Originally published on Substack.

Texas has a choice: build enough power for the future or regulate its way into energy scarcity.

Today, the Texas House Committee on State Affairs is holding a hearing on microgrids and distributed energy resources. That may sound technical, but it is really about whether Texas families get more reliable electricity at lower cost or whether government keeps slowing down the supply we need.

Energy Abundance, Not Scarcity

Texas became America’s energy leader because it trusted competition, private investment, property rights, and innovation more than central planning.

That should remain the North Star.

The goal should not be to manage scarcity through mandates, subsidies, and bureaucratic control. The goal should be energy abundance.

Electricity prices follow basic economics. When demand rises faster than reliable supply, prices rise and reliability weakens. When supply expands, competition works, and infrastructure keeps pace, price pressure falls.

This is not complicated. Texas needs more power, built faster, with less government in the way.

Families Feel The Pain

This is already a kitchen-table issue.

A University of Houston and Texas Southern University survey found that nearly 45% of Texas households pay more than $200 per month for summer electricity, and about one-third spend 7% or more of household income on energy.
That means higher electric bills are crowding out groceries, rent, medical care, savings, and opportunities for families.

Politicians often respond with rebates, subsidies, or temporary relief. That may sound compassionate, but it does not fix the problem. It often hides the problem.

The real answer is supply.

More generation. More storage. More transmission efficiency. More distributed energy. More private capital. More competition.

Growth Is Success

Texas is growing because people and businesses want to be here.

Families are moving here. Manufacturers are expanding here. Hospitals, logistics hubs, data centers, and energy-intensive industries need more electricity.

The Energy Information Administration expects U.S. electricity load to rise in 2026 and 2027, with ERCOT and PJM among the regions where growth pressures are especially important. EIA also estimates that data center load is emerging as a major driver of long-term U.S. electricity demand growth, though those estimates stew questionable given flawed projections.

That should not scare Texas lawmakers. It should focus them. Texas does not have a demand problem. Growth is success. Texas has an infrastructure, permitting, and regulatory alignment problem.

Microgrids Can Help

Microgrids and distributed energy resources can help meet this moment.

They allow large-load users, hospitals, campuses, rural communities, manufacturers, and data centers to bring their own power, manage their own risks, and reduce stress on the broader grid.

They can add supply closer to where power is needed. They can reduce congestion. They can improve resilience during outages. They can give customers more control over their energy costs.

This is economics at work. Let those who need power procure it, produce it, store it, and pay for it through voluntary contracts.

But microgrids will work only if Texas does not regulate them like monopoly utilities.

Don’t Regulate Innovation Like Monopoly Utilities

Texas should create a clear legal path for off-ERCOT, behind-the-meter, and islanded microgrids to generate, distribute, and sell power to defined customers without automatically triggering full public utility regulation.

If a system does not interconnect with ERCOT, does not use public transmission, and does not shift costs onto ratepayers, it should not be buried in utility-style red tape.

If that system later connects to ERCOT, imports power, exports power, or participates in wholesale markets, then appropriate oversight should apply.

That is the right balance: freedom first, regulation only when the broader grid is affected.

Other States Are Moving

Texas should lead, but other states are already moving.

New Hampshire’s HB 672 created a category for off-grid electricity providers and exempts them from certain public-utility regulations while they remain independent from the regulated grid.

Utah’s SB 132 created requirements for serving large-scale electric loads and helped clarify how large users can be served through new contractual and generation arrangements.

These reforms are not perfect, but they move in the right direction.

Private capital should be allowed to build energy infrastructure without being forced through a regulatory model designed for monopoly utilities.

Texas should do better.

Permitting Is The Bottleneck

America often takes longer to approve energy infrastructure than it should take to build it.
That is economic malpractice.

Permitting delays raise costs, slow investment, weaken reliability, and block markets from responding to real demand. When Texans need more power and private capital is ready to build, government should not stand in the way.

This is where economics and common sense meet. A market cannot solve scarcity when government blocks the supply response.

That is why microgrids matter. They can bypass some of the bottlenecks by allowing private users to bring their own power rather than waiting years for traditional infrastructure to catch up.

China Is A Warning, Not A Model

China’s centralized system is not a model Texas should copy. But its speed should be a warning.

Global Energy Monitor found that China began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal power capacity in 2024 after a major permitting surge in prior years.

The lesson is not to imitate China. The lesson is that energy abundance is economic strength. Texas can win the energy race the Texas way: with freedom, competition, private property, and private investment.

Don’t Single Out Data Centers

Data centers are becoming an easy political target. That is a mistake.

They should pay their electric bills like every other customer once they are operating. They should not get special subsidies. They should not shift costs to families. But they also should not be forced to pre-pay, self-finance, or shoulder special grid costs that no other building or industry must pay.

Office towers do not pre-pay the grid before opening. Hospitals do not pre-pay the grid before serving patients. Manufacturers do not pre-pay the grid before producing goods. Retail centers do not pre-pay the grid before hiring workers.

So why single out data centers?

Forcing one sector to meet special obligations that others do not face is not fairness. It is discrimination. It picks winners and losers. It punishes growth. It tells innovators that Texas welcomes investment until politicians decide their industry is too visible.

That is not the Texas model.

