Economic Policy News

For most Americans, $351 million is serious money. The median worker earns $45,708 per year, which means it would take 7,679 average earners to reach $351 million. But for Congress, $351 million is an afterthought. This is the amount that Congress has voted to spend on Pell Grants in addition to the budget-busting deal agreed…

It’s no secret that for many Latinos, the most important voting issue is the economy. For years, our families have been disadvantaged by a lack of available jobs, sluggish wage growth, and the real challenge of trying to pay down debt and save more to get ahead. Latinos put a high priority on greater economic…

Congress is up to its old tricks again, trying to pass another massive spending bill that uses gimmicks and tricks to push deficit spending even higher. And it thinks it can hoodwink President Donald Trump into signing it. Next week, the House is expected to vote on a combined fiscal year 2018 continuing resolution and…

Over the next several weeks, Heritage Foundation experts will publish short articles on the budget and federal spending. The next 12 months are a critical time for adjusting the spending outlook. In the last spending agreement enacted in the spring of 2018, Congress intentionally designed the spending limits so that they will be broken or…

South America is not at the center of global affairs, but few countries in the region may go as unnoticed as Paraguay. At first glance, Paraguay appears an unlikely prospect to stand out as an emerging-market democracy. In the shadow of the large and populous economies of Brazil and Argentina, the small landlocked country was…

Houston schools will offer free meals to all students this year, but there’s no guarantee that will help more families who are still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, which struck a year ago this week. Nearly all Houston students were eligible for subsidized free meals last year, so this move just expands an already sizable federal…

A new metastudy by Serbian think tank Libek confirms that countries wishing to increase their economic growth—and reap the many rewards that come from doing so—need to focus on advancing the economic freedom of their people. Libek looked at 92 scholarly research studies that considered the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth. Eighty-six of…

In February 2017, U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady remarked at a conference on international tax competition, “Our blueprint delivers a tax code built specifically to leapfrog America from dead last among our global competitors back into the lead pack of the most pro-growth tax systems on earth.” Fast forward to August…

The collapse of the U.S. steel industry in the 1980s sent once-thriving Pittsburgh into a severe economic depression. Pittsburgh has struggled to rebuild and rebrand itself for decades. Yet the city today is not the crumbling, desolate place one might expect. The city has been transforming itself from an industrial economy based on steel to…

A congressional select committee on reforming the budget process recently held another public hearing, supposedly with the ultimate aim of designing a more transparent, accountable, and responsible budgetary process. Any such changes should also re-establish and enhance Congress’ power of the purse. But if those are the goals of the Joint Select Committee on Budget and…

Economic freedom enables the sharing economy, and in a groundbreaking new multinational study, the Swedish think tank Timbro finds a strong relationship between free markets and the sharing economy. The Timbro Sharing Economy Index is the first global index of the sharing economy, estimating the size and usage of the sharing economy in each country….

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Congress is once again looking for more ways to avoid responsibility. On Wednesday, June 27, the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform held a member day meeting that included testimony from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other lawmakers. Center-stage at the…

Despite rampant speculation that President Donald Trump’s trade policy might increase some car prices, how his regulatory relief agenda may lower sticker prices and increase safety goes largely ignored. How did this happen? The Trump administration is revising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards imposed on automakers during the Obama era. In particular, they are…

The Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus of 158 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, releases an annual budget called “A Framework for United Conservatism.” Its aim is to unite conservatives in Congress behind a long-term fiscal plan. This year’s Framework builds on the RSC’s fiscal year 2018 budget both of which embody conservative…

The House Budget Committee last Thursday approved a budget resolution for fiscal 2019. The House budget, dubbed “A Brighter American Future,” would achieve balance in 2027. Importantly, the House budget proposes about $300 billion in spending reductions by using a powerful fiscal tool called reconciliation. The Senate needs to follow suit to unlock those savings…

The House Budget Committee this week unveiled its fiscal 2019 budget proposal, and the most important aspect is that it provides reconciliation instructions to authorizing committees to find more than $300 billion in mandatory spending cuts. More than two-thirds of the federal budget consists of mandatory spending, which is not subject to the annual appropriations…