Economic Policy News

This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the eight remaining annual appropriations bills. The House will combine the four-bill Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act (H.R. 3354), which was passed prior to August recess, with another “mini-bus” package. In total, the package would spend $1.132 trillion in fiscal year 2018, busting…

President Donald Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the American people that if they gave Republicans the chance to govern, pro-growth tax reform would be their major legislative priority in 2017. Now that the voters have given Republicans control of the White House, House, and Senate, there is a real…

In a national speech on Wednesday, President Donald Trump framed the tax reform debate that will continue to unfold when Congress returns next week. The president’s vision focused on letting Americans keep more of their own money. Done rightly, this vision can unleash robust economic growth that will benefit all Americans. America is suffering under…

Two hundred and sixty-nine billion dollars. That’s a big number, and yet it’s not the amount the federal government spends on any of its major activities like defense, Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. Rather, this is what the Congressional Budget Office currently projects the federal government will spend on interest payments on the debt for…

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has indicated that the federal borrowing limit must be raised by Sept. 29, or the U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills. Congress, which controls the purse strings of the U.S. government, should not abdicate that authority by writing Mnuchin a blank check and getting nothing in return…

Carefree, Arizona—population 3,363—is 2,400 miles from Wall Street. But that’s still not far enough away to escape the harm caused by Democrats’ supposed “Wall Street reform” known as the Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed into law seven years ago this month. According to a local news report, a proposed housing project in Carefree was terminated…

The House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up its interior appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018. This markup could lead to a slight revision of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Buy America” provision. While the bill should just repeal Buy America regulations for the EPA altogether, it does take a small step in the right…

The United Kingdom’s government triggered a two-year period of negotiations to exit the European Union in March. This “Brexit” process will offer the U.K. the opportunity to forge new trade relationships with nations around the world, including—importantly—the United States, as Heritage Foundation scholars have explained. Unfortunately, recent press reports indicate that the loss of Prime…

According to widely reported survey data, women’s substantial gains in education, labor force participation, and earnings haven’t made them better off during retirement. But that outcome makes little sense, and it is in fact based on incomplete data. According to data from the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, older women are no more likely…

America’s entrepreneurial dynamism has been falling, and the cost of inaction grows daily. According to a recent study by the Economic Innovation Group, America “suffers from a problem of too little creation—not too much destruction—perhaps for the first time in its history.” Over the past decade, our economic and job creation engine has run out…

It’s natural to think that economic freedom and peace should go together. Vindicating that idea, new empirical evidence shows that economically freer countries tend to be more peaceful and stable, while less economically free countries tend to be riddled with violence. The standings of more than 150 countries in two independent indexes, The Heritage Foundation’s…

America’s tax code is horribly out of date. Thankfully, Congress and the president have outlined plans for updating the tax code and cutting Americans’ taxes. The public strongly supports this agenda. A recent study by The Heritage Foundation’s American Perceptions Initiative into American attitudes toward tax reform found that almost two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans…

The last decade has seen a boom in recreational drone usage, as hundreds of thousands of law-abiding hobby pilots have taken to the skies with enthusiasm. Meanwhile, enterprising individuals are continually dreaming up new commercial uses for drone technology. Unmanned craft have already been used for aerial photography, helping realtors sell homes, and helping property…

It’s been described as a “slap in the face,” “slaughter,” “a punitive … assault on science, the environment, and indeed the planet.” Aside from being inappropriate and irresponsible, these remarks are how some in the policy world and media have depicted cuts to global warming spending in President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal. People seem…

There is not much good news coming out of Brazil these days. Political corruption scandals continue to rock the country, and the political instability has caused the nation’s stock market to crash. Judge Sergio Moro, who presides over the biggest corruption scandal of them all (dubbed Operation Car Wash), has become something of a folk…