The Heartland Institute

Medicaid Facts - Nebraska’s inflation-adjusted per capita Medicaid spending increased 224 percent over the past two decades, which was nearly twice as fast as the increase in state education spending and over 20 times faster than the increase in state spending on transportation. - Nebraska’s state taxpayers pay about 40 percent ...

The Commission on Industrial Relations Is An Antiquated Relic The statutory scheme that created the Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR) is antiquated and needs reform that favors the taxpayer. LB 397 does not favor the taxpayer because it gives the CIR greater authority and provides no additional transparency. Comparability ...

As the world’s leading democracy, the United States has a strong tradition of providing public access to information held by federal, state, and local governments.The 1966 Freedomof Information Act (FOIA) codified the practice of requiring federal agencies to respond to requests for information fromanymember of the public.Under ...

This report summarizes key economic issues surrounding climate change legislation and regulation and considers potential implications for Nebraska, a state with a large agricultural sector and a focused manufacturing industry. The key findings are listed below. manufacturing sectors that are expected to be hardest hit by increases ...

Nebraska’s Water Resources Nebraska is endowed with abundant, accessible water resources. From the vast reserves of the High Plains Aquifer to the healthy flows of the Republican, Platte, Niobrara, and several other rivers, Nebraska’s water resources are extensive, especially in the context of the state’s modest and relatively ...

Nebraska’s greatest water policy challenges are how to cost-effectively and equitably meet our obligations to Kansas under the terms of the Republican Basin Compact; how to cost-effectively and equitably meet our obligations in the Platte Basin as specified in the current Co-operative Agreement with Colorado, Wyoming, and the U ...

The ongoing economic downturn has made life difficult for taxpayer, legislator, and bureaucrat alike. Those in the private sector have been adjusting to the new and ever-changing economic con-ditions for the past two and a half years, but government budgets, shielded somewhat from eco-nomic conditions (for a time, anyway) by ...

Today, 40 states including the District of Columbia allow public charter schools. That number will likely increase since states’ eligibility for $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top Funds de-pends in part on ensuring conditions for high-performing charter schools. States without char-ter laws are at a competitive disadvantage ...

In 1960, the private sector funded over three quarters of the nation’s health care expenditures. Individu-als paid nearly one-half of the total national health care expenditures through out-of-pocket expendi-tures. Beginning in 1967, the way health care was purchased in the U.S. began to completely reverse itself:  The private ...

Nebraska city governments are struggling to make ends meet. Shrinking tax revenues and growing personnel budgets are forcing city governments to ask increasingly tougher questions in increasingly tougher times: “Should we raise city taxes? Cut city services? Lay-off city employees?” Such anxious queries are undoubtedly related ...