The right approach is simple: cost causation, not political targeting. If a customer imposes costs on the system, rates and contracts should reflect those costs. But government should not invent special rules for one industry because it is growing fast.

Four Principles For Texas

First, protect the right to build private power.

Off-ERCOT, islanded, and behind-the-meter microgrids should be allowed to serve defined customers without being regulated like public utilities.

Second, clarify interconnection rules.

Developers need certainty. If a project stays off the grid, it should face a light-touch framework. If it connects to ERCOT, then ERCOT rules and reliability protections should apply.

Third, apply equal treatment.

Data centers, manufacturers, hospitals, campuses, and other large-load users should pay for the electricity they use and the costs they impose. But government should not force one industry to carry special burdens no other customer carries.

Fourth, avoid subsidies and favoritism.

Public-private partnerships and subsidy-driven programs may sound appealing, but they often distort markets, shift costs to taxpayers or ratepayers, and invite government to choose winners and losers.

True resilience comes from competition, redundancy, price signals, and decentralized decision-making.

Let Private Capital Build

Texas does not need more government micromanagement of electricity.

It needs more supply. Faster permitting. Clearer rules. Stronger property rights. More private capital.

Microgrids and distributed energy resources are not a silver bullet, but they are an important part of an energy abundance agenda. They can help Texans add power where it is needed, reduce strain on the grid, strengthen reliability, and lower long-term costs.

The Legislature should resist turning this into another regulatory maze. Let entrepreneurs build. Let consumers contract. Let private capital solve problems. Let large users bring their own power without forcing families to pick up the tab.

More power, built faster, with less government in the way is how Texas can stay the energy capital of America and let people prosper.

Three Key Takeaways For Policymakers

1. Texas needs more supply, not more control. Rising electricity demand is a sign of growth and opportunity. The answer is energy abundance through private investment, faster permitting, and competitive markets.
2. Private microgrids should not be regulated like monopoly utilities. Off-ERCOT, behind-the-meter, and islanded systems that do not shift costs onto ratepayers should have a clear, light-touch path to build.
3. Government should not pick winners and losers. Singling out data centers or any fast-growing industry for special costs no other customer pays would punish investment and weaken Texas’ competitive advantage.

Get Involved

Texas can lead the next era of energy abundance, but only if lawmakers hear from Texans who want reliability, affordability, and freedom to build.

Contact your state legislators. Submit comments on energy policy. Share this newsletter with friends, business leaders, and policymakers who care about keeping Texas prosperous.

Originally published on Substack. 

Yesterday, I submitted written testimony to the Texas House Select Committee on Health Care Affordability with a straightforward message: stop layering new mandates onto a broken system and start rebuilding health care around patients.

That is the foundation of my work at Ginn Economic Consulting, my recent piece Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies, and the broader Empower Patients Initiative, which I helped advance with Americans for Tax Reform and Dr. Deane Waldman. The same framework is also developed in our re-released book with a different title, Become an Empowered Patient.

The core point is simple: affordable care will not come from empowering more bureaucracies. It will come from empowering patients.

That should be the North Star for Texas policymakers.

Texans do not need another study to know health care is broken. They live it every month through rising premiums, higher deductibles, surprise bills, delayed care, shrinking physician independence, and wages squeezed by employer-sponsored coverage. They see a system with more “coverage” but less affordability, less transparency, and less trust.

That is not a functioning market. It is a heavily distorted system shaped by third-party payment, government favoritism, and bureaucratic control.

Coverage Is Not Care

One of the biggest mistakes in health policy is treating coverage and care as if they are the same thing.

They are not.

A bigger insurance card does not automatically mean better access, lower prices, or stronger outcomes. In practice, the opposite often happens. When patients are disconnected from real prices, doctors are buried in compliance, and payment is routed through layers of insurers and government programs, the system becomes more expensive and less personal at the same time.

That is why serious reform should not begin with “How do we expand bureaucratic coverage?” It should begin with “How do we restore the patient-doctor relationship and let markets work again?”

That is the animating principle of the Empower Patients Initiative: move power away from institutions and back to people.

The Tax Code Helped Create This Mess

One of the most underappreciated drivers of our current system is the federal tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance.

That policy helped push coverage into the workplace, hide the true cost of compensation, reward more expensive plans, and disconnect patients from the actual price of care. It encouraged a world where employers, insurers, and government programs make most of the decisions while patients try to navigate the consequences.

That is one reason I argued in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies and Solving the Healthcare Affordability Crisis that the real problem is not a lack of bureaucratic oversight. It is a system of warped incentives that suppresses price signals, shields payers from accountability, and leaves patients with less control than they should have.

That is not a market failure. It is a policy failure.

Transparency Helps Only If Patients Can Act

There is plenty of discussion right now about price transparency. Good. People should know what care costs.

But transparency alone is not enough.

What price are we talking about? The hospital list price? The negotiated insurer rate? The Medicare reimbursement? The cash price? The patient’s out-of-pocket estimate? Those can be radically different numbers. So if lawmakers simply require more price posting without changing who controls the dollars and the decisions, transparency becomes one more compliance exercise.

Transparency without ownership is noise.

For transparency to matter, patients need the power to act on the information. That means more direct primary care, more cash-pay options, more flexible health savings arrangements, and fewer barriers blocking real alternatives. That is why the Empower Patients Initiative focuses on restoring buyer-seller relationships in health care rather than just adding new reporting requirements to the old system.

