Not surprisingly, the culinary world and the public do not seem to appreciate Assemblyman Ortiz’ worries about their health. Thousands of agitated people twittered and posted Facebook comments on Facebook urging a halt to New York’s legislative experiments with their food.

Government policy undoubtedly plays an important role in protecting society, but no one is in need of protection here. While Assemblyman Ortiz argues that this bill will give consumers “the option to exercise healthier diets and healthier lifestyles” by having a personal control over their salt intake, he has obviously forgotten that customers are able to make their own choice by easily switching restaurants if they are not satisfied with the quality of served food. Ultimately, the bill will not just regulate preparation of food in restaurants, but also the choices available to restaurant customers.

Banning a millennia old culinary ingredient such as salt will spoil the cuisine of both internationally inspired restaurants and home-style eateries, leaving New Yorkers with a bad taste in their mouths in more ways than one.

- Desislava Yordanova
Intern, Center for Economic Freedom ]]>PublicationWed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MDTSunshine Week 2010, sponsored by the American Society of News Editors. But in a week dedicated to promoting all things transparency, the news so far has been anything but bright.

The Associated Press is reporting that, despite directives from President Obama, the federal government has become less transparent, not more.

The new AP audit cites a “review of annual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reports filed by 17 major agencies,” which found the government used legal exemptions to withhold information from the public at a much greater rate in FY 2009 versus FY 2008.

Agencies cited the FOIA’s nine exemptions “at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year.”

Another audit, conducted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, also found the federal government’s transparency efforts to be lacking.

The GWU audit’s key findings included:

• A severe backlog in FOIA requests, with some requests dating back 18 years;
• Only 13 of 90 agencies in the audit had documented concrete changes to the improve their FOIA practices;
• Just four federal agencies, including the Justice Department, showed both an increase in information released and a decrease in information withheld.

Clearly, as these two reports show, more work that needs to be done – especially at the federal level – before the public’s right to know is secure.

- James Quintero ]]>PublicationMon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MDTPeter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, recently had a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen.” In his piece, he explains why ordeals such as the recent Climategate scandal should not be surprising to anyone due to today’s unfortunate state of affairs at our nation’s public universities.

The piece sheds light on an issue often overlooked or understated, and that is the impact university affairs have on everyday political and business issues. Research published by university intellectuals, though mostly incredibly specialized, sometimes has far reaching effects. Climategate is a perfect example.

Berkowitz lays out the problem quite succinctly when he states that “…our universities, which above all should be cultivating intellectual virtue, are in their day-to-day operations fostering the opposite. Fashionable ideas, the convenience of professors, and the bureaucratic structures of academic life combine to encourage students and faculty alike to defend arguments for which they lack vital information. They pretend to knowledge they don't possess and invoke the authority of rank and status instead of reasoned debate.”

Unfortunately, this dishonest trend shows no sign of slowing down. Until a strong coalition of brave university intellectuals are willing to risk their careers for the sake of true intellectual honesty, expect more scandals like Climategate.

- Elizabeth Young ]]>PublicationWed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MST On the low side, O’Brien told lawmakers to expect at least an $11 billion shortfall for the 2012-13 budget. But that figure could go as high as $15 billion if the economy and tax revenues performed below expectations. The shortfall’s main culprits: falling revenues, an ongoing structural deficit, and recurring expenses resulting from the stimulus act.

Making matters worse, Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs recently informed lawmakers that rising health care costs would add an additional $1.7 billion in cost to the current budget. The increased costs, in large part, stem from higher-than-expected enrollment growth in the state’s Medicaid program.

With the state’s budget outlook presenting a challenge, some are already beating the drums for higher taxes in order to close the shortfall. But just because Texas faces a multi-billion shortfall doesn’t mean higher taxes are a must. The 2003 legislative session is a perfect example of this.

Faced with a $10 billion budget shortfall—similar to the one we face today—Texas lawmakers held the line on spending and passed a balanced budget, without raising taxes.

How did they do it? They embraced zero-based budgeting and agency consolidation, while cutting out waste and fraud where they could.

And Texas is all the better for it.

Duplicating that 2003 effort won’t be easy, but considering the alternative—higher taxes, slower economic growth, and less money in your pocket—it is definitely the better approach.

