severance v. Patterson has some worried that the millions of Texans who visit the Texas coast each year will lose access to the state’s public beaches. But despite such predictions of doom, Texas beaches will remain open and accessible. |
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EPA’s Legal Losing Streak After more than three years of what The Wall Street Journal called “a regulatory spree unprecedented in U.S. history,” EPA’s regulatory actions are finally being tested in court. And in amounting number of cases, they have been found wanting. |
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Fool for Higher Education Americans will continue to borrow for college as long as government-subsidized loans are available. But when the federal spigot closes, so will be the number of students able to attend college. The resulting downward pressure on demand will force universities to reduce prices, restoring market equilibrium in time.
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Why the Left Wants to Blacklist ALEC Let's put the bottom line up front: We at the Texas Public Policy Foundation are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC, and we're proud of it. Amid continuing reports of efforts by political critics to isolate and destroy the group because of its limited-government advocacy, it's appropriate to say a few words in the council's defense. |
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How California's Budget Blunders Led to My Divorce from the Golden State California’s big-government, entitlement state model, aided by the nation’s best weather, is collapsing. California, ever the trendsetting state, appears to presage President Obama’s ideal vision of America by a few years. Meanwhile Texas frees job creators to do what they do best through low taxes, less regulation, and a reasonable lawsuit climate – perhaps pointing the way to an alternative vision of a once and future America.
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Use Report to Improve Texas Juvenile Justice Many Texas youths have been successfully rehabilitated through local juvenile probation programming while in county custody under the Commitment Reduction Program. Prioritizing these types of programs can help address the challenges facing Texas' youth lockups and ensure the wise use of Texas taxpayers' money. |
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Federalizing Fracking: A Bad Idea “You can’t professionalize if you don’t federalize,” said former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle 10 years ago at the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. He may as well have been talking about the Obama Administration’s new executive order and rules to expand federal oversight to what is now, arguably, the most economic valuable activity in the country. |
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More commentaries are found in the Newsroom.
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Recent Press Releases
| Environmental Protection Agency operates under “pretense of science” | | Texas Public Policy Foundation report exposes how EPA manipulates cost-benefit analyses to justify almost all new air-quality regulations |
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relied on four highly questionable assumptions in 2009 to drastically inflate the health benefits from far-reaching new rules, according to a new report published by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. |
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TexasPolicy.com |
Texas Public Policy Foundation 900 Congress Ave., Ste. 400 Austin, TX 78701 Phone 512.472.2700 Fax 512.472.2728 |
| info@TexasPolicy.com |
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| "EPA applies an absolute form of the precautionary principle to its assumptions, treating small probabilities as virtual certainties," says Mario Loyola. |
| - National Review Online | |
| “We do consider virtual education a positive thing. There are a lot of perks in improving access and quality education in rural areas, and we think there could be fiscal benefits as well,” says James Golsan. |
| - The Texas Tribune | |
| "Only one in three college-headed students leaves [school] with both a degree and the learning a degree is meant to certify," says Tom Lindsay. |
| - Inside Higher Ed | |
| Schools' willingness to offer a $10,000 degree underscores the fact that the "moral high ground has shifted" from a time when colleges considered it crass to question the value of their degrees, says Thomas Lindsay |
| - Wall Street Journal | |
| Chuck DeVore: "Texas frees job creators to do what they do best through low taxes, less regulation, and a reasonable lawsuit climate." |
| - Fox News | |
| "Having an effective treatment program for parolees that can make a difference and pay for itself is good corrections policy," says Marc Levin. |
| - Austin American-Statesman | |
| Brooke Rollins and Wendy Gramm: "We at the Texas Public Policy Foundation are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC, and we're proud of it." |
| - Wall Street Journal | |
| Brooke Rollins and Wendy Gramm: ALEC is for less government and more freedom |
| - Reuters | |
| "Continued efforts to better prioritize the use of incarceration can help address the challenges facing Texas' youth lockups and ensure the wise use of Texas taxpayers' money," says Jeanette Moll |
| - Austin American-Statesman | |
| Kathleen Hartnett White: State authorities are better situated than the ferderal government for getting regulatory jobs done efficiently. |
| - The Daily Caller | |
| Tom Lindsay: “Different schools have different missions, and strengths, and partnerships. Not everybody is going to do what (TAMU) San Antonio can do, but the kinds of partnerships San Antonio represents are what is replicable.” |
| - Inside Higher Ed | |
| "Get right with 'Right on Crime'" |
| - Sun Sentinel | |
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