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Prudence should guide fiscal policy. Public services should be provided in an efficient, cost-effective manner.  Savings should be used to encourage economic growth and make Arkansas competitive in terms of jobs creation and income growth.  The Murphy Commission, a Policy Foundation project spent three years (1996-1998) studying state government before advancing ideas to make government cost-effective and […]

First in a multi-part series on term limits, approved by the people in 1992 and 2004.   (February 2014) The number of General Assembly members who list “attorney” or “lawyer” as their current or former profession has declined by nearly one-third since the people of Arkansas approved term limits in 1992.1   Amendment 73 to […]

“The most callused aspect of the current education monopoly in Arkansas is that it willingly and deliberately forces children–except those whose parents have wealth–to attend bad schools. And it does so with financial resources taken from parents already struggling financially and at the expense of their ability to choose a better school for their sons […]

(January 2014) Proponents of nationalized medical insurance long ago conceded the problem of adverse selection, i.e., buyers and sellers with asymmetric information1 create an unsustainable risk pool with few healthy and many unhealthy enrollees.  The federal Affordable Care Act tries to address adverse selection via the individual mandate, limited open enrollment, moderate fines and enrollee subsidies.  Proponents are preoccupied with […]

“As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, states now have the option to expand their Medicaid programs so that the programs provide health coverage to people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.  The federal government will pay 100 percent of […]

  “As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, states now have the option to expand their Medicaid programs so that the programs provide health coverage to people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.  The federal government will pay 100 percent […]

“Reduce the state’s income tax…repeal the state’s capital gains tax.” Arkansas Policy Foundation, Murphy Commission project, 1998   “(Arkansas) revenues are expanding because the business cycle’s current state is expansion, not contraction.” (Policy Foundation research memo, November 2012)   (December 2013) The state’s November General Revenue Report shows another fiscal year (2013-14) surplus emerging, another reminder […]

“When Edsel Ford died and Henry Ford had to reorganize his company board of directors there was a good deal of discussion of changes in “the Ford Empire.”  Metaphors comparing a businessman with a monarch have become common.  But the business man is not sovereign.  On the market sovereignty rests finally with the consumer…Whether a businessman has got his wealth […]

“As of Monday, more than 54,000 people–out of an estimated 250,000 who are eligible–had enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program, an increase of at least 964 from the total six days earlier,” the Arkansas Department of Human Services reported. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 13, 20131   (November 15, 2013) Barely 20 percent of Arkansans eligible for […]

(October 2013) In-state undergraduate tuition costs for students  attending Arkansas’ largest public universities continue to outpace inflation despite the lowest multi-year increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since the early 1960s.   CPI increased 12 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.1  The increase is among the lowest of the postwar era.  Comparable […]