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Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #1445
02/05/2026
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1) Mississippi Republicans Whiff on School Choice

Our education freedom alliance with ALEC has been on a roll with school choice sweeping through red states across the country.

We hit a bump in the road earlier this week when the Mississippi Senate Republicans rejected an ambitious voucher proposal that would have offered $12,000 to low income students (and more enrollees in future years), and up to $7,000 to attend a private or religious school.

By killing the bill, Republicans handed a big win to the state's teachers unions at the expense of disadvantaged children - many of whom are black.

Mississippi has made big gains in reading, leaping to 9th in the country by adopting reforms such as charter school and phonics. Math scores have improved too.

But we know from other states that creating school choice and competition would lead to further gains in one of the nation's poorest states.

GOP Governor Tate Reeves and GOP House Speaker Jason White vowed to make school choice the centerpiece of their 2026 legislative priorities. Unfortunately, the GOP-majority State Senate Education Committee killed the bill by voice vote after less than 90 seconds of discussion.

GOP Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, declared that choice is "not on the table" in Mississippi and worked to kill it. God forbid that Delbert should ever become governor.

Governor Reeves blasted Hosemann on X in one of the harshest tongue lashings of a colleague you will ever hear:
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Reeves should call for a special session to force a roll call vote in the State Senate. Time to see who really cares about children.

Btw, the unions are against the vouchers, but Republican voters are not. A poll conducted by Cygnal ([link removed]) last month found that 70% of GOP primary voters would support a pro-school-choice candidate, while only 15% would support one opposed to school choice.
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2) Republicans Are Even Losing on Taxes

We aren't trying to be Debbie Downers, but this New York Post headline is nerve wracking if you're a Republican:
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Democrats lead Republicans by a 52% to 46% margin in who voters intend to vote for in November. That's the highest margin ever in the Fox News poll.

Democrats are crushing Republicans on affordability by 14 points, health care by 21 points, helping the middle class by 14 points. But what's really depressing is the Republicans even trail Democrats slightly on taxes.

This is like Cher losing to Sonny on who's taller.

Time to sell the Big Beautiful Tax Bill to the voters. Everyone should know that the average tax bill would be about $2,000 higher this year without that bill - which every Democrat voted against.
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3) The Terrible 10 States on Taxes (All of Them Are Blue)

Here's the latest ranking from the Tax Foundation on economic competitiveness of their taxing system. We can’t help noting that taxes are headed up in 2026 in the three already-heaviest taxed states.
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4) More Evidence That Democratic Politicians Are Killing the American Dream

Realtor.com has just published research measuring how long it would take in and around major cities to afford a down payment on the median-priced house. They compared the nation's 50 largest housing markets (metropolitan areas).

Overall, the median-income household would need to save at the annual household savings rate of 5.1% for about seven years to come up with the down payment.

Lo, the finding that comes crashing through is that local housing and land use regulations make buying a home for young families in and around blue cities hopelessly unaffordable.

It would take a young person about 36 years to save enough money to afford the down payment on a house in the San Francisco metro area. This is approximately seven times the overall average. Also above 20 years are San Jose (36) , Los Angeles (34), San Diego (30), and Boston, Seattle, and New York (all 23). Almost all blue metros!

Then look at the inexpensive markets, almost all in red states. The typical household in metro San Antonio would require 1.3 years of savings to afford a down payment on the median-priced house. Virginia Beach (Norfolk) ranked second, at 2 years, followed by Memphis at 2.5, Houston at 3.5, with Birmingham and Jacksonville at 4.2. Eight other metros are under 6 years: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Louisville, and Orlando.

These high costs of buying a house in blue cities and states are especially remarkable, because as we've shown scores of times on these pages, millions of people are moving out of blue states. But leftist urban planners keep raising the cost of buying a home even when demand is falling.

Leftist politicians are killing the American dream of home ownership.

While the public policy discussion on housing affordability has focused on the relationship between prices and income, these data reveal that high down payments may be an even greater barrier to achieving the American Dream of homeownership.
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5) Balancing the Budget Is Really SO Easy

This video interview of Milton Friedman from the Hoover Institute is one of the best explanations of how to cut government spending. It's worth watching. He would abolish half the federal agencies. We need to get every pretend "fiscal conservative" to watch it as well.
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6) How Politicians Perceive You
A cartoon from Randy Glasbergen showing a man in therapy with the caption, "Of course you have a purpose in life. You pay taxes, don't you?."

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