In The News

Do cities with high crime rates tend to vote for Democratic mayors, or do the policies and practices of Democratic mayors tend to lead to high crime rates?

In a new publication, The Private Sector Can Reform Social Security’s Disability Program, Dr. Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, outlines how Galveston County opted out of Social Security in 1981 with Matagorda and Brazoria counties following suit in 1982. The three counties instead adopted what’s known as the “Alternate Plan.”

Republicans don’t trust President Obama.  Can’t fault them for that.  But that distrust is driving many of them to oppose trade promotion authority (TPA) legislation, also known as “fast track.”  That’s the wrong conclusion.  If distrust is the issue, then Republicans should support TPA rather than oppose it.

Energy development has been crucial to America's economic growth in recent years. The feds have the power to ensure that economic success has only just begun, but only if officials stop standing in the way of a needed infrastructure expansion.

There are winners and losers in President Obama’s effort to remake the U.S. health care system, and two of the big winners are nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). Both will get to do more and make more in the new health care landscape. 

The country has just taken another step towards energy independence—which also means energy security. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) have introduced the Energy Supply Distribution Act, whose primary purpose is to end the 40-year ban on exporting U.S. crude oil.

Only a relatively small number of people are actually excited that Hillary Clinton is running and will likely be the Democratic presidential nominee.

Social Security's disability program is in poor financial shape, but a new publication explains how a private sector reform, modeled after a program that's been around for nearly 35 years, would provide the disabled and survivors with better benefits while helping remove some of the strain from Social Security.

Several mostly blue states jumped on the health insurance exchange bandwagon as a way of showing support for Obamacare, says IPI's Merrill Matthews, and something similar happened in 1993 and 1994 with Clintoncare, Matthews says. “Those universal-coverage dreams turned into financial nightmares, and every one of those states eventually dramatically modified, scaled down, or eliminated their plans,” Matthews said.

Writing for the Institute for Policy Innovation, Merrill Matthews has a must-read article about an unintended consequences of Obamacare. He starts with a very sensible point about the effect of third-party payer.