As the time to write the 2012-13 state budget approaches, viewing the task as an opportunity, once again puts Texas in the position of leading the nation in strong fiscal policy.

- James Quintero ]]>PublicationWed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MST James Tooley, author of “The Beautiful Tree,” finds some very specific examples in Third World countries of parents acting as consumers of education. Parents visited schools, talked with teachers and administrators, compared notes with other parents, and checked up on what students were learning by questioning them or asking them how often their teacher checks their homework. These informal tactics allowed parents to actively compare children in the government public schools to those in the private schools in their neighborhood.

During his travels, Tooley would frequently ask parents why they chose one type of schooling over the other. Here are some of the responses:

• One parent said, “government school children are always smartly dressed in good uniforms but when you ask them some questions, you realize that they know nothing.”
• Another parent explained their reason for choosing a private school for their child by saying, “the children do not learn [in public schools]; all they do is play.”

Private schools are accountable to parents. If parents decide to withdraw their children and their fees, then the private school could go out of business. Owners of private schools understand this market principle and seek to keep their parents happy. Yet government experts don’t appear to trust the judgment of poor parents to decide the best school for their child and don’t understand how a private school can be accountable to parents.

Tooley believes in the education marketplace and finishes his book by saying “the market in education is powerful. It builds on something that no central planner can possibly embrace, the strength of millions of decisions by individual families, the millions of bits of information grasped by the Searchers who relentlessly create and innovate, modify and develop what the people want.”

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationMon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MSTThe Beautiful Tree,” explores public and private schools in Third World countries and finds that the private schools deliver a superior education with less funding. Why are private schools better?

One government principal in Ghana says that parents choose private schools because public schools cannot fire bad teachers. She says private schools proprietors “are very tough. If teachers don’t show up and teach, the parents react. Private schools need to make a profit, with the profit they pay their teachers, and so they need as many students as they can get. So they are tough with their teachers and supervise them carefully. I can’t do that with my teachers. I can’t sack them…. It is very rare for a teacher to be sacked [in a government school].”

Another reason that private schools are better is incentives. Private school owners have to stay on their toes and constantly monitor the performance of their teachers. Leaders of private schools are constantly walking around their school, making sure teachers are teaching, and following up on parent complaints to ensure that students are learning. One private school proprietor in India decided to install a closed-circuit television system to monitor classrooms because he knew that if teachers were accountable to him, he could be accountable to parents.

Government schools don’t have this incentive. Tooley explains, “the chief problem in the government schools is that the principals and inspectors have no incentives to do any of these things. Principals will draw the same salary and same benefits if they sit in their offices reading the newspaper all day — or even if they don’t show up at all — as they would if they meticulously walked the corridors checking on their teachers.”

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationFri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MSTThe Beautiful Tree,” visited public, recognized private schools, and unrecognized private schools in the slums of India, China, and Africa to compare the quality between these different school environments.

Tooley and other researchers visited the schools unannounced and took copious notes on the size of classes, whether the teacher was actually teaching, and the condition of the building and facilities.

All in all, private schools came out on top on almost every measure. Private school classes were smaller, teachers at private schools were more committed to teaching (as determined by more time on task), private schools were more likely to provide the curriculum parents wanted (such as teaching English), and the condition of the building and facilities were of equal quality. The only input where public government schools ranked higher was on the provision of playgrounds.

Tooley found that class size was a key factor in parents choosing private schools. Parents view classes in government public schools as “simply too big.” The data supports this belief with public school class sizes being either twice or three times as large as private schools.

Tooley was also able to gather information on the level of teacher training, teacher salaries, and student learning. He found that government schools were more likely to have better trained and educated teachers and better paid teachers (in some cases seven times more than teachers at private schools). Yet more training and higher pay doesn’t necessarily lead to higher teacher performance in the classroom, better student results, or a better school.

He explains, “When critics dismiss private schools for not having extensively trained teachers, the key reason they do is because they assume the teachers will be less effective. We’ve already seen that these untrained teachers are far more likely to show up and teach then their more heavily trained counterparts in government schools. Does their lack of training make any difference to student achievement – a key indicator of their effectiveness? It turns out it does not. Private schools again turn out to be superior to government schools.”