The Reform Agenda Texas Should Pursue

If Texas wants to lead, it should stop trying to patch over a broken structure and instead move toward a patient-centered market.

That means expanding direct primary care and direct doctor-patient contracts. It means reducing mandates that drive up premiums. It means pairing catastrophic coverage with patient-controlled accounts. It means removing barriers to entry so more providers can compete. It means protecting independent physicians from regulatory overload. And it means treating transparency as a tool instead of pretending it is the cure.

I have made that case consistently in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies, Solving the Healthcare Affordability Crisis, and Stop Propping Up Obamacare. The common theme is simple: if you keep subsidizing and regulating a broken structure, you get a more expensive version of the same broken structure.

The better answer is more freedom, more competition, and more direct accountability.

Fix Medicaid by Trusting Texans

The same principle applies to Medicaid.

Medicaid is supposed to help vulnerable Texans, but too often it traps them in a system with weak access, low provider participation, and expensive, hospital-centered care. Texas should not define success by how well it processes claims through a bureaucracy. It should define success by whether patients can actually get timely, quality care.

That means pushing for more state flexibility, more patient-centered options, and more room for innovative delivery models outside the usual administrative maze. A Texas model should focus on portable dollars, direct care, community and charitable support, and stronger incentives for responsible use of resources.

Trust Texans more. Trust Washington less.

Don’t Chase Every Villain of the Week

There is also a growing temptation to fixate on individual middlemen, especially pharmacy benefit managers.

They deserve scrutiny. But they are not the root problem.

PBMs are one manifestation of a third-party payment architecture that distorts incentives across the whole system. If lawmakers regulate one intermediary without fixing the underlying money flow, the dysfunction will simply reappear somewhere else.

That is why policymakers should focus less on chasing symptoms and more on repairing the structure itself. Fix the incentives. Fix the payment distortions. Fix the barriers to direct exchange. A lot of the middleman pathology shrinks once patients and doctors regain more control.

This Is Economic and Moral

At bottom, this is not just an economic issue. It is a moral one.

Patients are not billing codes. Doctors are not paper-pushers. Families should not need a bureaucratic decoder ring just to get basic care. A decent health system should be built on trust, choice, responsibility, useful transparency, and accountability grounded in voluntary exchange.

That is why the Empower Patients Initiative matters. It is not just another policy package. It is a shift in orientation away from bureaucratic control and back toward a system that treats people like adults.

That is how we improve access.

That is how we lower costs.

That is how we get better outcomes.

That is how we let people prosper.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Shift control to patients.

Expand direct primary care, patient-controlled accounts, cash-pay competition, and other models that reconnect people to doctors and prices, as outlined in the Empower Patients Initiative.

2. Fix incentives, not symptoms.

Reduce mandates, unwind third-party distortions, and stop propping up bureaucratic structures that separate patients from care, as I argued in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies and Stop Propping Up Obamacare.

3. Use transparency wisely.

Transparency helps only when patients can act on it with real alternatives and more control over their own health care dollars.

Health care reform should start with a simple test:

Does this policy move power from bureaucracies to patients?

If yes, advance it.

If no, reject it.

That is the standard Texas should use.

Thank you for reading, for supporting my work, and for sharing it with others. I’m grateful for the opportunity to keep doing this through Ginn Economic Consulting, helping provide a North Star for policymakers who want sound reforms that actually let people prosper. If you are a policymaker, organization, or media outlet looking to go deeper on these reforms, I am always glad to speak at events, do interviews, join podcasts, and meet with leaders across Texas and the country.
​
You can read more at vanceginn.com, subscribe at vanceginn.substack.com, explore the broader reform framework at EmpowerPatients.info, and get the book Become an Empowered Patient.

Originally published on Substack. 

​Yesterday, I submitted written testimony to the Texas House Select Committee on Health Care Affordability with a straightforward message: stop layering new mandates onto a broken system and start rebuilding health care around patients.

That is the foundation of my work at Ginn Economic Consulting, my recent piece Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies, and the broader Empower Patients Initiative, which I helped advance with Americans for Tax Reform and Dr. Deane Waldman. The same framework is also developed in our re-released book with a different title, Become an Empowered Patient.

The core point is simple: affordable care will not come from empowering more bureaucracies. It will come from empowering patients.

That should be the North Star for Texas policymakers.

Texans do not need another study to know health care is broken. They live it every month through rising premiums, higher deductibles, surprise bills, delayed care, shrinking physician independence, and wages squeezed by employer-sponsored coverage. They see a system with more “coverage” but less affordability, less transparency, and less trust.

That is not a functioning market. It is a heavily distorted system shaped by third-party payment, government favoritism, and bureaucratic control.

Coverage Is Not Care

One of the biggest mistakes in health policy is treating coverage and care as if they are the same thing.

They are not.

A bigger insurance card does not automatically mean better access, lower prices, or stronger outcomes. In practice, the opposite often happens. When patients are disconnected from real prices, doctors are buried in compliance, and payment is routed through layers of insurers and government programs, the system becomes more expensive and less personal at the same time.

