Originally published on Substack. 

You open a budgeting app and connect it to your checking account. Or maybe you apply for a mortgage and authorize another company to review your financial history. You should be able to decide who sees your information and how you use it.

But your data doesn’t move by magic. Someone builds the connection, protects it from hackers, verifies requests, monitors fraud, and maintains the technology.

Who should pay for all that?

That simple question is at the center of the fight over Section 1033 of Dodd-Frank⁠. With the Biden-era rule currently stayed and the Trump administration reconsidering it, Washington has another chance to get this right.

How We Got Here

Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act⁠ after the 2008 financial crisis. The massive 2010 law reshaped financial regulation and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.

Buried within Dodd-Frank is Section 1033. It generally requires covered financial companies to make certain information about a consumer’s financial products and services available to that consumer upon request.
That’s reasonable. Consumers should control their financial information. Not sure this requirement is necessary, as markets would work this out, but that’s the current law.

The Biden administration went much further. In 2024, the CFPB finalized its Personal Financial Data Rights rule⁠, creating an extensive framework for financial institutions to provide data electronically to consumers and authorized third parties. The problem isn’t consumer access. It’s Washington deciding how the market should provide it.

Zero Isn’t Free

As I explained in my 2025 report on Section 1033 at Americans for Tax Reform⁠, the rule prohibits covered providers from charging consumers or authorized third parties for required data access.

Consider what that means. Suppose you authorize a financial app to connect to your bank account every day. The app may benefit commercially from that connection, but your bank must build and maintain the secure infrastructure that makes the connection possible.

Engineers aren’t free. Cybersecurity isn’t free. Fraud monitoring, servers, software upgrades, and compliance aren’t free.

Washington can mandate a price of zero, but it cannot make the cost zero. Those costs will appear somewhere else through higher prices, reduced investment, fewer services, or some combination.

Imagine if Washington required one payment company to let its competitors use its network without compensation because the transaction ultimately belonged to the customer. We wouldn’t call that competition. We would call it a government mandate.

Consumer ownership of data and free access to someone else’s infrastructure are not the same thing.

Markets Were Working

The mandate is even harder to justify because financial companies were already solving these problems.

Banks, fintech companies, and data aggregators developed agreements and increasingly secure connections because consumers demanded them. Companies had incentives to make those connections easier and safer.

That’s how markets work. Consumers demand better services, entrepreneurs respond, businesses negotiate, and competing technologies improve.

Government should punish fraud and theft. It doesn’t need to determine every term of the transaction or set the price at zero.

Congress Should Decide

There is also a basic question of government authority. Section 1033 gives the CFPB rulemaking authority and directs it to promote standardized electronic formats. But the statutory language does not expressly mention APIs or data aggregators.

That deserves greater scrutiny after the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright⁠ decision⁠ overturned Chevron deference in 2024. Courts must independently determine what statutes authorize rather than deferring to an agency merely because the law is ambiguous.

Congress writes the laws. Regulators should implement them, not create new ones.

Another Chance

A federal court stayed the rule’s compliance dates⁠ in October 2025. Meanwhile, the CFPB is reconsidering major parts of the framework, including fees, data security, privacy, and who can act as a consumer’s representative.

As of late September 2026, that reconsideration remains at the proposed-rule stage and has been under White House Office of Management and Budget review since August.

Russ Vought, my former boss when I served as chief economist at OMB, now serves as acting CFPB director. The administration should use this opportunity to narrow Washington’s role rather than replace one sprawling rule with another.

Consumers should be able to obtain their information. Beyond that, companies should generally negotiate how they exchange data and what those services cost. Liability should follow the data, and reasonable security standards should apply to anyone handling sensitive information.

Let Markets Work

I’ve long argued that Congress should eliminate the CFPB and place legitimate consumer-protection responsibilities in more accountable institutions. But the immediate Section 1033 question is simpler.

Your financial data belongs to you. Someone else’s infrastructure doesn’t.

Washington should protect consumers, enforce contracts, and punish fraud. Prices should communicate costs, property rights should encourage investment, and competition should push companies to offer safer and better services.

That’s a much better model than having Washington decide the price is zero and pretending the cost disappeared. Let markets work so people can prosper.

