The Heartland Institute

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Kansas lawmakers may have to take out the largest loan in state history—$5 billion—to help plug a growing hole in the state's pension system. The loan, for almost more money than Kansas spent to run the entire government two years ago, would be financed through the sale of state bonds. The Kansas Public Employees Retirement ...

Record high levels of unemployment and record low reserve funds have placed great pressure on the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) tax and benefit system. Between 2008 and 2011, $174 billion was paid in unemployment taxes while $450 billion was paid out in benefits, a gap of $276 billion. In 2011 alone, employers and ...

The Social Security Act of 1935 established the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system, which pays benefits to workers who are laid off. Basic UI benefits are funded by payroll taxes on employers, but in recent years Congress has used general federal revenues to fund a range of extra benefits. With the recent recession ...

In this paper I analyze the provision of unemployment insurance in an environment with unobservable job offers and unobservable employment status. Both rejection of suitable offers and unreported employment income represent unemployment insurance fraud. I analyze US data characterizing the prevalence of both types of fraud, and ...

Congestion pricing use has been limited in the United States because of political, institutional, and public acceptance concerns. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study of Europe and Singapore ...

States are beginning to turn away from baseline budgeting, a method that has proven ineffective in keeping the size of government to a responsible level. They are moving toward zero-based and performance-based budgeting, which has proven effective in cutting deficits. Baseline budgeting merely builds on the government’s preceding ...

States report that their public-employee pensions are underfunded by a total of $438 billion, but a more accurate accounting demonstrates that they are actually underfunded by over $3 trillion. The accounting methods that states currently use to measure their liabilities assume plans can earn high investment without risk. Should ...

Highway congestion occurs when a vehicle causes delay to other vehicles on the road, resulting in longer and less reliable travel times, the use of additional fuel, and other costs to the economy. According to one widely cited study, in 2005 highway congestion resulted in 4.2 billion hours of delay and 2.9 billion gallons ...

States and local jurisdictions are increasingly discussing congestion pricing as a strategy for improving transportation system performance. In fact, many transportation experts believe that congestion pricing offers promising opportunities to costeffectively reduce traffic congestion, improve the reliability of highway system performance ...

Introduction by Steven Stanek Managing Editor Budget & Tax News The Heartland Institute The more government spends, the more it taxes. The more government taxes, the more it spends. That is why tax and expenditure limitations increasingly are being viewed favorably by tax and government watchdogs. Measures to limit how much ...

Public sector employers and employees need and will be seeking better results and flexibility from their core defined contribution retirement plans. While it is not expected that public employers will move away from their core defined benefit plans as a primary method of delivering retirement benefits, interest in defined contribution ...