That is why serious reform should not begin with “How do we expand bureaucratic coverage?” It should begin with “How do we restore the patient-doctor relationship and let markets work again?”

That is the animating principle of the Empower Patients Initiative: move power away from institutions and back to people.

The Tax Code Helped Create This Mess

One of the most underappreciated drivers of our current system is the federal tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance.

That policy helped push coverage into the workplace, hide the true cost of compensation, reward more expensive plans, and disconnect patients from the actual price of care. It encouraged a world where employers, insurers, and government programs make most of the decisions while patients try to navigate the consequences.

That is one reason I argued in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies and Solving the Healthcare Affordability Crisis that the real problem is not a lack of bureaucratic oversight. It is a system of warped incentives that suppresses price signals, shields payers from accountability, and leaves patients with less control than they should have.

That is not a market failure. It is a policy failure.

Transparency Helps Only If Patients Can Act

There is plenty of discussion right now about price transparency. Good. People should know what care costs.

But transparency alone is not enough.

What price are we talking about? The hospital list price? The negotiated insurer rate? The Medicare reimbursement? The cash price? The patient’s out-of-pocket estimate? Those can be radically different numbers. So if lawmakers simply require more price posting without changing who controls the dollars and the decisions, transparency becomes one more compliance exercise.

Transparency without ownership is noise.

For transparency to matter, patients need the power to act on the information. That means more direct primary care, more cash-pay options, more flexible health savings arrangements, and fewer barriers blocking real alternatives. That is why the Empower Patients Initiative focuses on restoring buyer-seller relationships in health care rather than just adding new reporting requirements to the old system.

The Reform Agenda Texas Should Pursue

If Texas wants to lead, it should stop trying to patch over a broken structure and instead move toward a patient-centered market.

That means expanding direct primary care and direct doctor-patient contracts. It means reducing mandates that drive up premiums. It means pairing catastrophic coverage with patient-controlled accounts. It means removing barriers to entry so more providers can compete. It means protecting independent physicians from regulatory overload. And it means treating transparency as a tool instead of pretending it is the cure.

I have made that case consistently in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies, Solving the Healthcare Affordability Crisis, and Stop Propping Up Obamacare. The common theme is simple: if you keep subsidizing and regulating a broken structure, you get a more expensive version of the same broken structure.

The better answer is more freedom, more competition, and more direct accountability.

Fix Medicaid by Trusting Texans

The same principle applies to Medicaid.

Medicaid is supposed to help vulnerable Texans, but too often it traps them in a system with weak access, low provider participation, and expensive, hospital-centered care. Texas should not define success by how well it processes claims through a bureaucracy. It should define success by whether patients can actually get timely, quality care.

That means pushing for more state flexibility, more patient-centered options, and more room for innovative delivery models outside the usual administrative maze. A Texas model should focus on portable dollars, direct care, community and charitable support, and stronger incentives for responsible use of resources.

Trust Texans more. Trust Washington less.

Don’t Chase Every Villain of the Week

There is also a growing temptation to fixate on individual middlemen, especially pharmacy benefit managers.

They deserve scrutiny. But they are not the root problem.

PBMs are one manifestation of a third-party payment architecture that distorts incentives across the whole system. If lawmakers regulate one intermediary without fixing the underlying money flow, the dysfunction will simply reappear somewhere else.

That is why policymakers should focus less on chasing symptoms and more on repairing the structure itself. Fix the incentives. Fix the payment distortions. Fix the barriers to direct exchange. A lot of the middleman pathology shrinks once patients and doctors regain more control.

This Is Economic and Moral

At bottom, this is not just an economic issue. It is a moral one.

Patients are not billing codes. Doctors are not paper-pushers. Families should not need a bureaucratic decoder ring just to get basic care. A decent health system should be built on trust, choice, responsibility, useful transparency, and accountability grounded in voluntary exchange.

That is why the Empower Patients Initiative matters. It is not just another policy package. It is a shift in orientation away from bureaucratic control and back toward a system that treats people like adults.

That is how we improve access.

That is how we lower costs.

That is how we get better outcomes.

That is how we let people prosper.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Shift control to patients.

Expand direct primary care, patient-controlled accounts, cash-pay competition, and other models that reconnect people to doctors and prices, as outlined in the Empower Patients Initiative.

2. Fix incentives, not symptoms.

Reduce mandates, unwind third-party distortions, and stop propping up bureaucratic structures that separate patients from care, as I argued in Empower Patients, Not Bureaucracies and Stop Propping Up Obamacare.

3. Use transparency wisely.

Transparency helps only when patients can act on it with real alternatives and more control over their own health care dollars.

Health care reform should start with a simple test:

Does this policy move power from bureaucracies to patients?

If yes, advance it.

If no, reject it.

That is the standard Texas should use.

Originally published at The Center Square. 

Civil court system abuse is rampant. Trial attorneys routinely file numerous, often unsupportable claims across a range of jurisdictions, abusing the multidistrict litigation process designed to streamline complex federal cases to target and overwhelm American companies. 

An estimated 70% of federal cases now involve such litigation and target a wide range of critical industries, from pharmaceutical companies to American fire-truck manufacturers to healthcare. 

For a while, Texas looked like it had solved its lawsuit problem. In 2003, lawmakers passed House Bill 4, and voters approved Proposition 12, putting limits on abusive medical liability claims and restoring some sanity to a system that had spun badly out of control. 

