The Heartland Institute

For governors who can’t just say no to the Medicaid expansion for political reasons, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s stance is going to be the guide: expansion into the exchanges, not the Medicaid program. Governor Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) announced Wednesday that Wisconsin will not accept federal funding under the Affordable ...

Standard & Poor’s is the only credit rating agency to have downgraded U.S. government debt, and now it is the only credit rating agency to be sued by the government over its ratings of housing-backed securities. Whether it remains the only one to be sued remains to be seen. The U.S. government and several states have announced ...

While Texas lawmakers have so far proposed relatively small school choice programs, more than that may happen in this legislative session, say local observers. Even with Republicans firmly in control of the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature, “advancing school choice in Texas has proven enormously difficult,” said ...

School choice advocates are optimistic Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s education proposals released February 18 will become law in some form, but they predict more protests in the state capitol before then. Walker’s proposals include expanding the Milwaukee and Racine voucher program statewide, developing an independent board to oversee ...

Maine legislators are considering an education reform that has garnered significant national attention: the Parent Trigger. The legislation, first passed in California, has been considered in approximately 20 other states, and legislators in five states have stated their intention to propose it in early 2013. A Parent Trigger would ...

James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, talks with Jim Lakely about the future of energy and environment policy in a second term for Barack Obama. Taylor and Lakely cover the Interior Department’s decision to put 1.6 million ...

Ohio Gov. John Kasich detailed in a budget proposal his plans for expanding Medicaid eligibility as called for under President Obama’s health care law. Kasich, a Republican, faced pressure from liberal groups devoted to increasing the entitlement program, as well as from health care providers backed into a corner by Obama’s ...

Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court of the United States prepared by the American Soybean Association in support of the preservation of patent law for genetically modified soybeans. The brief argues doing so will support the development of new seed biotechnology that will enhance efficiency and profitability by controlling weeds ...

Idaho’s House Education Committee heard testimony in January concerning the Common Core education standards, an effort to standardize what schools across the country teach through common K-12 standards and assessments in 45 states. “We lose our educational sovereignty,” said Stephanie Zimmerman, founder of Idahoans Against Common ...

Indiana’s Senate passed a bill to withdraw the state from Common Core national education standards in February, after the bill morphed into a bipartisan bid to have the state reconsider with more public input. Senate Bill 193 passed 38-11, with three Democrats joining every Republican in voting for it. When 46 states signed ...

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”—George Orwell While we spend billions on standards for skill-building and assessing skills, we don’t seem to notice that U.S. students, in general, are not doing any academic work. This assumes a connection between ...

Recently, en route to Michigan’s northernmost point, it struck me that Calumet is more than 500 miles away from Lansing, where state legislators make policy. Yet the notion of drafting statewide policies to govern school curriculum and practices in places as different as Lansing, the Upper Peninsula, and Detroit is rarely criticized ...

French president Francois Hollande’s statement that the euro should not fluctuate according to the mood of the market; the complaint by Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker about the euro being “dangerously high”; and the Bank of Japan’s recent decision to weaken the yen with “aggressive” quantitative easing confirm what we ...

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that states could not be forced to expand Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, some states have decided “free” federal money is too hard to pass up. Just this week Ohio Gov. John Kasich became the fifth Republican governor to endorse the expansion of Medicaid ...

Professor Yuri Maltsev has won international accolades for his work for freedom and prosperity. He is the only economist who ever advised top government officials in both the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War era. He joins us to discuss freedom and government. ...

DES MOINES, Iowa—Iowa’s teacher-preparation programs fail to produce graduates who are ready to lead a classroom, according to a new study that quickly drew fire from some educators. The National Council on Teacher Quality released its “2012 State Teacher Policy Yearbook” in January, grading Iowa’s teacher preparation as just ...

Last summer, Americans for Prosperity analyzed the disappointing Medicare reforms in the President’s signature health care law. This week, the President suggested additional so-called reforms to Medicare in this State of the Union speech. Just like his reforms in 2010, these proposals fail to address the underlying issues in Medicare ...

This week, President Obama took credit for the slowdown in health care cost inflation, proclaiming in his State of the Union address that “[a]lready, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.” This is a real stretch, to say the least. For starters, as others have noted, the slowdown in ...

According to Keynesian economic theory, many recessions have little or nothing to do with underlying structural economic problems. Instead, the theory holds, recessions are the result of a crisis in confidence. People are simply afraid and therefore not spending. And when they are not spending, others are not earning income, and ...

In the past few years, members of Congress have proposed several bills to expand states’ ability to tax purchases made online and from mail-order catalogs. Yesterday, U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi (R-WY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act , which expands states’ ability to charge ...