Media Hit

Fans of the just-passed permanent Internet Tax Fairness Act (PITFA), which bans taxes on Internet servcie, were weighing in Thursday (Feb. 11), including warning about the Internet sale tax legislation whose future consideration was a tradeoff for that passage.

IPI's Dr. Merrill Matthews says repealing the mandate would be good for the economy and the environment. “Ending the Renewable Fuel Standard would immediately and dramatically increase the demand for oil, stabilize energy markets, boost the economy, and likely reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.”

Tom Giovanetti, president of the freedom-oriented IPI, recently wrote “Now that Texas Republican Kevin Brady chairs the Ways & Means Committee, he will have more to say about the details of any eventual tax reform than will the future president. So what really matters is Brady’s priorities…and they are encouraging”.

"If either [Trump or Cruz] wins the White House, it’s the EPA's, not the human race's, existence that will be threatened,” IPI's Merrill Matthews said.

Our success in effectively treating cancer is probably going to come from the private sector not the government, Dr. Merrill Matthews reminds us.

“The better hope for ending the federal power grab may come from the states, which have found lots of new reasons to embrace the Constitution’s federalism and challenge federal overreach,” said IPI's Merrill Matthews.

Bartlett Cleland of the Institute for Policy Innovation writes: The VAT is attractive to those who…[w]ant to grow government… Whether or not those proposing such taxes are interested in expanding the scope of government is almost irrelevant, because once the tools for such expansion are in place they can be used by future politicians to grow government subtly.  Similarly, whether a tax is labeled as a VAT or not is also irrelevant if the function is the same—for example by not allowing companies to deduct wages.

The Renewable Fuel Standard has been a boon to corn growers but hardly anyone else, writes Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas.

The repeated congressional attempts to repeal the ACA reflect the law's unpopularity, said IPI's Merrill Matthews. About 40% approve and 52% disapprove of the ACA, according to a December CBS News poll. "It's about premiums and high deductibles. If people had seen premiums going down, you would see widespread support for Obamacare. But, what you do have is something that has created turmoil in the market and a huge amount of frustration with people trying to get affordable coverage."

As IPI’s Merrill Matthews wrote for the Wall Street Journal, ethanol mandates increase the cost of driving, adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than do fossil fuels, and was crafted at a time when the junk science of “peak oil” was scaring entrepreneurial Americans into developing hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology that has transformed the U.S. into one of the world’s largest energy producers. That Cruz could back this policy and remain at the top of the polls in the Hawkeye State suggested that the fever associated with addiction to federal subsidies was breaking.