The Heartland Institute

In his 2014 budget, President Barack Obama called for a strategic review of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The budget stated selling or privatizing the TVA could result in a significant cut in the federal deficit and “put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.” Born during the Great Depression as part of President ...

This Obamacare thing is not going as well as some had hoped. Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of ...

Approximately 11,000 Alabama children attending failing public schools can receive private funds for private school now that Gov. Robert Bentley has signed a school choice bill. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court lifted a restraining order on the bill. Teachers union officials who filed the restraining order promised they will ...

As Alabama legislators tabled a bill to withdraw from Common Core national standards, its department of education is adopting related tests and attempting to convince legislators and voters to keep the Core. The day before the vote, state Superintendent Tommy Bice held a press conference to dispel “myths” about Common Core, a ...

UPDATE, 1:19 p.m. ET: As Alabama education politics roils over a surprise school choice bill that had lawmakers shouting at each other last week, the Senate Education Committee today decided it will vote March 13 on a bill withdraw the state from the Common Core. Voucher politics complicate negotiations between the legislature ...

Alabama will withdraw from two national testing groups, but state and national officials are being tight-lipped about why and what’s next. In 2010, 45 states agreed to use the same set of requirements for what K-12 students should know in math and English. It’s called the Common Core. Since then, states have joined one or ...

So why is it that the governors of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming have all said no to a state-implemented health insurance exchange? Scott Walker’s letter explaining ...

As Congress decides whether to allow the national capital gains tax rate to increase at the beginning of next year, states across the country are debating whether to change their own capital gains taxes. These are taxes paid by individuals and corporations on their capital gains, or profits realized when investors sell a capital ...

The United States has the highest corporate tax rate among the 34 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in addition to being one of the few nations still using a “worldwide system.” These are two reasons the United States is in dire need of fundamental corporate tax reform. Under the ...

Since the 2006–07 financial crisis the Federal Reserve has taken several steps to stimulate the economy and unfreeze credit markets, which had ground to a halt after the bursting of the housing bubble. The Federal Reserve launched its current monetary strategy in 2007, lowering the federal funds rate from 5.25 percent to effectively ...

A product that is quickly changing the telecom industry and how people communicate is voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calling, where voice and multimedia communication are conducted and transmitted over Internet protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP subscriptions have grown rapidly in recent years: According to ...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously known as the Food Stamp program, has become one of the fastest-growing welfare programs of the U.S. government. SNAP is administered by the Department of Agriculture, and the benefits are distributed by individual states. Currently, SNAP is the fourth-largest means ...

Unusually cold water in 2009-10 and 2010-11 contributed to the death of dozens of young dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers report. Snowmelt Chilled Gulf Researchers attribute the deaths of 86 dolphins that were either aborted or died shortly after birth in 2011 to cold water in the Gulf. The culprit may well be fresh ...

Since the late 1980s the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has conducted monetary policy primarily by setting a target for the nominal overnight federal funds rate. In late 2008 the FOMC set the target at zero. It has since indicated that it expects the target to remain at zero until late 2014. Should this happen, the ...

Tax increment financing has become a popular tool for encouraging economic development in municipalities across the country. Originally designed to help blighted areas attract businesses, tax increment financing, or “TIF,” has quickly become the subsidy of choice for towns seeking to spur development. TIF allows municipalities to ...

Yesterday, at the Republican National Convention, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice gave a superb speech covering many important issues. One issue she touched on that regrettably hasn’t been talked about enough this campaign season is education reform. For the United States to have sustained economic prosperity ...

Since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, legislators in the United States and across the world have proposed new taxes on certain financial transactions, including securities trading and stock transactions. For proponents of these financial transaction taxes the goal is twofold: to raise revenue for the national governments through ...

The Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission has undertaken several efforts to increase its regulatory power over the Internet by reclassifying broadband access services from their current status as an informational service to a Title II telecommunications service. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski launched a proposal ...

Nearly 50 million U.S. adults—more than a fifth of the total adult population—smoke cigarettes. After vigorous public health efforts including taxes, education, and outright bans on smoking, the percentage of Americans who smoke has fallen by almost half in the past four decades. In recent years, however, the number of Americans ...

Birmingham public schools enrollment and teaching staff have decreased over the past decade while the city’s central education office has remained disproportionately flush with employees, many of whom have retained hefty salaries amidst budget cuts. In June, Alabama’s Department of Education voted unanimously to step in and oversee ...