Over the last several months, federal policymakers have been considering changing the inflation measure used to calculate the annual cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) of Social Security payments from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) with the chained-CPI. On Friday, the U.S. Senate voiced opposition to adopting the chained-CPI, although President Obama…
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West Virginia is not alone when it comes to cutting funding to Higher Education. According to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, from 2008 - 2013, state spending on public colleges and universities dropped by an average of 28 percent or $2,353 per student. All but two states, North Dakota and…
Infrastructure is an important aspect of this country that is often taken for granted. Every family, community, and business relies on infrastructure to thrive. It is what connects people and goods across this nation. It can measure the quality of life enjoyed by millions. As the Charleston Gazette reported this morning, the American Society for…
Each month, we put out our Jobs Count publication, which reports on the state's jobs numbers, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics (CES). Each month, the BLS revises the previous month's numbers, but the revisions are typically small, and usually don't change the overall picture. However, at the beginning of each…
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute looks the economic impact of Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which was introduced in Congress in response to President Obama's call to raise the minimum wage made during this year's State of the Union address. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would raise the minimum…
We learned last week from the Associated Press that Governor Tomblin is pushing legislation to require some online retailers with facilities in the state to collect sales taxes. The legislation (HB 2754 & SB 377) is commonly referred to as an "Amazon law" because in many states, like West Virginia, the online retail giant does…
One of the biggest items of interest in Governor Tomblin's proposed FY 2014 budget is Medicaid. Base budget appropriations for Medicaid totaled $568 million, an increase of $142 million from FY 2013. This increase in base budget appropriations has created the perception that the state is spending $142 million more on Medicaid than it did…
On Sunday, Gazette gossip columnist Phil Kabler pointed out that John Raese - a West Virginia Republican politician and owner of Greer Industries in Morgantown - "was No. 2 among the top 100 purchase card vendors in the state, making $12,998,945 off the state in 2012." The fact that Mr. Raese receives so much money from…
Today we learned that Charleston Mayor Danny Jones is proposing a tax reform package to pay for upgrades to the Charleston Civic Center. The tax reform package includes both tax reductions and the adoption of a city sales tax. The tax reductions include eliminating the Business and Occupation (B&O) tax on manufacturing and reducing the…
Last week, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tina Rosenburg had an op-ed in the New York Times on how countries can avoid the resource curse. While the brunt of the article focused on how unstable countries are vulnerable to building a shared prosperity from their rich natural resources, Rosenburg highlighted Alaska and its permanent fund as…