The Heartland Institute

States To Tackle Income Taxes While Congress and the president recently hiked taxes for 77 percent of the nation’s taxpayers, proposals for sweeping tax cuts continue to gain momentum at the state level. In the new year governors and influential state lawmakers from Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio ...

One of the great privileges I have in working for Heartland is the opportunity to help elected officials at all levels of government discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to economic and social problems. Heartland realizes busy elected officials have little or no staff and need a reliable source of research ...

The election results have been certified, the fiscal cliff has been averted, and the world didn’t end. Now state lawmakers are heading back to their state capitols to begin their 2013 legislative sessions. States are expected to face many important issues this year, including Medicaid expansion and balancing their budgets ...

One need not look far to see the federal government and state governments are moving further apart on their approaches to energy policy. More states are looking at ways to encourage the development of affordable domestic energy sources such as natural gas and away from picking winners and losers through arbitrary renewable ...

Approaching the Fiscal Cliff As we approach 2013, taxpayers are waiting to see if Congress will let the nation go over the so-called fiscal cliff by allowing the largest tax increase in American history and budget cuts to go into effect. There is still wide disagreement over which tax hikes to prevent and what spending ...

With the reelection of President Barack Obama, the implementation of the federal health care law is moving forward, leaving states that have resisted implementation to make some key health care decisions. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has long encouraged states to implement their own health insurance ...

Earlier this week the non-partisan Tax Foundation released its 2013 State Business Tax Climate index . This must-read report allows elected officials to see how their states stack up in terms of creating a tax system that is appealing to business, and thus likely to attract job-creators to the state. According to ...

On August 9, The Heartland Institute hosted its eighth Emerging Issues Forum , a gathering of state elected officials, public policy experts, and Heartland senior staff to discuss the issues likely to be on the agenda in 2013 and beyond. The event was a huge success, attracting more than 85 elected officials from at ...

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 ...

On August 9, The Heartland Institute held its 2012 Emerging Issues Forum in Chicago, Illinois. More than 140 people attended, including more than 85 legislators from at least 32 states. One of the most talked-about panels at the event was the health care panel, which featured Georgia state Sen. Judson Hill, Dr. Jill ...

Yesterday, The Heartland Institute announced more than 5,000 people have signed a petition demanding that Congress “ rein in the Environmental Protection Agency ” (EPA) through deep cuts in the size, power, and cost of the agency . EPA was established in 1970 to protect the nation’s air and water from pollution. Over ...

What does the Supreme Court ruling mean for states? Today the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional most of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the controversial individual mandate, which was called a tax by the Court. The Court did, however, strike down the law’s Medicaid expansion ...

Today, North Carolina is expected to vote to allow the process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for natural gas. This comes just a month after Vermont became the first state to completely ban the process, even though the state has no known resources that actually could be tapped this way. Many environmental activists ...

It has been a year since Wisconsin’s Act 10, which limited collective bargaining rights for most public employees, went into effect. The passing of these reforms has led to next week’s nationally significant recall election of Governor Scott Walker. As the media is talking about ad money and polls, research organizations such ...

Teachers unions react badly to teachers who don’t fall in line behind them. The unions’ methods range from public shamings and labor complaints to coordinated pressure on administrators to fire or withhold promotion from dissenters. Joy Pullmann, managing editor of School Reform News, compiled the evidence into a 10-page ...

“Color of Change,” Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, and other extreme leftist groups’ attempts to defame the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are not surprising. Rather than discussing and debating actual policy, these groups have resorted to ad hominem attacks and bullying tactics. What is ...

One of the most dreaded days of the year is approaching … tax day. This year Tuesday, April 17 will be the last day people can file their taxes. It is also the Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day , which calculates that Americans had to work more than a quarter of the year just to pay all the nation’s taxes for ...

In what has been one of the most anticipated cases in decades, the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States earlier this week. In total, 26 states filed lawsuits against the federal health care law, and a ruling is expected in June ...

Last week, The Heartland Institute held a conference call on the policy issues related to the booming natural gas industry. Heartland’s energy and environment legislative specialist, John Monaghan, and James M. Taylor, Heartland’s senior fellow for environment issues and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, discussed ...

Earlier this week our friends at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) graciously hosted me and Heartland’s senior fellow for budget and entitlement policy, Peter Ferrara. We went to Oklahoma City to speak about why the state should consider phasing out its income tax. Peter explained that any state could eliminate ...