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Nearing the Goal Line

What To Know: Texas leaders say property tax reform is within reach.

“Showing their usual united front, the state’s “Big Three” political leaders on Friday tried to remake their case for why the Texas Legislature should deliver on long-term, ongoing property tax relief before the session wraps up this month,” the Texas Tribune reports. ([link removed] ) “…The three reaffirmed their commitment to a proposal that would increase the state sales tax one percentage point, raising about $5 billion per year to lower school district tax rates — which many have seen as a long shot from the start, with lawmakers from both parties skeptical about a sales tax hike.”

The TPPF Take: Property tax reform must be paired with spending restraint; otherwise, relief will only be temporary.

“The good news is that there is still time to fix the budget and put Texas back under spending limits,” says TPPF’s Vance Ginn. “Fiscal responsibility is what has made Texas the economic envy of the nation. Let’s not mess that up with fiscal irresponsibility.”

For more on Texas’ success and tax reform, click here. ([link removed] )

Do The Right Thing

What To Know: The Trump administration is now calling on an appeals court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act.

“The arguments came in a legal brief the Justice Department filed with the New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing a ruling from last December that invalidated all of the ACA,” the Wall Street Journal reports. ([link removed] ) “That decision, by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee based in Texas, came in litigation brought by a group of Republican-led states challenging the law. At earlier stages of the case, the Trump-era Justice Department argued against several central provisions of the ACA, but it didn’t ask the court to strike down the whole law.”

The TPPF Take: Texas Public Policy Foundation attorneys argued that case on behalf of individual plaintiffs.

“The Affordable Care Act is clearly unconstitutional, by the Supreme Court’s own reasoning,” says TPPF’s Rob Henneke. “And it continues to hurt Americans by driving up insurance premiums and deductibles, making health care unaffordable for many families. The Fifth Circuit should recognize this in its ruling.”

For more on the ACA, click here. ([link removed] )

Grade Inflation

What To Know: Colleges and universities are graduating the Class of 2019 this month. But the degrees they’re handing out might not mean much.

“A much bigger and wider scandal rages on college campuses these days than rich parents’ bribing schools to admit their kids: grade inflation, which overstates academic achievement and misleads employers when these kids graduate,” writes Robert Trowbridge in The Hill. ([link removed] ) “…The prospective employer will not know which schools inflate grades and which do not. And the ones that do are not about to stop.”

The TPPF Take: There’s a way to address grade inflation, by adding context to grades.

“The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, decided to include with each student’s grade the average grade in the class,” says TPPF’s Tom Lindsay. “So a student might earn an A, and the transcript would also reflect that the average for the class was a B-. It’s something Dartmouth and Columbia have both done. But UNC has yet to put its policy into practice. That’s disappointing.”

For more on grade inflation, click here. ([link removed] )

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