But the reaction exposed a deeper tension: Who gets to prosper?

America needs secure borders, immigration rules, and the rule of law. But those rules should protect liberty and security, not empower politicians to decide who works where and at what government-determined price.

A Broken System

Our immigration system is already a government-created mess of quotas, lotteries, backlogs, mandates, and political discretion. Yet we’re told the solution is more government control. Why?

There are legitimate concerns about H-1B visas. George Borjas’s new NBER study⁠ estimates that new H-1B workers earn about 16% less than statistically comparable native-born workers after adjusting for education, age, occupation, industry, location, and other factors.

We shouldn’t dismiss that. But Borjas also finds something revealing. H-1B workers change jobs far less frequently than comparable highly educated workers. He notes that these barriers to mobility may give employers greater market power and reduce H-1B wages.

That’s partly a government-created competition problem. If workers have difficulty leaving for better jobs, employers face less pressure to raise wages. The market solution is more competition for workers, not more government control over them.

Who Sets the Price?

The administration’s $100,000 H-1B requirement makes the tension even clearer. Interestingly, Borjas estimates⁠ that a revenue-maximizing visa fee could fall between roughly $95,000 and $152,000 under some assumptions. But even if putting a price on scarce visas makes sense, why should the president arbitrarily determine that price?

This isn’t a conventional wage price control, but the economic instinct is similar: government substitutes an administratively determined price for decentralized price discovery. That’s closer to the state-directed approach historically associated with China than America’s tradition of competitive markets. Indeed, the IMF continues to recommend⁠ reducing China’s remaining hukou barriers because greater labor mobility can improve flexibility and growth.

There is a rule-of-law issue, too. A federal judge ruled in June⁠ that the $100,000 fee exceeded presidential authority and amounted to a tax Congress had not authorized, and the administration appealed. If the H-1B system needs fundamental reform, Congress should legislate it. Presidents shouldn’t make immigration law by arbitrarily setting labor-related prices.

Let Markets Work

Congress could do something much better. The government caps most new private-sector H-1Bs at 85,000 while Borjas reports roughly 450,000 workers participated annually in the lotteries from 2021 through 2026. Instead of artificial scarcity plus a lottery plus a government-set price, Congress could use a market-based visa system.

Economists Richard Vedder, Joshua Hall, and Benjamin VanMetre have proposed a NASDAQ-style visa market⁠, while economist Gary Becker proposed using prices to allocate immigration opportunities.

Government should set transparent rules, screen for criminals and national-security threats, secure the border, punish fraud, and limit taxpayer-funded benefits. Then let competitive bidding reveal the value of scarce visas and make work authorization more portable so employers must compete for workers.
​
Government should set the rules of the game, not determine the economic outcome. That’s neither open borders nor central planning. It’s ordered liberty.

And there’s a human side. Immigrants aren’t simply units of “labor supply.” They’re people seeking opportunity, raising families, building businesses, innovating, and sometimes escaping poverty.
​
America has been exceptional partly because people from almost anywhere can come here legally and become Americans. That works best when immigration is joined with assimilation around liberty, responsibility, work, family, faith, the rule of law, and our constitutional order.

Originally published at Kansas Policy Institute. 

For decades, Washington has made it easier for states to spend money without fully confronting the cost. That era may be coming to an end.

Kansas should see that as an opportunity.

A recent Washington Post editorial documents how dramatically the relationship between Washington and the states has changed. Federal transfers to states reached about $1.2 trillion in 2025, roughly 17 percent of federal spending. Federal money provided about 34 percent of state revenue nationwide in 2024, compared with 22 percent in 1989.

That arrangement allows Washington to collect or borrow money, route it through federal programs, and return it to states with requirements attached.

Kansas is less exposed than most. Federal funds supplied 24.9 percent of Kansas state revenue in fiscal 2024, compared with 34.2 percent nationwide.

But even Kansas has substantial reason to pay attention.

Washington is approaching $40 trillion in gross debt while continuing to run enormous annual deficits. That fiscal path cannot continue indefinitely. Federal aid to states, along with the rest of the federal budget, will face increasing pressure.

The wrong response in Topeka would be to assume that every dollar Washington removes must be replaced with another dollar from Kansas taxpayers.

