In case you missed it…
Health care
Medicaid has transformed from a critical safety net for the most vulnerable members of society into a program that encourages dependency and erodes self-sufficiency. More than half of Medicaid enrollees didn’t work at all in 2015, and roughly 60 percent of Nevadans who gained Medicaid coverage — thanks to the program’s expansion under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — didn’t work at all during 2015. It’s for this reason, NPRI Policy Analyst Daniel Honchariw says Nevada lawmakers must look at the possibility of implementing work requirements for able-bodied enrollees. (Read Honchariw’s op-ed here) Such a policy is just one of many policy initiatives Nevada could take, despite federal inaction on health care, according to NPRI’s newly-released study on state-based health care policy options. (Read more)
Tax reform
The benefits of the GOP tax plan just keep showing up. Over 2 million workers have already benefitted thanks to the reform — and virtually all American workers are likely to see a boost to their take-home pay next month. But that’s just the beginning. In recent years, numerous corporations had moved their operations (and their money) off-shore in an effort to avoid America’s punitively high tax rates — but that’s now changing. Apple announced this week that it plans to pay $38 billion in taxes to repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars back to the states. The company has also pledged to invest $350 billion in American operations in the next five years and hire more than 20,000 American workers. (Read more)
Education
State Senator Tick Segerblom has a plan to increase funding for government-run education: Increase Clark County’s sales tax. It’s bad enough that Sen. Segerblom is pushing to hike a regressive and punitive sales tax just years after the state raised $1.4 billion in new taxes. What’s even worse, however, is that he hopes to establish a legal loophole that would allow state lawmakers to do so without Nevada’s constitutionally required threshold of two-thirds approval within each legislative chamber. (Read more)
Minimum wage
While cuts to federal tax rates are putting more dollars in the pockets of workers and spurring economic growth, government-mandated minimum-wage increases are having the opposite effect across the nation. The restaurant chain Red Robin recently announced it would be eliminating bus-boys at 570 locations due to “rising labor costs.” The cause of those rising labor costs? Well, in most cases, it’s the increased minimum wage that took place in 18 states and 20 cities just this month. (Read more)
Cronyism
There has recently been talk about bringing back earmarks — those special-interest spending provisions that used to be attached to bills, encouraging lawmakers to vote “yea” on bills they would otherwise oppose. Even President Trump has floated the idea of bringing back the practice, claiming that doing so might encourage some partisan lawmakers to once again consider working with the opposing party. But not everyone is on board. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) reminds us that earmarks were banned in 2010 for one very simple (and important) reason: They encourage cronyism, abuse and government waste. “Who can forget pork-barrel embarrassments like the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ the ‘Monuments to Me’ projects that members got named after themselves, or the turtle tunnel in Florida (yes, it’s a tunnel for turtles) — ? Earmarks were everything Americans couldn’t stand about Washington — corrupt, wasteful, entitled, and out of touch,” writes Sen. Lee. (Read more)
War on poverty
California officially has the highest poverty rate in the nation, as the LA Times reported this week. The revelation isn’t that surprising, given the skyrocketing cost of living in California and the complete disregard for entitlement reform within state government. In short, the state’s burdensome regulations, taxes and massive welfare state are actually contributing to the poverty crisis within its borders, rather than mitigating it. And while plenty of “red” states also ranked fairly high, one thing is certain: California’s indifference to sound policy is making it increasingly harder for over a fifth of the state’s population to climb the economic ladder. (Read more)