Students in private schools also scored higher on standardized tests in key subjects than students in government schools even when controlling for background differences.

Private schools serving poor children in the slums actually receive no government funding and no international aid and yet are of a higher quality because market forces are at work and they are accountable to parents.

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationFri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MST Consider that Lubbock County (population: 264,418) has 2,478 of its residents in prisons and state jails, while Hidalgo County (population: 726,604) accounts for 2,986 inmates. Thus, taxpayers in Hidalgo County are subsidizing other counties like Lubbock that incarcerate nearly three times as many of their residents per capita.

Gross disparities exist in revocations to prison from probation. For example, in Hunt County, according to state data, last year 95 percent of their adult probation department’s revocations were for rules violations rather than a new offense. That far exceeds the statewide average of 49 percent. From 2004-05 to 2008-09, probation revocations from Hunt County grew 24.9 percent, going from 244 to 309 even as its number of probationers declined. The county only has about 600 felony probationers, but it revokes them for rules violations at a much higher rate than most other counties.

Hunt County is not alone. Many other counties, particularly rural counties in East Texas, have revocation rates for rules violations far above the state average. In contrast, Hidalgo County is the lowest in the state – only 31.8 percent of their probation revocations were for rules violations. Most other counties in the Valley are also below the state average.

Imbalanced scales of justice weigh heavily on Texas taxpayers and lock in disparities, as the same person who would be sentenced or revoked to prison in one county receives probation or remains on probation in another county.

Decisions on revoking probationers must always put public safety first. However, lawmakers should require all probation departments and judges to use a progressive sanctions and incentives model. Instead of doing nothing when a probationer violates the rules and then revoking them for many years after enough violations pile up, graduated responses such as a curfew – and even a few nights in county jail if necessary – are used to promote compliance. Conversely, incentives such as less frequent reporting are used to recognize exemplary performance. Victims also benefit when probationers succeed, as probationers pay more than $45 million per year in restitution while inmates pay about half a million in restitution, fees, and court costs combined.

All counties must be held accountable for implementing best practices that result in more offenders successfully completing probation and reserve prison space for those who pose a danger to public safety.

- Marc Levin ]]>PublicationTue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 MST This is a lofty goal. What is the best way to provide all children, even those in the most poor and remote areas on earth, access to a quality education? Many academics and development experts believe the answer lies in free public schooling for all. But does a free public education benefit every child or are private schools also part of the answer? Which type of school provides a better education? Do private schools even exist in the slums?

James Tooley set out to answer these questions by traveling around the world in search of private schools that serve the poor. He visited the slums in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, India and China to conduct research on public and private schools and shares his findings in his book, “The Beautiful Tree.”

As he visited with government officials in these countries to get a list of public and private schools, he commonly found that those in government did not believe that private schools existed in the poor areas and if they did they had to be of a very low quality. Tooley shares interesting stories as he explores the slums and searches for schools that the government doesn’t believe exist. He encounters many obstacles, but is able to find schools with the help of local townspeople, students, and parents.

Tooley found that there are basically three types of schools in the Third World:

1) Government public schools;
2) Recognized private schools; and
3) Unrecognized or unregistered private schools.

Government schools are public schools and are free and open to any student. They are typically funded by the country’s government, foreign aid, philanthropists, and international aid organizations.

Private schools are funded by fees paid by parents. Private schools make sure their fees are affordable to poor families and typically charge a monthly fee of about 5 to 10 percent of what the breadwinner earns a month. In addition, private schools serve a percentage of orphans and students who can’t afford their fees by allowing up to 20 percent of students to attend for free or at a reduced rate.

Private schools are either recognized or unrecognized by the government and may be for-profit or non-profit. Unrecognized schools are not regulated by the government and may not even be listed on their registry of schools. Tooley does not think much of government recognition, saying that it “conveys no information about school quality, it only indicates the school’s ability to afford bribes.”

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationThu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTrepeatedly and emphatically that they object to the federal government taking control of their health care. President Obama’s “new” health care proposal is nothing more than a rebranding of the same big-government ideas that the Congress has already passed and the public has already repudiated.

Instead of moving away from government control of health care, President Obama’s plan includes even more regulation. Creating yet another agency, a new Health Insurance Rate Authority, would provide “oversight” of rates. In recent years, the Texas Legislature has moved away from allowing government agencies to set consumer prices. Artificial price controls have never proven effective for very long, and there is no reason to believe that would change now.