The payoff was real. Liability premiums for physicians fell sharply, Texas was later removed from the medical liability crisis list, and the old doctor-flight problem eased. Reform worked. But Texas never finished the job.

What lawmakers fixed in medical malpractice, the broader litigation industry adapted around. Last session, Senate Bill 30 gave lawmakers an opportunity to narrow the use of inflated medical charges in civil cases. However, the broader reform push stalled and never became law. 

Today, Texas is once again facing a lawsuit problem – this time with a new wave of nuclear verdicts, inflated damage models, aggressive venue tactics, and growing pressure from outside litigation financing. 

That failure matters because the costs are no longer theoretical. Texas tort costs reached nearly $38 billion in 2022, or about $4,594 per household, and those costs grew at a 9.7 percent annual rate from 2016 to 2022 and continue to grow faster than both inflation and the broader economy. 

A separate Texas estimate on the broader economic drag found excessive tort litigation is associated with about $60.8 billion in lost gross state product and nearly 509,000 jobs. That is not a courthouse sideshow. That is a major tax on growth, jobs and affordability.

While the magnitude may be different, the direction is hard to deny: lawsuit abuse hits Texas businesses and consumers hard. When lawsuits become leverage rather than justice, the costs do not stay in the courtroom. They show up in higher insurance premiums, more defensive business practices, delayed expansion, and higher prices for families. 

The hidden tax from lawsuit abuse is felt in grocery trips, medical bills, housing costs, and insurance premiums. In a state built on enterprise and risk-taking, that kind of drag matters. It means fewer resources for hiring, investing, innovating and serving customers. 

Small businesses already hit hard by the costs of torts are now increasingly forced to pool together just to manage insurance costs created by that liability. 

Texas already proved two decades ago that reform can work. But instead of building on that success, it let too much of the rest grow back. 

Plaintiffs’ lawyers got more creative. Damage claims got more inflated. Large verdicts became more common. And lawmakers acted as if the problem had been solved because one piece of it had been fixed in 2003. It had not.

None of this is an argument against legitimate claims. A sound tort system is essential to a free society. People who are genuinely harmed should be able to recover damages. Businesses that act negligently should be held accountable. 

But a legal system meant to deliver justice should not become a vehicle for wealth transfer, inflated billing, and economic distortion. When weak claims survive too long, when exaggerated damages become standard practice, and when litigation turns into a business model, everyone else pays.

Texas needs to remember what made reform work in the first place: fairness, predictability and clear limits that protect real victims without turning the legal system into a jackpot game. The state once led on this issue. Now it is drifting, and Texans are footing the bill.

That drift is costing families real money, hurting employers, and weakening one of the biggest advantages Texas has long had over other states: a better climate for working, investing, building and prospering.

The figure below shows how the growth in Texas’ biennial budget was cut by 13.3% from 12% to 10.4% after the creation of the Conservative Texas Budget in 2014, which first influenced the 2015 Legislature when crafting the 2016-17 budget, along with changes in the state’s governor (Gov. Greg Abbott), lieutenant governor (Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick), and some legislators. ​The 10.4% average growth rate of biennial appropriations since 2016 was above the 7.9% biennial average rate of population growth plus inflation, which was driven substantially higher after the latest 2024-25 budget, which was well above this key metric (previously, the biennial budget growth was 5.2% compared with 9.3% in the rate of population growth plus inflation). ​

Making matters worse, the growth of the budget has increased substantially faster than population growth plus inflation in Texas since Republicans gained their first trifecta in control of the Governor's mansion, Senate, and House in 2003. Their first budget was in 2004-05, which the work of House Appropriations Chairman Talmadge Heflin (one of my wonderful mentors) helped address by closing a budget shortfall without raising taxes through spending cuts and restraint. The figure above highlights how the budget has grown nearly 30% faster than the average taxpayer's ability to pay for it over this period. The figure above illustrates how these excesses have accumulated over time, resulting in massive spending and substantial tax burdens on Texans. There is more work to do!​

Sustainable Budget Work With Other States, ATR, and CFGF

When I returned to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in May 2020, I sought to regain a sense of freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic and be closer to family. I started an effort to work on this sound budgeting approach with other state think tanks. This led me to work with many fantastic people who are trying to restrain government spending at the state, local, and federal levels. Here are my latest data on the federal and state budgets as part of American for Tax Reform's Sustainable Budget Project and a recent publication by the Club for Growth Foundation.

​From 2016 to 2025, the following happened:

Federal spending skyrocketed 81.9% to $7.0 trillion in 2025, which is two and a half times faster than the 32.4% increase in population growth plus inflation.

• If Congress had restrained spending to this sustainable growth rate:
  • The federal government would’ve spent $1.9 trillion less in 2025.
    
  • The national debt would’ve increased by less, with a $2.7 trillion increase instead of $15.6 trillion.
    
  • Cumulative debt since 2006 would have risen by less, by $4.2 trillion rather than $23.2 trillion.
• That’s trillions of dollars that could’ve stayed in people’s pockets or been invested in future prosperity, not siphoned off to fund bloated bureaucracies and waste.

Aggregate state spending, by the 50 state governments, excluding funds received from the federal government, increased by 65.8% during that decade to $2.1 trillion. 

