The number of people on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) reached a record high this year. But a large number of people are double-dipping from both the disability insurance (DI) and unemployment insurance (UI) programs. A bill introduced last week would put an end to these overpayments, which unnecessarily drain the …
PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently released a study of Massachusetts’s experience with health care reform, claiming that under Obamacare most employers will not reduce or eliminate the health coverage they currently offer. However, there are at least three aspects the study did not directly address, all of which suggest that employers will, in fact, …
According to the Boston Herald and other news sources, the family of the Boston Marathon bombers received large amounts of welfare benefits. This calls attention to the policy principle that immigrants should be net contributors to the government and society and should not be a fiscal burden on American society. …
How much are we spending on education? Actually, far more than we know—because as it turns out, states are hiding some of the teachers’ benefits. In a new paper, Heritage expert Jason Richwine reveals that “Proper accounting would reveal tens of billions of dollars in extra teacher pension costs, equivalent …
Sequestration has taken effect, and yet government spending continues growing. Sequestration’s 2.4 percent reductions are not enough to fix Washington’s spending and debt problem because they do nothing to reform entitlement programs, whose costs will grow rapidly with America’s aging population. As more Americans age and retire, more Americans will …
Federal employees—who work on average a month less than private-sector workers and get paid more—are lobbying for higher pay. Government unions know that Congress is looking for ways to nip and tuck the federal budget, and they’re counting on being left out of the deal. “The Federal-Postal Coalition—a group representing …
Government employee unions are using a flawed study of federal pay to lobby for an end to President Obama’s freeze on cost-of-living salary increases. Obama’s decision will be significant: salaries and benefits for civilian workers totaled an alarming $271 billion last year. Heritage’s Jason Richwine and Andrew G. Biggs of …
The news that new Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims dropped sharply to 339,000 last week has raised eyebrows—and aroused suspicion the Department of Labor had massaged the numbers. In truth, there is both more and less to this story than meets the eye. The numbers are incomplete, but because of bureaucratic …
