by Kate Piercy In the chart below, Mercatus Center Research Fellow Matt Mitchell compares the actual decline in states’ spending from 2009 to 2010 (in blue) and the sustained cuts in state and local spending necessary to close the gap between spending and revenues over the next 50 years, known as the 50-year fiscal gap (in...
by Heather Wilhelm The great national health-care squeeze, as today’s Washington Post reports, has begun–and Americans can thank the new health care law: Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start...
by Kristina Rasmussen We’ve written about the cost of the Governor’s entourage (you know, your standard retinue of butlers, housemen, and laundresses). Today’s State Journal-Register features a thoughtful letter to the editor on closing the Executive Mansion down as a residence for the governor: In times of economic distress, tough choices have to be made. A family might decide to forego a...
by Collin Hitt Central Illinois’s newest charter school held an open house last night. I drove up from Springfield to check it out. Called Quest Charter Academy, the school will grow to enroll children in grades 6 through 12. It’ll focus on math and science, and will mirror the international compass of local businesses like...
by Kristina Rasmussen A report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that the sunset of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010 would cost the average middle-income Illinois family earning $68,958 some $1,640 in higher taxes in 2011. Check out our handy table to see how much your family could pay in higher federal and/or state...
by Ashley Muchow Check it out! The Tax Foundation released a nifty interactive tool showing state-to-state migration data for a range of years between 1993 and 2008. The tool tracks the flow of both people and their income based on IRS tax return data. You can select any state and track the net inflows and outflows to and from...
by Ashley Muchow Steve Kelley of the The Times-Picayune drew up a great political cartoon published in today’s paper.
by John Tillman Tuesday night, I happened to be watching live when Karl Rove fulminated on the Christine O’Donnell win in the Delaware GOP Senate primary. You can see the full video here but I’ve provided a transcript (from Fox News) of some of the key passages below. Among the things Rove said: “This is the inexplicable (emphasis added)...
by Ashley Muchow Robert Barro, in his most recent WSJ article, takes note of various logical shortcomings in the Obama administration’s economic agenda. Rather than focus on the supply-side rationale of creating incentives that stimulate both supply and demand—thus yielding sustained economic growth—the Obama administration has ignored the breadth of supply-side manifestations in the policy measures it...
by Ashley Muchow Two trends have taken off in recent years—a rising number of entitlement recipients and a drop in the number of Americans paying taxes. Both highlight the unfortunate drift towards mounting wealth redistribution and big government. Sara Murray fleshed out these two trends in today’s WSJ. Government data [doesn’t] show how many of the households...
by Kristina Rasmussen A round up of local Illinois measures on the ballot this November 2 by Ballotpedia.org shows that local governments across the state are trying to hike taxes and borrow more money. Some examples, with individual summaries from Ballotpedia.org: Sangamon County sales tax hike. The tax would add one percent to the current sales tax rate in...
by Kristina Rasmussen A new report on jobs and unemployment from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability points out that Illinois’s employment levels are similar to that after the 2001 recession: Though the State gained jobs between the ‘90s tech boom peak and the 2006 expansion peak, the employment situation in Illinois currently stands approximately where the...
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had an interesting article recently in AEI’s journal, The American. The article, titled “The Emerging Markets’ Century,” details how emerging economies may have a growing impact in the global market because of their comparatively strong public finances when compared to industrialized counties. He explains, “Whereas public debt levels in...
by Kate Piercy According to a report from the Chicago Tribune, “the attorney at the center of a long-running lawsuit,” Michael Shakman, told a federal judge Thursday that since the start of 2008, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger violated a ban on political hiring more than 150 times: Stroger’s administration altered the list of jobs not covered...