• Had states’ spending grown by the maximum rate of 32.4% in population growth plus inflation from 2016 to 2025, they:
  
  • Would have spent $419 billion less in 2024.
    
  • Would have had cumulative spending be $1.8 trillion less over that decade, leaving more money in people’s pockets.​

Result: When combining federal and state overspending, Americans lost over $3.1 trillion in 2025 and more than $20.8 trillion in excess taxes and debt across the decade.

Affordability is under pressure across the U.S.—and the root causes are increasingly tied to policy choices.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we examine how persistent inflation, excessive federal spending, weak state tax reform, regulatory burdens, and supply constraints are driving higher costs and limiting opportunity for families and businesses.

The stakes are clear: when government expands and markets are distorted, the result is higher prices, reduced investment, and slower economic growth.

This episode provides a full economic health check—from CPI and jobs data to federal budgeting, property taxes, banking regulation, lawsuit costs, and emerging risks to future growth like data center restrictions.

The payoff is a roadmap for improving affordability: restore fiscal discipline, remove barriers to supply, and allow markets to allocate resources more efficiently.

🎧 Watch the full episode at the link above. 
📖 Read the full show notes: https://vanceginn.substack.com/p/ca1a37b7-7c59-4410-ba95-faa5c8dc2eb0

Subscribe, share, and explore more at vanceginn.com to stay informed and engaged.

Originally published on Substack. 

Texas policymakers have a critical policy choice. The Texas House State Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday, April 9, at 10 am CT, is set to discuss data centers and their influence on the state.
​
This hearing is not just about electricity or water demand. It is about whether Texas will remain competitive in the industries shaping the future, including AI, cloud computing, logistics, finance, and the digital infrastructure behind daily life.

The committee’s own charge recognizes the links between data centers, economic growth, workforce needs, national security, regulatory reform, and grid reliability. The best way to secure these issues for Texans is to allow markets to work rather than top-down, big-government policies, such as moratoria, heavy regulation, taxes, government spending, and similar approaches. Stop legislating out of fear; start thinking about first principles.

Start With First Principles

Data centers are not some niche luxury for a few tech firms. They are part of the backbone of modern commerce and communication. They help power GPS, cloud services, online banking, streaming, AI tools, and real-time business operations.

They are being built in many states, with Virginia leading the way in the number of data centers in operation or under construction. Texas is close behind Virginia in second place for the number of those data centers, but is first when including the announced data center builds.

Check out this graphic provided by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

The real question is not whether Texas should want data centers. Of course it should. The real question is whether Texas will build the energy and water systems needed to support growth or blame demand for exposing policy failures.
​
I’ve argued before that Texas should compete for data center investment instead of regulating it away; policymakers should stop blaming data centers for failures rooted in bad utility policy; anti-innovation energy policy can short-circuit America’s future; and intervention often backfires when innovation is at stake.

Those are not separate arguments. They are the same argument from different angles: when the government blocks supply, prosperity suffers.

The Problem Is Not Demand

Let’s grant critics their best point. Data centers use electricity. Some use water. Large new facilities require planning. But that still does not make data centers the problem.

A growing economy uses more resources. That is what growth looks like. The policy issue is whether the market is free to internalize costs spontaneously and whether supply can expand. The committee itself is studying how SB 6 (bad electricity bill passed in the 2025 regular session), ERCOT’s large-load process, and co-located resources can support resilience and reliability.

Grid strain is not proof that data centers are bad. It is often proof that policy has constrained supply.

What Electricity Critics Miss

The loudest arguments against data centers usually rely on gross electricity numbers. Those numbers sound scary, but they do not tell the whole story.

What matters is the net burden on the system and whether firms can solve problems through markets. Data centers can use private contracts, co-located generation, backup systems, and flexible load strategies. And the claim that data centers automatically drive up power prices is weaker than many assume.

A recent Committee to Unleash Prosperity summary of Institute for Energy Research findings argues that rising electricity demand can spread high fixed grid costs across more kilowatt-hours, helping moderate per-unit price pressures, while state policy plays a larger role in price differences.

That does not mean costs don’t matter. It means the answer is to allow large users to bear the costs they create through market prices and allow supply to expand. That is a serious market-based answer. Blanket restrictions or heavy regulation are not.

What Water Critics Miss

Water criticism often gets even sloppier. Opponents cite headline numbers as if every facility used the most water-intensive setup under worst-case conditions. But operating reality is more nuanced.

Many facilities can reduce water use through more efficient cooling technologies, including closed-loop systems and other innovations that sharply reduce ongoing water needs. And where water is genuinely scarce, the answer is not panic from Austin. The answer is to let pricing, contracts, property rights, reuse, and innovation allow firms to internalize those costs.
That is how markets should work.

Don’t Copy Scarcity States

Texas should not import the politics of decline from states now moving toward moratoria, tighter restrictions, and anti-data-center activism. Those policies do not stop digital demand. They just move jobs, capital, tax base, and strategic advantages elsewhere. Texas became an economic powerhouse by building, not by panicking.