Instead, ask why the money was being spent.

That is where Kansas has an underused advantage.

Kansas already has performance-based budgeting in state law. Agencies are supposed to provide goals, outcomes, and performance measures that help lawmakers judge whether programs are accomplishing what taxpayers are funding them to do.

Too often, though, those measures do not happen nor drive the budget conversation enough. They should.
Instead of beginning with last year’s appropriation and negotiating how much to add, lawmakers should start with results. What problem is a program solving? What evidence shows that it works? Is there a less expensive approach? Could businesses, nonprofits, families, or local communities handle the responsibility better?

Federal funding reductions would make those questions more important, not less.

Kansas also enters this discussion with spending already elevated. The 2027 Responsible Kansas Budget shows state-funded spending rising from $7.2 billion in fiscal 2005 to $22.3 billion in fiscal 2026. Spending has grown much faster over that period than the benchmark of population growth plus inflation.

So Kansas does not need another source of money to preserve every existing program. It needs better prioritization.

That means pairing serious performance reviews with a firm limit on overall spending growth. A strong Kansas spending limit would force policymakers to make tradeoffs instead of allowing higher revenues to continually ratchet spending upward.

Those savings have another purpose: tax relief.

When government requires fewer resources, Kansans can keep more of what they earn. Permanent reductions in broad-based income-tax rates would improve incentives for entrepreneurship, investment, work, and migration into Kansas. Over time, that can mean a larger private economy rather than a larger government economy.

This is the promise of federalism that gets overlooked.

Fifty states making more of their own decisions create more accountability, experimentation, and competition. Kansans can see more clearly what their government costs and compare its results with Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and beyond.

Washington’s fiscal troubles will create challenges for states. But they could also help reverse decades of centralization.

Kansas should use the opportunity to measure results, eliminate what isn’t working, restrain spending, lower taxes, and return more decisions to the people closest to them.
​
That would be a healthier federalism and a stronger Kansas.

Originally published on Substack.

Diesel above $6 per gallon hurts. It hits truckers and farmers first, then works its way through freight, groceries, construction, manufacturing, and ultimately household budgets. So I understand the instinct to ask why American refiners are exporting diesel when prices are so high here.

But I’ve studied oil, gasoline, and diesel markets for nearly two decades, and there’s an important lesson in that research: prices reflect information about scarcity throughout the supply chain. Trying to suppress that signal doesn’t eliminate the scarcity.

That’s why President Trump’s consideration of a diesel export ban⁠ concerns me. The desire for lower prices is understandable. But the better response is to attack the causes of expensive energy rather than restrict where American refiners can sell it.

What’s In the Diesel Price?
​
The Energy Information Administration’s breakdown⁠ of what Americans pay at the pump is revealing. In May, when diesel averaged $5.60 per gallon, 42% of the price came from crude oil, 25% from refining, 23% from distribution and marketing, and 11% from taxes.

Those shares move with market conditions. Over the longer run, EIA estimates crude oil⁠ accounted for about half of the average retail diesel price from 2004 through 2025. Crude therefore remains fundamental to what truckers and families eventually pay.

But today’s diesel problem is also about refining. The latest EIA analysis⁠ points to unusually high diesel refining margins combined with elevated crude prices. Global distillate supplies have tightened as refinery disruptions and geopolitical events reduced available supply.

This is what scarcity looks like.

America Is Already Straining Refining

American refiners aren’t sitting around waiting for higher prices.

According to EIA’s September diesel-market analysis⁠, U.S. distillate production averaged about 5.1 million barrels per day from January through August, the highest since 2019. Refinery utilization reached roughly 97% in the week ending September 11.

Yet inventories remained about 13% below their five-year seasonal average.

Meanwhile, global diesel markets have tightened⁠ as geopolitical conflicts, refinery disruptions, and reduced exports from important producing regions have collided with already-low inventories.

That context matters because an export ban doesn’t create another gallon of diesel.

It could keep additional gallons in some U.S. markets temporarily. That’s the strongest argument for it. But the more important question is: What happens to production and investment afterward?

Don’t Punish the Supply Response

Refineries are multibillion-dollar investments expected to operate for decades. Investors care about future regulatory costs, input prices, transportation options, and access to customers.

