Tax-funded vouchers are allowing some inner-city children in two large cities to escape failing public schools – but not without fierce opposition, primarily from teachers' unions and from those who question the constitutionality of vouchers.
House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) has proposed giving tax deductions to people who purchase their own health insurance. House Health Subcommittee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) has proposed an even more radical idea: making health insurance personal and portable for everyone. These proposals would make health insurance more affordable, reduce the number of uninsured and give people more control over their health care.
Since the sweeping tax cuts of 1981, little has been done to directly benefit middle-income American families – those with taxable earnings between $30,000 and about $65,000 a year. During that period, federal taxes have been raised eight times, with only one small tax cut in 1997. The latest figures from the Tax Foundation show that the taxes have been ratcheted upward so that in 1997 the total burden of federal, state and local taxes on a median-income two-earner family was 38.2 percent of income.
What benefit do salaried workers, including federal government employees, have that is unavailable to workers who are paid by the hour? They have the option of choosing "comp time" – time off from the job to compensate for overtime already worked. A bill that would give millions of hourly workers freedom of choice in the workplace passed the House last year (H.R. 1), and the Senate will consider similar legislation, known as the Family Friendly Workplace Act (S. 4), this year.
Texas has adopted one of the most liberal charter school laws in the country. It also has established one of the first statewide school accountability systems, a model for the nation. Rigorous testing standards that apply to both regular and charter schools give parents the information they need to evaluate their children's schools and compare them with other schools.
In 1997 the federal government, which had demanded that manufacturers equip new cars and vans with passenger-side air bags, did an about-face. Until 1997, government regulators had claimed air bags would save thousands of lives. They failed to disclose evidence that passenger air bags posed a threat to infants, children and small adults. As mandated, air bags were installed and children died as a result. In response to a public outcry, the government announced that with a waiver from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), vehicle owners can disconnect their air bags.
President Clinton wants to use any possible budget surplus to save Social Security. Republican leaders in Congress want to use any money from a possible tobacco settlement to save Medicare. But neither approach will work unless we replace our chain-letter approach to elderly entitlements with fully funded systems, under which each generation finances its own retirement and health care expenses.
For the past 10 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) has gotten a bad rap. Despite the fact that 95 percent of the CO2 emitted each year is produced by nature, environmentalists started referring to CO2 as a pollutant in 1988 after some scientists claimed that the 30 percent rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last 150 years was attributable to humans and was causing global warming.
President Clinton wants to raise the Child and Dependent Tax Credit for most families with adjusted gross incomes of $60,000 or less. Currently, families earning $10,000 or less can get a credit equal to 30 percent of their child-care expenses. That is, for every dollar they spend on child care, they get a 30-cent tax rebate from the government.
The 1997 budget agreement includes a provision giving the states $24 billion over five years to provide health insurance to uninsured children from low-income families – basically those in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level, not eligible for Medicaid, not enrolled in a health plan or covered by health insurance.
The number of people without health insurance continues to grow. The most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimate places the number at 41.4 million people, or 17.7 percent of the nonelderly population – up from 35.7 million, or 16.6 percent in 1990.
Not long ago, American health care was easily the best in the world. Today, we face a quality crisis. Almost 60 million Americans are now members of health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and an estimated 160 million are enrolled in some kind of managed care. Yet polls show that many of these people have no confidence that their health plan will make decisions in their best interest as patients.
With Medicare teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, President Clinton is proposing to add more beneficiaries and more costs. Specifically, all Americans ages 62 to 64 (the Medicare eligibility age is 65) would be able to join Medicare in exchange for a monthly premium between $300 and $400. Those ages 55 to 61 who have involuntarily lost their jobs would have the same option. And employers would face a new mandate: retirees over age 55 who were promised and then denied postretirement health insurance would have the right to buy into their previous employer's health plan. Are these proposals a good idea?
Dallas – The global climate change treaty under discussion in Kyoto, if agreed to by the U.S., will have a significant impact on the Texas economy. Sterling Burnett, Environmental Analyst for the National Center for Policy Analysis, joins U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson in Plano Monday, December 8, 1997 for a public briefing to discuss the potential effects.
Since ancient times, people have feared and suffered at the hands of tax collectors. The ancient writer Lactantius tells us that Roman tax collectors would always double the tax when they were sent to collect it, in order to make sure that their efforts were rewarded. Tax collectors were so pervasive, he says, "there was no threshing-floor without the taxman there, no vintage without a guard on the spot."
Despite a new government study showing that the rising cost of premiums is the main reason a growing number of people don't have health insurance, more than 200 members of Congress have cosponsored legislation that would make health insurance even more expensive.
The amount of serious crime has decreased in most towns and cities across the country. New York City, for example, had fewer than 1,000 murders in 1996, the lowest number in nearly 30 years. Overall crime has dropped by half in Houston during the past six years, and violent crimes there are down by two-thirds.
Since 1986 the number of states in which it is legal to carry concealed weapons has grown from nine to 31, representing 49 percent of the country's population. Should we feel safer?
The unemployment rate stands at 4.9 percent, the lowest since the Vietnam war. Employers looking for workers are finding that the supply of labor, even unskilled labor, is tight. However, more than a million Americans who could work – in fact, desperately need the skills that come only from real work – remain unproductive. These are our nation's prisoners.
At a recent White House conference on child care, President Clinton called the day care market "dysfunctional." First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton complained of a "silent crisis" in child care. Both the president and Mrs. Clinton advocated more government intervention, including more federal spending on training day-care workers. But government is the cause of many of the problems parents face, including arbitrary, cost-increasing regulations at the local level and discriminatory tax laws at the federal level.
Should patients, in consultation with their physicians, be allowed to make their own health care decisions? Or must bureaucrats protect patients from themselves and their doctors? These questions are prompted by the issue of Medicare private contracting.
The tax code has always allowed various deductions and credits for investment in physical capital. But there have been few incentives to make comparable investments in human capital – expanding the productive capacity of human beings.
The budget agreement passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton includes a provision giving the states $24 billion over five years to extend health insurance to more low-income uninsured children – basically those with family incomes below 200 percent of poverty, not eligible for Medicaid, not enrolled in a health plan or covered by health insurance.
Over the past year the media have reported that one possible effect of global warming will be the expansion of tropical, communicable diseases borne by rodents or parasites into the United States. Fortunately, even if a warmer climate is in the offing, there is no reason for alarm, since the prime factor controlling communicable diseases is not global temperature, but relative wealth and the ecological and medical interventions people use to control diseases and their hosts.
In December, world leaders will gather in Kyoto, Japan, to consider an international treaty to control emissions of greenhouse gases. Its supporters say the treaty is a necessary step in preventing catastrophic changes in the earth's climate. Its opponents – including leading scientists and economists – say it is likely to do more environmental harm than good.