The Obama administration’s celebrations touting the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, as a rousing success were premature. There will be little to celebrate as Americans face dramatically higher health-insurance premiums, more health policy cancellations and limited access to providers in the coming years. Now, according to a recent Gallup poll, four in 10 Americans are...
Evidence that the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is harming the nation’s labor market continues to mount. U.S. News & World Report Chairman and Editor Mortimer Zuckerman explained in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that less than one-half of working-age adults are working full time. Zuckerman lays blame to slow-growth and the...
Illinois’ budget battle took a turn for the worse earlier this month. A decision by the Illinois Supreme Court put the state and its taxpayers at risk. The Supreme Court ruled that Illinois has its hands tied when it comes to reforming retiree health insurance benefits for government workers. The problem is that Illinois has...
Cook County residents got more bad news last week when Fitch Ratings, the global rating agency, downgraded Cook County’s debt to A+ from AA-. The rating agency cited skyrocketing pension costs as one of the key reasons for the credit downgrade. The most direct impact of the downgrade is higher borrowing costs for Cook County. Infrastructure and...
An important debate about the future of the Export-Import Bank of the United States is raging in Congress and in the media. The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing last month to ask if the bank was “corporate necessity or corporate welfare?” The Ex-Im Bank originated as a New Deal-era program, financing loans to...
Chicago needs entrepreneurs. But too often, the city slows them down or chases them out of town. The “City that Works” doesn’t work for startups. A simple process is necessary so that startups in Chicago can get off the ground and start working, hiring and paying taxes. One good place to start is to make...
For far too long Illinois politicians haven’t done enough to address a public corruption epidemic that has wreaked havoc on the state’s image and the pocketbooks of its taxpayers. Illinois consistently ranks in the top five states for public corruption, and a recent study estimated the cost of corruption in Illinois at nearly $1.4 billion...
Illinois has once again earned the dubious honor of having one of the worst pension crises in the nation. This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, released a report, “Understanding Public Pension Debt,” which combined the state rankings of several different pension debt studies, including reports by Moody’s Investors Service and the U.S. Census...
The California city of Stockton’s bankruptcy case took an interesting turn yesterday. The big question surrounding the city’s bankruptcy has always been what might happen to city employee pensions. Most government advocates assumed that these pensions would remain untouched no matter what happened to Stockton’s finances. Now the federal judge in charge of the bankruptcy...
Popular ridesharing company Uber is ready to add 425 new jobs in its Chicago office – but only if Gov. Pat Quinn vetoes a bill recently passed by the Illinois General Assembly that would impose burdensome restrictions on ridesharing services and their drivers. Some businesses tell the state government that they will only create jobs...
Two Illinois businesses have announced they will leave for Indiana since the start of July. One of them, ironically, is named after the state of Illinois. Illini Hi-Reach is a rental provider of industrial equipment. Illini announced on July 2 that it will move its corporate headquarters from Lemont, Ill. to Crown Point, Ind. Less...
The recent Illinois Supreme Court ruling on state retiree health insurance benefits creates a major problem for both the state and local governments. The court ruled that retiree health insurance benefits are protected by the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution. The ruling will make it difficult to reform retiree health benefits and to...
Unfortunately for taxpayers, June was a groundbreaking month for corruption in Illinois. In June alone, there were reports of 85 corruption-related stories in the state. Some of the record-breaking highlights include the following: For the first time in 33 years, the Illinois Legislative Audit Commission exercised its subpoena powers in the issuance of a subpoena...
It is a sad commentary on our political system when a lawmaker has to file suit in federal court to enforce the law. But earlier this year, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., did just that. He filed suit in federal court “to make Congress live by the letter of the health care law it imposed on...