Tell refiners that government may restrict where they sell whenever prices become politically uncomfortable, and policy risk rises. That can reduce expected returns on refinery expansions, upgrades, maintenance, pipelines, terminals, and storage.

My own research helps explain why focusing narrowly on the pump price can mislead policymakers. In a peer-reviewed Energy Economics⁠ research on retail and wholesale gasoline prices⁠, we found a strong long-run relationship between crude oil and wholesale and retail gasoline prices, with symmetric long-run adjustment.

Our later Energy Economics⁠ study of the retail gasoline supply chain⁠ similarly examined short- and long-run price responses and structural breaks. And my more recent research, “Structural Breaks and Long-Run Adjustment in the Diesel Fuel Market,”⁠ applies this work directly to diesel.

The broader lesson is simple: petroleum markets are interconnected, and prices adjust to underlying market fundamentals.

So let’s improve those fundamentals!

Make Supply the Strategy

Start with production. America should make it easier to explore, drill, produce, and transport oil. More crude supply matters because, as the EIA data above show, crude remains one of the largest components of diesel prices.

Then tackle refining. If refining represents roughly one-quarter of today’s diesel price, barriers to building, expanding, and modernizing refinery capacity deserve much more attention than restricting exports. Streamline permitting and provide predictable rules so businesses can confidently invest billions of dollars over decades.

Lower the cost of investment, too. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, machinery, and other productive inputs raise the cost of pipelines, refineries, drilling equipment, storage facilities, and other infrastructure. If we want cheaper energy, government shouldn’t make the capital needed to produce it more expensive.

Transportation matters, but it isn’t the central problem. The administration’s temporary Jones Act relief⁠ shows why flexibility matters when supplies are tight. Fuel needs to move efficiently between American regions, not encounter artificial transportation barriers.

And pursue peace. When wars damage refineries, disrupt shipping routes, or remove barrelsfrom world markets, Americans eventually feel those disruptions at the pump.

Let Abundance Work

America exported about 2.4 million barrels per day of major transportation fuels in 2025, according to EIA’s analysis of U.S. transportation-fuel trade⁠, with distillates accounting for more than half. Yet distillate exports actually declined from 2024 and remained below 2019 levels.

Exports aren’t the enemy. Scarcity is.

The durable answer is to make producing, refining, transporting, and investing in American energy easier and more profitable.

More production. More refining. More infrastructure. Freer trade. Less government.

Don’t respond to high diesel prices with another government restriction. Remove the barriers to abundance and let people prosper.

Originally published on The Center Square. 

​Mark Cuban and State Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) have identified real public frustration: American health care too often fails patients on affordability, transparency and choice. But breaking up health care companies will not create one. Putting patients in control would.

Cuban and Talarico recently argued that consolidation among insurers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), pharmacies, and providers drives up costs. Talarico described how when he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, he would pay $684 for a 30-day supply of insulin. That affordability problem is real. The disagreement is over the solution.

Talarico has embraced the bipartisan Break Up Big Medicine Act⁠, which would restrict certain health care companies from owning medical providers. Cuban has also criticized vertical integration among insurers, PBMs, pharmacies and providers.

But Cuban is not entering this debate without a political or commercial history. He previously backed Kamala Harris over President Donald Trump and is now joining Democrat Talarico in calling for federal action against health-care consolidation. That raises a fair policy question: Would giving Washington more power to determine how health-care companies may organize actually increase competition and patient choice, or simply replace market decisions with political ones? 

Those concerns deserve scrutiny. But Washington deciding how companies may organize does not address the deeper problem: patients control too little of their health care money.

Decades of public policy have built a third-party payment system dominated by employers, insurers, PBMs, hospitals, and government programs. The person receiving care often cannot see a meaningful price or directly control the dollars paying it. That weakens the price signals and consumer choices that make markets work.

Cuban’s health-care crusade also comes with a commercial interest worth considering. He is not merely criticizing the prescription-drug marketplace; he co-founded a company that competes in it. That raises another question: Should an entrepreneur competing against established health-care companies also urge Washington to restructure those competitors by law? Or should his business model compete for patients and prove its value on the merits? 