Three Points for Policymakers

1. Do not confuse demand with danger. Data centers are a sign of growth, productivity, and modern infrastructure needs.
2. Allow cost internalization through market prices, not regulation, taxes, or growth suppression. When power or water is scarce, structural rules mean firms bear those costs through prices, contracts, and technology rather than broad political restrictions.
3. Choose abundance over barriers. Faster permitting, more generation, better water pricing through privatization with clear property rights, and more private infrastructure solutions are better answers. As I’ve argued in my work on utility reform and innovation over intervention, the durable answer is more supply, not fear or scapegoating.

Speak Up

The committee may be avoiding oral public testimony, as only invited testimony is allowed, but Texans can still be heard in writing. The hearing notice states that electronic public comments are open to Texas residents until the hearing adjourns.
Please submit a public comment here by noon CT on Thursday, April 9, and tell lawmakers to support data centers, reject anti-growth restrictions, and focus instead on energy and water abundance.

Texas can either build the infrastructure of the future or watch other states do it instead. Texas must build for national, economic, and personal security.

Originally published on Substack. 

Texas families just made the case for school choice better than any politician, think tank, or activist ever could.

The first year of Texas Education Freedom Accounts (think ESAs) drew 274,310 applications by the March 31 deadline. That is not a niche movement or a messaging win, that is a market signal.

Families across Texas are telling lawmakers, loudly and clearly, that they want more control over their children’s education. That should be celebrated. Texas finally cracked the government-school monopoly.

But let’s not pretend the work is finished.

Demand Is Real

This application surge proves what some of us have been saying for years: school choice is real, popular, and badly needed. It also proves something else. TEFA was never truly universal school choice.

From the beginning, I have argued that the right standard is all students, all money, all options. Texas has 6.3 million school-age kids. A truly universal model would let funding follow every child to the best-fit education options, whether that is a district school, charter school, private school, microschool, tutoring, therapies, or homeschooling support. That is the real goal.

TEFA does not get us there yet.

The state appropriated $1 billion for the first year. Based on the official award structure, that likely funds only about 90,000 students, and possibly fewer depending on how many students receive larger disability awards.

Private-school students can receive $10,474, homeschool students receive $2,000, and students with disabilities can receive up to $30,000.

So yes, 274,310 applications is huge. But if the state can fund only around 90,000 spots, then the program reaches only about 1.4 percent of Texas’s 6.3 million school-age kids.

That is not universal choice. That is rationed choice.

The Tiers Tell the Story

The new details make the point even more clearly.

Applications are prioritized through a need- and income-based lottery. The first tier is low- and middle-income students with disabilities. The second tier is low-income families. The third tier is middle-income families. The fourth tier is families above 500 percent of the federal poverty line, and they are limited to just 20 percent of total program funding.

According to the Comptroller’s reported breakdown, nearly three-fourths of applicants are from low- or middle-income families. Nearly 30,000 applicants qualify for the first priority tier, and another 79,000 qualify for the second.

In other words, the full $1 billion will likely be exhausted just serving the first two tiers.

That means the state created a program with overwhelming demand and then funded it so narrowly that most applicants will not receive an account in year one.

Again, that does not weaken the case for school choice. It strengthens it.

Hold Your Ground

For months, too many people acted as if Texas had already reached the gold standard just because it finally passed something. It had not. I argued that partial reforms still leave millions of students behind and that universality, not symbolism, is the real test.

That is exactly what we are seeing now.

Families did not just “like” TEFA. They overwhelmed it. They did not treat it like a boutique side program. They treated it like what it should become: a real alternative to a government-school monopoly that has been overfunded and underperforming for too long.

Texas lawmakers should stop reading this as proof they nailed it. They should read it as proof they underbuilt it.

The Better Model

And here is the bigger point.

A truly universal TEFA could still be cheaper than what Texas already spends propping up the monopoly system.

At a simple top-line comparison, a universal TEFA funded at $12,000 per student for all 6.3 million school-age children would cost $75.6 billion per year. Compare that with the $100 billion-plus Texas spends across public education annually for about 5.5 million government-school students, or roughly $19,000 per student on a broad all-in basis.

That means Texas could move toward a truly universal model, fund every child, expand real competition, and still potentially save at least $25 billion per year compared with the current bloated monopoly system.

And those savings should not disappear into more bureaucracy. They must be used to compress school district property tax rates to zero.

That is a much better path than continuing to pour more money into a government-school monopoly while barely increasing school choice at the margins.

Finish The Job

The lesson from this first year is not complicated. Texas started school choice. Good. Now finish it.

Move from capped choice to truly universal choice. Let funding follow the child, not the system. Stop treating educational freedom as a rationed carveout. Allow a real market where families choose, providers compete, and schools have to earn trust instead of relying on geography and politics.

That is how you get innovation, accountability, and customization. And that is how you stop feeding a monopoly that has had decades and billions of dollars to prove itself.

The demand is here. The families are ready. The waitlist proves it. Now lawmakers should catch up.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Treat TEFA as proof of demand, not proof of completion.

More than 274,000 applications show Texas families want far more educational freedom than lawmakers funded.

2. Move from capped choice to universal choice.

A program that likely funds only about 90,000 students out of 6.3 million school-age kids is a foothold, not a finish line.
3. Use universal choice to improve education and lower taxes.

A broader TEFA model could cost less than the current monopoly system and help create a path toward compressing school district property tax rates to zero.

The real victory is still ahead: a truly universal education market in the largest red state in America.