In another surprise move, the pledge that “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan,” appears to have been broken. The “grandfathered” plans will have a plethora of new mandates and restrictions that will most assuredly not leave the plan as it is today.

Texas has shown that capping non-economic damages is essential to reducing frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits and increasing access to health care. The absence of damage caps in President Obama’s plan demonstrates a lack of seriousness on the issue of tort reform.

President Obama’s plan includes no free market ideas and no elements that promote competition among health insurers and health care providers. The token items that the President claims to have included from his critics were already in the Senate’s bill.

In fact, nothing in the substance of President Obama’s plan gives individuals more control over their health insurance. The only part of his plan that mentions more choices for consumers is the headline on the White House website. That does not count for legislative change.

- Arlene Wohlgemuth ]]>PublicationWed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTLos Angeles Times article, the technology giant is planning on building a high-speed broadband service. Google claims that the network will be 100 times faster than what is available today, and reach as many as 500,000 people. Many municipalities have already created “Bring Google Fiber” groups on Facebook, seeking to attract Google to their respective cities.

Interestingly, Google is choosing to put its experimental network in territory tightly controlled by other service providers, citing the strong competition as the key to ensuring success. Google has stated that offering this experimental network could prod cable and phone companies to offer cheaper, speedier access on a broader scale.

The increase in competition is good for ensuring innovation as well. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said that the cable industry planned to spend billions of dollars on top of the $161 billion it had already invested over 13 years in a national broadband infrastructure, and industry watchers are hoping that Google’s entry into the marketplace will spur competition and innovation. Google’s new fiber network could cost anywhere from $60 million to $1.6 billion.

Oddly enough, while Google’s entrance into the broadband market shows the importance of line management by network providers, Google supports network neutrality regulation. As I pointed out in my policy perspective, net neutrality would limit ISPs ability to manage—and thus maximize the profit from—their own lines, reducing their incentive to invest the billions of dollars into innovation that they are currently providing. Google’s entrance into the market is a great example of why the current broadband market is working. When there is competition, investment and innovation follow.

- Ryan Brannan ]]>PublicationTue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTCato Institute study examines the arguments for national standards. Some individuals and organizations support national standards claiming that countries that outperform the United States on international assessments all have national standards. Let's examine the facts of countries that do better and worse than the U.S. on two different international tests.

• On the international 8th grade TIMMS test, eight countries that outperformed the U.S. have national standards, but so did 33 of the 39 countries that scored lower than the U.S. – including 11 of the 12 lowest performers.
• On the international PISA exam, 11 nations that outperformed the U.S. have national standards, three have regional standards, and five have no centralized standards. Of the nine countries that did worse on the PISA, four have national standards, one has regional standards, and four have no standards.

Clearly, national standards do not equal excellence.

Nations that perform well on international tests with national standards tend to be homogeneous. For a country as diverse as the U.S. making everyone happy with the content on religion or history will be extremely difficult. Just think about the recent battles in Texas over evolution and social studies.

Another thing to note is that some countries with national standards are actually decreasing the scope of their standards.

• Japan reduced the content of their national standards by 30 percent in 2002.
• Singapore reduced its national curriculum by a third in 1999 and added critical thinking in 2001.
• Korea is sending its teachers here to learn how to teach creativity and critical thinking.

What about the quality of the proposed national standards in the U.S.? A study released today by the Pioneer Institute and the Pacific Research Institute shows that Massachusetts and California have higher standards than the prosposed national standards. Another analysis done by higher education and public school educators comparing Texas' English and math college readiness standards to the proposed national standards finds that Texas' standards are more comprehensive than the national standards.

All of this confirms Texas' decision to not join the national standards bandwagon because it just doesn't make sense.

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationMon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MST The Houston Independent School District and YES Prep charter school are both considering putting an end to the practice of paying teachers more for an advanced degree, according to the Houston Chronicle. HISD estimates it will cost taxpayers $7.8 million this year to pay teachers an additional stipend for a master’s or doctorate degree.