Cuban’s own Cost Plus Drugs⁠ offers a useful contrast. It operates through a limited cash-pay model that offers posted prices for certain medicines. That can be a useful option for some consumers, but it is not a complete replacement for the coverage, pharmacy access, specialty-drug services, clinical support, and benefit integration many patients depend on. Its existence nevertheless makes an important point: companies can enter the market and compete without Washington forcing rivals to restructure.
The real test of Cuban’s confidence in Cost Plus Drugs is simple: compete for patients. A business model that truly delivers better value should not require a political campaign to restructure its competitors by statute. If Cuban’s model is as superior as he claims, it does not need Talarico and Washington bureaucrats to tilt the playing field. It should compete, win customers, and prove its value without a government-designed breakup of its rivals.
​That is the lesson policymakers should apply across health care.
My Empower Patients Initiative⁠ with Dr. Deane Waldman would move health care dollars and decisions toward patients. A central reform is No-Limit Health Savings Accounts, which would give Americans much greater freedom to save and spend their own money on care.
Combine that with portable health care dollars, direct primary care, transparent cash prices, catastrophic insurance, and fewer barriers to providers entering markets. Then businesses have to compete for consumers instead of lobbying government over how the industry should be structured.

The same principle applies to PBMs. As I explained in recent Texas legislative testimony⁠, PBMs deserve scrutiny, and fraud or anticompetitive conduct should be punished. But regulating one middleman more aggressively can simply move costs and bargaining power elsewhere.

Lower prices, transparency, and patient choice are worthy goals. But Washington won't achieve them by deciding which healthcare businesses may exist, which relationships may survive, and which business model political insiders prefer.

The better path is to give patients, not politicians, and not corporate bureaucracies, more control over their healthcare dollars. Expand choices and provide clear prices. Punish fraud and genuinely anticompetitive conduct. Let new entrants compete on the merits, without using government to restructure their rivals.

Texans do not need the government to redesign the already government-dominated healthcare system around Cuban’s business interests or Talarico’s progressive agenda. They need the freedom and financial control to choose the care, coverage, pharmacy, and doctor that work for them.

Originally published on Substack.

As a father of three, I think a lot about how much childhood has changed since I was growing up in Houston. My kids have access to more information on a phone than I could have imagined at their age, and advanced computing is accelerating that change. There are real risks that Emily and I have to think about as parents, from inappropriate content and scams to too much screen time and now the possibility that kids let AI do their thinking for them.
​
But there are enormous opportunities, too. That is why I keep coming back to the same principle I’ve written about for years⁠: parents know their children better than politicians and bureaucrats ever will. New research from Google provides some pretty compelling evidence that teenagers understand this, too.

Google’s new U.S. Future Report 2026⁠ (all figures below are from this Report) surveyed a nationally representative group of 1,003 American teens ages 13 to 17, supplemented by larger state surveys and focus groups. The findings tell a much more interesting story than the usual narrative that kids are helpless against technology and therefore government must step in.

Kids Are Already Adapting

Consider how quickly advanced computing has become normal. Google reports that 94% of teens surveyed used an AI tool during the previous year. About 74% use it for learning at least weekly, and 57% use it creatively at least weekly.

I’ve written previously⁠ about how advanced computing could dramatically lower the cost of personalized education. A private tutor has traditionally been expensive. Now a student can have a tool available around the clock that adjusts explanations to how that student learns. That has tremendous potential, especially when combined with the education freedom⁠ Jenny Clark and I have advocated so families can choose among public schools, private schools, microschools, homeschooling, and other options.

The goal shouldn’t be to have advanced computing replace teachers or parents. It should be to give teachers, parents, and students better tools.

Teens Still Trust Mom and Dad

The finding that stood out most to me had almost nothing to do with AI.
​
When Google asked teens whom they trust most for guidance about healthy online habits, 67% chose parents or adult family members. Just 5% chose teachers or schools. Among younger teens ages 13 to 15, reliance on parents and family rises to 73%.

When something actually goes wrong, the numbers become even more striking. Large majorities say they would turn to a parent or guardian about scams, privacy concerns, cyberbullying, uncomfortable interactions, or inappropriate content.

