Iowa’s unemployment rate declined to 3 percent in April, which is down from 3.3 percent in March. “The number of unemployed Iowans decreased to 50,900 in April from 55,600 in March. The total number of working Iowans increased to 1,646,800 in April — a figure that is 10,000 higher than March and 45,100 higher than one year ago,” reported Iowa Workforce Development. Unemployment insurance claims are at their lowest level since 1973.
Every time I write about healthcare reform, I receive at least one comment about the need to get the government out of healthcare entirely. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument, but I think it’s unrealistic.
It is true that industries, which have seen the largest increases in costs over the past few decades, such as healthcare and higher education, are also some of those most highly impacted by government interventions. Since 1965, when the federal government got seriously involved in healthcare with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid, inflation-adjusted per-capita spending on healthcare has increased more than six-fold, to an average of over $12,000 per person today.
ITR Foundation Policy Director John Hendrickson joined the ITR Live podcast to talk about why it is important that the Iowa Caucuses remain first in the nation and the importance of the Electoral College.
Uncle Sam is broke and the nation is on the verge of a serious debt crisis, if we are not already in one. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released an alarming report regarding the nation’s fiscal health and their conclusions aren’t good. The report, which should be taken very seriously, flatly states, “The federal government faces an unsustainable fiscal future.” Consider the magnitude of Congress’s own watchdog cautioning the nation that we cannot continue down the same spending path we are on.
Rural citizens and legislators are concerned that school choice would take critical funding away from their local schools. ITR Foundation Deputy Director Walt Rogers sat down with Need to Know host Jeff Angelo to debunk this myth and explain how school choice would improve education quality through the competition. The discussion starts at the 9:25 minute mark.
The School Choice Questions We Should Be Asking The education establishment has done an amazing job of creating the perfect “Emperor’s New Clothes” scenario when arguing against school choice. In the story, the emperor is fond of clothes and two “weavers” enter his capital, telling him they will create a magnificent suit for him that would be invisible to all […]
It appears the Republican Party will maintain Iowa’s first in the nation status for its 2024 presidential caucus, but uncertainty remains whether Democrats will continue to have Iowa leadoff their party’s nominating process. Iowa’s first in the nation presidential caucuses have become a tradition and are an integral part of the state’s political culture. As a reminder, Donald Trump won Iowa’s Republican caucus in 2020 and Pete Buttigieg was the choice of Iowa Democrats that year.
Iowa has a long history with property taxes and it is one of the most debated issues, even dating back to before statehood. The very first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa met in 1838 in Burlington, and one of their primary goals was to develop a revenue system. A few short months later the Iowa Territory created a property tax for residents, levied and collected by the counties – a function which the county still performs to this day.
How’s your property tax bill? If you tell us it’s too high, we won’t argue with you. In fact, we keep proposing solutions to deliver stronger taxpayer protections. But property taxes exist to fund our K-12 education system and city and county governments, as well as other services we all have access to; they are never going away. So maybe […]
Maybe you missed it, but April 3-9 was Affordable Housing Week in Iowa, where one of the main takeaways was that Iowa needs to increase its housing supply. It’s no secret that many states, including Iowa, have a housing shortage. Housing advocacy groups have identified a particular shortage of affordable homes, especially for lower-income Iowa families. In fact, it is such a pressing need that the State has designated $330 million over a five-year period to help aid in the issue.