From a classical liberal perspective, there is good here. There is bad here. And there is some ugly here, too.
​
The Good

Some of the best parts of these charges show lawmakers understand, at least in places, that Texas works best when government protects property rights, improves transparency, and lets markets work.

The Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee was told to evaluate whether ERCOT remains a “robust energy-only market,” review how 765-kv transmission lines affect landowners, and study how data-center growth is affecting the grid, water, and communities.

The House also has useful oversight angles, including government transparency, public information, and accountability through its new Governmental Oversight Committee.

Those are real opportunities to defend property rights and demand better signals from government.

There is also real promise in the Senate’s attention to financial technology, blockchain, cryptocurrency, AI, and autonomous systems. Texas should want to be the place where innovation is built and scaled, not preemptively strangled by fear.

And on health care, both chambers are at least asking better questions than usual. The Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee specifically mentions Health Savings Accounts and more flexible plan offerings, while the House’s Health Care Affordability Committee is looking at cost drivers, financing models, competition, transparency, and barriers facing employers. That points in the direction of my Empower Patients approach: more control for patients, more flexibility, more price visibility, and less bureaucratic command-and-control.

The Bad

The bad is where Texas keeps falling back into the same political trap: targeted relief instead of neutral reform without mention of eliminating property taxes.

The Senate’s Local Government Committee is examining bigger homestead exemptions, lowering the age for the senior tax ceiling, and reducing taxes for new homeowners.

The House’s Ways and Means Committee is likewise studying how to build on prior property-tax relief through more compression and bigger homestead exemptions.

Compression is the right path. Homestead carveouts are not.

Texas should keep compressing school district tax rates with surpluses until those rates go to zero. That is the broad, neutral way to provide relief.

By contrast, homestead exemptions pick winners and losers. They reward one class of property owner, shift burdens onto others, and make the tax code less neutral and less honest. I’ve argued before that these carveouts are distortions, not reforms. The state should not pretend selective relief is the same thing as fixing the system.

A classical liberal tax policy treats people equally. It does not hand out special treatment to politically favored categories and call that fairness.

The same issue shows up in education. The Senate deserves credit for calling school choice a success and for noting the enormous demand, with more than 250,000 applications tied to the rollout of Senate Bill 2.

Good. Expand it. But do not turn around and use declining district enrollment as an excuse to keep feeding the government-school monopoly with more money, more staffing layers, and more “right-sizing” theater while school choice inches forward at the margins.

Texas needs more students funded in the schools or learning models that work for them, not another round of backfilling a monopoly that is already losing families.

The Ugly

The ugly is where the state still wants to allocate capital, absorb federal dependency, and wander into areas it should approach with much more humility.

The House Appropriations Committee is monitoring major spending tied to homestead and business personal property exemptions, cyber command, and nuclear offices.

Elsewhere, House committees are studying how to maximize federal funding for rural health transformation and aviation infrastructure. That may sound pragmatic, but Texas should be moving away from dependence on an increasingly insolvent federal government, not building a budget model that assumes more Washington money will always be there.

If federal funds prop up too much of the state budget, then Texas is importing federal fiscal dysfunction into its own house. That is backward.

Texas should reduce government spending then pass a strong state and local spending limit. The real budget problem is not that taxpayers are undertaxed. It is that government overspends.

My work on Responsible State Budgets Across the U.S. makes the point clearly: spending growth should be capped at population growth plus inflation and treated as a ceiling, not a target. That would discipline the state, pressure local governments to live within a sustainable path, and create the fiscal space to keep compressing property tax rates downward over time.

And Texas should stay out of trying to become a digital parent. The House Public Health Committee is studying social media’s impact on youth well-being.

Fine. Study it. But Texas should be very careful before converting concern into government micromanagement of parenting, online behavior, or speech. Parents need tools, transparency, and authority. They do not need the state acting like the internet’s hall monitor.

One more point: Texas should consider its excessive lawsuit environment. The House is studying governmental immunity and the Texas Tort Claims Act, and that is worth reviewing carefully. But the larger priority should be neutral rules, transparent government, and real accountability, not another round of using legal reform as a substitute for broader structural reform.

What Texas Should Do

Texas should take the good and build on it. Protect property rights. Keep innovation open. Empower patients. Expand school choice substantially. Demand transparency from government. Reduce dependence on federal money. And put a real state and local spending limit in place.

It should reject the bad and the ugly. No more picking winners and losers through homestead exemptions and other carveouts. No more pretending selective favors are neutral policy. No more feeding a school monopoly while choice grows too slowly. No more drifting into federal dependency. And no more state temptation to regulate parenting by proxy.

Texas can lead. But only if it remembers that prosperity comes from neutral rules, strong property rights, patient choice, educational freedom, and disciplined government — not from political favoritism dressed up as reform.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Overspending is the core state-and-local problem.
Adopt a real spending limit tied to population growth plus inflation and treat it as a ceiling, not a target.

2. Compression beats carveouts.
Use surpluses to keep compressing school district tax rates toward zero, instead of expanding homestead exemptions that pick winners and losers.

3. Freedom beats favoritism.
Expand school choice meaningfully, empower patients, reduce dependence on federal funds, and resist the urge to micromanage families or allocate benefits to favored industries.