That matters because lawmakers across the country are considering increasingly aggressive online-safety and age-verification mandates. I’ve opposed these approaches in Texas⁠ and written about the same problem in Kansas⁠. The intentions are often good. I want my kids protected online, too. But good intentions don’t eliminate tradeoffs.

Government-mandated age verification can mean more personal information collected and stored, higher compliance costs, barriers for smaller competitors, and government increasingly determining how families interact with lawful technology. Ironically, regulations aimed at Big Tech can strengthen the biggest companies because they can afford armies of lawyers and compliance officers that startups cannot.

The Knowledge Problem Matters

There is also a more basic economic problem with one-size-fits-all rules: government doesn’t have enough information.
​
Google found that 51% of 13-to-15-year-olds report parental management of their device or phone settings, compared with 36% of 16-to-17-year-olds. That makes sense. Parenting changes as children mature. Even children of the same age can have very different levels of maturity, needs, and circumstances.

Emily and I know our three kids differently. We know their strengths, weaknesses, habits, and personalities. A legislator writing a statewide rule cannot possibly possess that information.

This is Hayek’s knowledge problem applied to parenting. Knowledge is dispersed among millions of families, and no central authority can gather enough of it to determine the right answer for every child. That doesn’t mean every parent will make the right decision. It means government officials are human, too, and they have far less information about my children than I do.

Freedom Requires Responsibility

The Google report shouldn’t be treated as the final word. Google has commercial interests in the future of technology, and these are largely self-reported behaviors. We should continue studying what advanced computing does to learning, attention, social development, and other outcomes.

But the findings reinforce what I’ve argued in my work on online safety⁠: protect children by enforcing laws against exploitation, fraud, threats, and abuse. Hold businesses accountable when they violate people’s rights. Give parents better tools and clearer information. Teach kids how to think critically and use technology responsibly.

Then leave room for families and innovators to figure out what works.

My kids are going to grow up with technologies I didn’t have at their age. I don’t want government trying to freeze the world in 1995 to protect them from 2035. I want Emily and me to prepare them for that world by teaching them judgment, responsibility, faith, curiosity, and self-control.

Technology will change. Those principles won’t.

And if teenagers themselves say Mom and Dad are the people they trust most when the digital world gets difficult, policymakers should pay attention.
​
Empower parents. Protect kids from actual harm. Let innovation flourish. That’s a better path for families, freedom, and prosperity.

Originally published at Kansas Policy Institute.

​Here’s a warning Kansas policymakers shouldn’t ignore.

When Washington recently eliminated federal funding for two nutrition-education positions in Kansas, the Frontier Extension District decided to keep the program. The result? A $192,000 property-tax increase on residents of Anderson, Franklin, and Osage counties.

That’s a small example of a much bigger problem: Kansas can’t assume Washington will keep paying the bills.

Kansas is fortunately less dependent on Washington than most states. According to Pew’s latest Census-based comparison, federal funds accounted for 24.9 percent of Kansas state revenue in FY2024, compared with 34.2 percent nationally. That’s much better than Louisiana, where 50.7 percent came from Washington. But one-fourth of Kansas revenue is still a major exposure.

The Kansas budget provides another perspective. KPI’s 2027 Responsible Kansas Budget reports about $27.8 billion in total FY2026 spending compared with $22.3 billion from state funds. That leaves roughly $5.5 billion tied to federal funding under this different accounting measure.

Now consider where that money originates.

Washington is approaching $40 trillion in gross national debt and is projected to spend about $7.4 trillion while collecting only $5.6 trillion this fiscal year. That’s roughly $1.32 spent for every $1 collected.

And the fiscal gap gets worse.

CBO projects annual deficits approaching $3.1 trillion by 2036. Debt held by the public is projected to rise from about 101 percent of GDP today to 120 percent in 2036 and 175 percent by 2056. Interest costs alone are projected to roughly double to $2.1 trillion annually by 2036.

Something eventually has to give. Federal grants to states will be an obvious place for Washington to look. Kansas should prepare now instead of waiting for Washington to force the issue.

This is also why federalism matters. States shouldn’t become administrative arms of Washington. Federalism keeps government closer to taxpayers and allows states to compete over taxes, spending, regulation, and services. Federal grants blur that accountability because Washington taxes or borrows the money, attaches strings, and sends it back.

