In The News

A bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen has inadvertently called attention to the fact that those "special tax breaks" just for the oil and gas industry don't exist. Mr. Van Hollen proposes to create some very special punishments instead. Regardless of the bill's fortunes on Capitol Hill, it has already performed a public service by illuminating the fallacy behind assaults on the industry.

Nearly a half-dozen tax proposals affecting Internet operations are expected to appear on the congressional agenda, with many of them affecting broadband and cable services.

Tom Giovanetti testified before state legislators in favor of the tax break for cable customers, saying there was a “gross disparity” in the taxing of satellite and cable. “We want the winners to be determined by who has the best product offerings, not by some historical quirk or glitch in the tax code that no one got around to fixing because it was hard.”

It appears that Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) will slip under the Affordable Care Act’s threshold for qualified coverage—although just barely. And given the fact that HSAs, and similar high deductible health insurance options, are about the only type of health coverage bending down the health care cost curve, they may even thrive.

On the eve of ObamaCare’s third anniversary one thing is for sure: there have been a lot of surprises in the last three years — most of them bad. And the White House and Democrats are about to get their next big surprise when health care spending explodes.

Developing a viable guest worker program should be the first item on the immigration reform agenda, not the last.

I don’t know how much money President Obama thinks it saves by canceling White House tours, but we do have several estimates of how much Medicare and Medicaid fraud cost.  Typical estimates put the figure in the $60 billion a year range for each program.

Several factors in Obamacare are causing health insurance premium rates to rise, notably community rating.

Tennessee legislators should reject a proposal that would radically increase the "pole attachment fee" for private broadband providers because it would raise the costs and thus slow the spread of broadband competition in the state.