The Heartland Institute

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and minimum wage laws have been two of the primary mechanisms the federal and state governments have used to help low-income families move out of poverty. A debate is currently ongoing in many state legislatures and Congress over which of these two policies is more effective and should ...

States across the country have accumulated at least $900 billion in off-balance-sheet liabilities, potentially leaving future taxpayers with much heavier tax burdens than states currently are imposing or acknowleding, according to a new study from the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA). Government employee pensions and health ...

California is facing a worse budget predicament than previously thought, and while the governor touts additional short-term fixes of tax hikes and spending cuts, opponents are calling for systemic reform. In January, the state was staring down a $9.2 billion deficit. By mid-May, the projection had ballooned to $15.7 billion. Gov ...

The first gold rush in the United States was not — as widely thought — in California in 1849; rather, it was in Georgia in 1828. Gold occurred naturally in a band from Virginia to Alabama, with especially rich veins around the town of Dahlonega in northern Georgia. During the next two decades, thousands of miners began ...

Wisconsin Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s landmark budget and unionization reform bill, has allowed school districts across the state to balance budgets without teacher layoffs, according to a new report from The Heartland Institute. “Act 10 virtually eliminated [the state’s] $3.6 billion budget deficit ... and provided school districts ...

Although gasoline taxes have long been the main source of funding for building, maintaining, and operating America’s network of highways, roads, and streets, the tax is at best an imperfect user fee. As such, Congress and the states should take action to transition from gas taxes to more efficient vehicle-mile fees. One of ...

If the fiscal policies currently in place are continued in coming years, the revenues collected by the federal government will fall far short of federal spending. That gap will grow over time as the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care continue to boost federal spending under current policies. Therefore ...

To recruit and retain the best teachers possible, policymakers should avoid across-the-board pay increases, and focus instead on performance pay by easing restrictions against entering the profession and basing tenure decisions on classroom performance, writes Jason Richwine in a Backgrounder for The Heritage Foundation. Retirement ...

The small town of Dixon, Ill., had a comptroller who managed to steal at least $53 million from the city, according to FBI agents, who led Rita Crundwell away in handcuffs in April. The cost comes to nearly $3,376 for every man, woman and child in this town of 15,700 in northwest Illinois. Dixon is probably best known ...

If President Obama and Congress fail to act this year, an enormous, unprecedented tax increase will fall on American taxpayers starting on January 1, 2013. The Washington Post called the looming tax increase “Taxmageddon,” and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke called it a “massive fiscal cliff.” This impending tax increase ...

Ballooning costs in recent years indicate that there is significant room for increased efficiencies in Texas schools that would free up funds to improve educational instruction without the tax increases sought in the recent lawsuits filed by school districts against the state, writes James Golsan in a policy brief for the Texas ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

Texas state spending rose 310% between 1990 and 2012, while population growth plus inflation totaled only 132%.Looking to the future, Texas is faced with additional demands on general revenue spending of at least $4 billion in 2013and $10 billion in 2014-15. Texas has been the nation’s leading job creator for more than a decade ...

Confronted with growing budget deficits and decreasing tax bases, states have sought to expand sales tax laws to capture revenue from sales of digital products. Just as states have begun to impose such taxes, however, the shift from downloaded products to cloud-based data and applications — accessible from anywhere in the world ...

The very legislation that nearly provoked riots inside Wisconsin’s capitol saved many school districts from financial ruin or having to fire significant numbers of teachers, concludes a new report from the Education Action Group. The Wisconsin legislature and Gov. Scott Walker (R) passed Act 10 in early 2011. It sparked a weeks ...

While there is no disputing the divisiveness and political bitterness Act 10 has created, the law that redefined collective bargaining in Wisconsin has made a dramatic difference for the state’s financially struggling school districts, according to a report released in March. But school superintendents say they worry about the ...

Hydraulic fracturing has enabled profitable extraction of oil and gas in diverse areas of the country. As a result, many states sitting atop the country’s shale formations are reconsidering the way they tax these resources, to fill budget holes. Many of these debates are occurring in states with unconventional deposits and where ...

Introduction The economic recession that began in 2007 exposed and aggravated a government fiscal crisis that had been brewing for many years at the national, state, and municipal levels of the U.S. Slow or negative economic growth, falling housing values, and rising government spending came together to make it impossible to ...

As the debate on federal tax reform continues, the ACCF Center for Policy Research (CPR) presents this Special Report to further the debate and highlight the effect of increased federal tax rates on long-term individual capital gains tax rates when both the federal, state and, in some cases, local tax rates are combined. Long ...