Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.
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Vaccine Mandates Aren’t Biden’s Only Job-Killing Scheme – The U.S. faces a daunting array of economic challenges—inflation, supply disruptions, and worker shortages among them. Some of those are the direct result of the pandemic. Others are the result of the often frantic and poorly conceived government responses to it. Extended lockdowns, school closures, and other restrictions created an economic shock. The government responded to that shock with an untested array of monetary and fiscal interventions that were enormous in scope and whose unintended consequences are only now becoming evident. Labor shortages are among those consequences. The Biden administration should work to eliminate those shortages, not worsen them. Heritage expert: Doug Badger

Vote-By-Mail: Most Voters Think It Will Cause More Cheating – The purpose of in-person voting, which is the way we have voted since the beginning of the country is because, most importantly, you are filling out your ballot. You're doing it under the supervision of election officials and the observation of poll watchers so that you can ensure that no one is pressuring or coercing you in the polling place to vote a particular way, and then you yourself are putting the ballot in the ballot box. All of that is not happening when you vote by mail. The electioneering laws, for example -- which prohibit candidates from electioneering anywhere inside or close to a polling place -- don't apply to people's homes. So that means that party activists, campaign staffers, political guns for hire can show up at your home and pressure you to vote a particular way or coerce you to vote a particular way. We see that in proven absentee ballot fraud cases. Additionally, you are putting your ballot, after you've completed it, into the mail, hoping that the Postal Service will deliver it in time. Heritage expert: Hans von Spakovsky

‘Build Back Better’ Plan Would Make Medicaid Bigger With Less Flexibility, Accountability – Using Medicaid to solve the long-term care challenges is shortsighted and poorly targeted. Expanding government’s role in delivery of long-term care services drives out private options and stretches an already overstretched safety net aimed at the poor. Rather than expand Medicaid’s role in long-term care, Congress should promote private alternatives, preserve the safety net for those who already depend on it, and reduce long-term dependence on Medicaid. The Build Back Better plan also would undermine state flexibility by imposing new federal requirements on the states. Under Medicaid, the federal government sets out basic rules and the states have significant authority to design their own programs within those parameters. The spending bill would change the status of some populations and services from optional to mandatory. Rather than giving states the ability to tailor programs to meet their unique demands and needs, this proposal would chip away at state flexibility in favor of federal eligibility and benefit mandates. Heritage expert: Nina Schaefer