When Washington stops paying, state and local taxpayers often get the bill.

Kansas shouldn’t respond by replacing every lost federal dollar with another state or local tax dollar, as in the Anderson County example above. Instead, lawmakers should use program-based budgeting effectively to review what government actually does. Every program should have a clear purpose, measurable outcomes, and regular evaluation. Policymakers should ask whether it works, whether taxpayers should fund it, and whether competition or the private sector could do it better. Kansas has a version of this in a years-old performance-based budget law that is largely ignored by governors and legislators.

For federally supported programs, add another question: Would Kansans choose to fund this themselves if Washington stopped paying? Then put a firm ceiling over the entire process.

Kansas should pass a Responsible Kansas Budget every year while imposing a strict spending limit based on population growth plus inflation. A better Taxpayer Bill of Rights could make that restraint harder to evade, require a supermajority to exceed the limit, and use excess revenue to permanently reduce broad-based income-tax rates.

Program-based budgeting helps lawmakers decide what deserves funding. A spending limit forces them to prioritize among those programs. You need both.

Competition completes the picture. Free markets and competition give providers incentives to innovate, economize, and serve people better. Better results at lower costs mean fewer taxpayer dollars are needed.

Kansas is in a better position to deal with declining federal funds than Louisiana and many other states. But lawmakers should heed the warning now instead of kicking it down the road.

Originally published on Substack. 

​I’ve been thinking about something since Labor Day.

We spent a day celebrating American workers. Then, within days, Washington gave us two very different proposals with something important in common.

President Trump recently proposed a $5,000 “Trump Dividend”⁠ for adult U.S. citizens if Republicans retain Congress. It would require congressional approval (no matter whether Trump thinks it doesn’t) and could cost about $1.2 trillion if paid to roughly 240 million adults.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has championed a draft proposal that would let certain married families receive federal child-care assistance when one parent stays home with their children.

I understand why both ideas are attractive. Who doesn’t like getting a check?

But as an economist, a father of three, and someone who believes deeply in the value of work, I keep coming back to a different question: Why are we subsidizing everything?

One Subsidy Leads to Another

The argument for helping stay-at-home parents is actually pretty compelling.

Government already subsidizes daycare. If the family next door gets thousands of dollars because both parents work and their child goes to daycare, why should your family get nothing because Mom or Dad stays home?

I get it. But notice what happened.

Government subsidized one choice. That created an inequity. Now the proposed solution is another subsidy.

Think about college. Washington spent decades subsidizing higher education. That helped make college artificially attractive relative to apprenticeships, trades, and entering the workforce directly. Then, when student debt became a major problem, Washington’s answer was more subsidies and attempted debt cancellation.

One intervention creates distortions that become the justification for the next intervention. Pretty soon, we’re subsidizing everything.

There Is No Free Dividend

Trump’s “dividend” illustrates the fiscal problem.

A corporation pays dividends from profits. Washington is not earning a profit. It is already running an estimated $2.1 trillion deficit⁠ this fiscal year.

Vice President Vance suggested tariff revenue could help finance the checks. But CBO estimates tariffs have generated about $167 billion so far this fiscal year, nowhere close to the potential $1.2 trillion cost.

And as I’ve written repeatedly⁠, tariffs aren’t free money from foreign countries. They are taxes collected on imports that raise costs for Americans.

Tax Americans, then send some of the money back as a “dividend”? That isn’t prosperity. There is no free government money. Somebody pays.

Families Know Better

This is where it becomes personal for me.

I think a mother choosing to stay home with her children can make a wonderful choice. But I don’t want Washington paying her to make it.

I also don’t want Washington pushing another mother toward the workforce because government has made daycare artificially cheaper.

My wife and I both own businesses. We largely work from home. We have three kids. We’ve made choices about work, school, and family that fit us.

Other families should choose differently.

Homeschool. Use daycare. Build a business. Work full time. Stay home. Have grandparents help.

Good. I don’t know what is best for them. Neither does Washington.

Work Still Matters

That brings me back to Labor Day.

Work is about much more than GDP. It lets us use our talents, provide for our families, serve others, and build something valuable.