A common misperception about teacher quality is that more training and education equals a better teacher. This is not necessarily the case. Just because a teacher has a Ph.D. in physics does not mean they know how to teach. A one-size-fits-all compensation method such as stipends for advanced degrees risks paying some teachers more who aren’t worth it and not adequately rewarding others who are. School leaders should make the decision on how much to pay each teacher individually based on their performance and effectiveness.

Research clearly finds that possession of an advanced degree has absolutely no correlation to higher teacher effectiveness or student achievement. Our recent paper on teacher quality explains this misconception.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education recently put out a report on teachers with master’s degrees that had some surprising facts.
• 90% of teacher’s master degrees are in education programs (not the subject area they teach).
• Master’s degrees in education had the highest growth rate of all master’s degrees between 1997 and 2007.
• 27% of teachers in Texas have a master’s degree and, as a result, receive an extra $1,423 per year on average. This amounts to more than $124.5 million a year spent on outdated method of compensation that does not translate into better teacher quality or higher student achievement.

As school districts are looking for ways to cut their budget and improve teacher quality, we recommend they cut out stipends for advanced degrees – there is nothing in state or federal education regulations prohibiting them making this cut.

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationMon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTTexas Tribune re-launched its public employee payroll database last week, citing a need for more dynamic search capabilities. The original application, which the Texas Tribune found to be the most popular feature on its site, only allowed a visitor to search by name or agency. Today, users have a full range of search tools, allowing for a more in-depth analysis.

Through the Texas Freedom of Information Act, the Texas Tribune collected some 340,000 public employee records, accounting for $15 billion in payroll at the state’s largest agencies, universities, cities, school districts, and mass transit operators. Just by toggling through the “Job Title” search function, I found that the 169 “School Crossing Guards” across the state make, on average, $9,683 per year, while the highest paid crossing guards in the state receive $15,080. School Crossing Guard Supervisors make approximately $24,000 on average, while the highest paid Supervisor takes home $47,844. According to the data, “School Crossing Guards” and their supervisors are only on the payroll under that title in seven Texas jurisdictions.

Why do only seven jurisdictions in Texas have salaried crossing guards? $15,080 works out to almost $20 per hour for a guard working two 2-hour shifts per day during a nine-month school year – is that, in fact, a crossing guards schedule?

Obviously, the database can’t answer those questions, but having the data available and making the government transparent allows for us to discover questions we would have never thought to ask. We can then take those questions to PTA meetings, or our school superintendents, or our school board members to find answers.

Kudos to the Texas Tribune for making a great product even better.

- Mike Joyce ]]>PublicationWed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MST In this “Quick Take” filmed after the panel, Dr. Richard Brake with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute discussed how Texas does at teaching its students western civilization, as well as if we need to improve and how.

Dr. Brake explained, “ISI has been involved with a multi-year effort to assess how much students know when they go into college about American history and government and how much they know when they come out.” The results of the study showed that students aren’t learning much while in college.

Take ISI’s Civic Literacy Quiz for yourself and see whether you also need a refresher.

- Elizabeth Young ]]>PublicationFri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MST8th Annual Policy Orientation for the Texas Legislature, we hosted a movie screening of the education documentary ”The Cartel”. This incredible film has won numerous awards at multiple film festivals. The film’s director Bob Bowdon takes a minute to explain his film in this short video from our “Quick Takes” series.

“The Cartel” has been named an official selection of the Washington, DC Independent Film Festival and will screen at noon on Saturday, March 13. In addition, The Cartel will be shown in movie theaters in 12 cities across the country this spring – one of them being Houston – and the theatrical release will likely be in late April or early May. Stay tuned for more details on dates.

- Brooke Terry ]]>PublicationFri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTgoals for higher education sound fantastic. However, his plan to “expand access” to higher education is fundamentally flawed. It provides a massive increase in student aid – $156 billion in fiscal year 2011, up from $98 billion in 2008. The budget also will make it easier for borrowers to repay their loans, lowering income-based repayments and cutting the length of their repayments. Again, that sounds great. So what’s the problem?

Neal McCluskey from the Cato Institute summed it up best when he said: “There is perhaps no bigger vehicle politicians use to buy middle class votes than higher education and student aid – giving money away to people who want to go to college. And, there is simply no justification for this because the reason people go to college is so they can earn more money over their lifetime. So, when the president talks about ‘forgiving student debt,’ essentially what he’s saying is taxpayers should have to pay the burden for someone else to make a whole lot more money over their lifetime. It’s simply unfair.”

