It has been 20 years since the Texas legislature moved to end regulated energy rates and break up monopolies. Texas now has twice the energy production of any other state, and electric prices are among the nation’s lowest. Unfortunately, House Committee on State Affairs Chairman Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) is attempting to set the clock back […]
The Senate is considering another poorly designed disaster aid package. With a price tag of $13.5 billion, the Senate intends to use the bill’s disaster and emergency spending designation as a way to circumvent the spending caps put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The bill will boost funding for programs that […]
On March 22, 2019, the Trump Administration took another step to act on the president’s campaign promise to financially support coal and nuclear power.
Are lawmakers in the 116th Congress again preparing to pick winners and losers in the commercial transportation industry? Under former President Barack Obama, the Department of Transportation capitulated to the demands on union workers and issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to require all freight rail operations to have at least two members aboard. Fortunately, this […]
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By a vote of 52 to 47, the Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Andrew R. Wheeler as the 15th Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Mr. Wheeler served as the Deputy Administrator from April to July 2018, and then served as Acting Administrator from July 2018 to February 2019. The Administrator […]
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The $333 billion spending package that Congress has cobbled together to avoid the threat of a partial government shutdown contains lots of giveaways that go beyond keeping the government’s lights on. The legislation cancels a plan previously approved by President Trump – during the partial government shutdown – that would have blocked a scheduled pay […]
In an effort to fight climate change, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced this week a framework they call a “Green New Deal.” Saying that this plan is overly ambitious is an understatement. The proposal calls for “a sustainable, pollution and greenhouse gas free, food system” that “expands independent family […]
President Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, once said in 1973, “get big or get out.” He enthusiastically urged farmers to buy up their neighbors’ land. Since then, American agriculture policy has enabled big industrialized farm businesses to triumph over smaller family farms. Big businesses usually receive larger subsidies, so the most powerful farming operations are rewarded. […]
All the way back at the beginning of the year, a federal energy regulator unanimously repudiated a proposed rule that would have subsidized coal and nuclear powerplants. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said the rule failed to reach the “clear and fundamental” legal requirement that the rule was “just and reasonable.” FERC is an […]
As people eat their leftover Halloween candy, they may want to think about how much they paid for all those treats. Raw sugar in the United States regularly costs double or triple the world average, and this hurts food companies and leads to high prices for consumers at the grocery store. U.S. laws artificially inflate the price […]