Markets help us discover where those talents are needed. When electricians become scarce, wages rise. People notice. Workers train. Businesses respond.

Nobody in Washington needs to know exactly how many electricians America needs. Prices, wages, profits, and losses communicate that information through millions of voluntary decisions.

Help People Rise

None of this means abandoning people who genuinely need help. I’ve argued for years that the goal of a safety net should be to help people become independent, not simply enroll more people in government programs.

That’s why I developed Empowerment Accounts⁠. The idea is to simplify assistance, connect work-capable people with work and social capital, and make self-sufficiency the goal. Families help families. Churches help neighbors. Charities serve communities. Businesses create jobs. Government does not have a monopoly on compassion.

Let People Prosper

So maybe that’s what has been bothering me since Labor Day. We celebrated work and the American worker. Then Washington went back to debating who should get the next check.

I think we have it backward.

Government doesn’t need to subsidize every choice. It should stop creating so many distortions in the first place.
​
The American Dream isn’t getting a bigger check from Washington. It’s building a life where you don’t need one.

Originally published on Substack. 

How old were you on September 11, 2001? I was 19 years old.

I was a student at San Jacinto College in the Houston area, still playing drums in a rock band called Sindrome and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

Then everything changed.

Like millions of Americans, I watched the images coming out of New York almost unable to comprehend what I was seeing. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then another. The Pentagon was hit. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania.

America was under attack.

Twenty-five years later, those words still hit me.

But what I remember isn’t only what was happening thousands of miles away. I remember what it felt like at home in Houston.

Could Houston Be Next?

We lived near one of the largest concentrations of refineries and chemical plants in the world.

I remember being scared that the Houston Ship Channel or the chemical plants around Pasadena could be attacked next.

That fear wasn’t completely irrational. Plants along the Ship Channel immediately tightened security⁠. Facilities in Pasadena, Deer Park, La Porte, and elsewhere went on heightened alert. Some sent nonessential workers home.
Nobody knew what was coming next.

I remember people rushing to gas stations. People were buying supplies. Rumors were everywhere. Everyone was trying to figure out whether another attack was coming and where it might happen.

It was wild.

For someone who was 19, it was also the first time I really understood how quickly the world you take for granted can change.

What I Remember Most

Nearly 3,000 innocent people were murdered⁠ that morning. But when I think back on September 11, I also remember what happened afterward.

Americans came together.

People lined up to give blood. First responders ran toward buildings while everyone else was running away. Churches filled. Flags appeared everywhere. Strangers helped strangers.

We prayed.

For a little while, many of the things that normally divided us seemed much smaller. That has stayed with me.
I wish it didn’t take tragedy for us to remember how much we have in common.

Twenty-Five Years Later

Today, I’m 44. I’m no longer that 19-year-old college kid playing drums around Houston.

I’m a husband. A father of three. An economist. And my children are growing up in a country where September 11 is something they learn about in history.

That realization gets me.

They didn’t experience the confusion of that morning. They didn’t watch the towers fall live on television wondering what was happening. They didn’t feel the uncertainty of wondering whether Houston, Washington, Los Angeles, or somewhere else might be next.

And I’m thankful for that. I pray they never experience anything like it. But I want them to understand it.

I want them to know about the 2,977 people who were killed⁠, the firefighters and police officers who climbed those stairs, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back, and the Americans who answered the call to serve afterward.

This year, on the 25th anniversary, we once again honor those lives and sacrifices. I also want them to understand what we learned about freedom. It is precious. It can be threatened. And it is worth defending.

Never Forget

Twenty-five years is a long time. Yet I can still picture that 19-year-old version of myself trying to understand what was happening.

I remember the fear. But I also remember the courage. I remember the uncertainty. But I also remember the faith. I remember an America that was wounded but refused to be defeated.

So today I’ll do what Americans promised to do 25 years ago. I’ll remember.

I’ll pray for the families who never got their loved ones back. I’ll thank God for the first responders who ran toward danger. I’ll pray for those who have defended our country since. And I’ll pray that my children, and their children, never have to experience a day like September 11, 2001.

But I hope they always understand why we remember it. Freedom is precious. Life is precious. Our country is worth it.

Never forget. 🇺🇸
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Until next time, God bless you, and let people prosper.