McCluskey continued, “And then there’s another problem connected to all this student aid, and that’s that it drives up tuition costs. The president talks about tuition inflation, well student aid is what drives tuition inflation because students can buy more, they demand more, which means universities can charge more because they can get the money.”

So not only is the President’s proposal unfair, it actually makes the problem of tuition inflation much worse. The way to solve tuition inflation is not by doing more of the same. Increasing access to grants and loans has become a crutch for bad higher education policy, and until lawmakers ease up on regulations and let the market flourish in higher education, things will only get worse.

- Elizabeth Young ]]>PublicationMon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 MSTCactus Café due to budget woes. The university will also be ending its decades-long program of informal classes that allow area residents to learn various subjects and skills for a nominal fee. Together, ending these programs will save UT-Austin $122,000, barely a drop out of its multi-billion dollar bucket.

The issue here isn’t cutting Cactus Café or the informal classes; it’s that UT-Austin chose to cut those programs rather than areas of the budget that would save substantially more money. For this reason, the cut seems suspect. UT-Austin has so many other areas in their budget to cut, and the fact that they chose something students and lawmakers would be upset about raises some red flags for me. Here’s why.

The state leadership’s letter asking state agencies to cut 5% from their budgets specifically states that: “Your plan should represent prudent, efficient reductions that minimize the impact on direct services. For purposes of this review, we expect you to analyze the necessity of all administrative expenses and purchases. Reducing direct services should be your last option, but should be identified, if necessary, in order to meet the 5 percent target.”

If that’s the case, then why is the Cactus Café the first cut that’s been announced?

To be clear, I’m not defending the Cactus Café. It’s just that when spending cuts are proposed, bureaucracies tend to offer up the ones that inflict the most pain on the public first (e.g., closing the Washington Monument on weekends) as a means to protect their turf. That’s certainly what this smells like.

The public should implore UT-Austin to cut the real fat in its budget. This paper lists several ways universities in Texas, particularly UT-Austin, could reform their operations to save substantial sums of money.

- Elizabeth Young ]]>PublicationFri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 MSTpush for comprehensive health care reform legislation is on indefinite hold.

The entire process has been on wrong track from the very beginning. Once leaders in Congress saw that the American people generally disapproved of their proposals, rather than taking a step back, they tried to ram through reform using power moves and backroom deals. The entire issue has become so snarled that Congress couldn’t get out of the mess they created for themselves.

Fortunately, President Obama gave Congress an out this week when he proclaimed the new focus of his administration would be job growth. But during the same speech he reiterated his commitment to health care reform.

"As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed," Mr. Obama said in his address. "But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Here's what I ask of Congress, though: Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close."

Well, Mr. President, there is a better approach. If Congress is serious about getting a health care bill passed this year, it should abandon its one-government-fits-all designs and instead take its first serious look at the patient-centered health care solutions the Texas Public Policy Foundation has championed all along.

- Elizabeth Young ]]>PublicationFri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 MSTCato Institute, federal subsidy programs topped the 2,000 mark for the first time last week. Almost half of those have been created in the last 20 years: the number of federal subsidy programs soared 21 percent during the 1990s and 40 percent during the 2000s.

As Chris Edwards, Cato’s director of tax policy, rather depressingly puts it, “There is a federal subsidy program for every year that has passed since Emperor Augustus held sway in Rome. We’ve gone from bread and circuses to food stamps, the National Endowment for the Arts, and 1,999 other hand-out programs from the imperial city on the Potomac.”

Of course, Washington isn’t alone in the subsidy game. Texas does pretty well too. In addition to the standard economic development programs, Texas is tops in the nation when it comes to renewable energy subsidies. By 2020, Texas consumers could be paying as much $1.3 billion a year to support wind energy—that is in addition to the $300 million or so the Feds are contributing to Texas wind producers. The solar folks are also lining up—the cost of proposed solar subsidies last session ran as high as $220 million. And they’ll all be back in 2011.

It would be nice in this one instance if we could topple Texas from its number one ranking.

- Bill Peacock ]]>Publication