Senator Elizabeth Warren wants ordinary taxpayers pushed into an IRS-run tax prep system, but when her own taxes got complicated, she hired a CPA. That choice tells taxpayers plenty about why independent tax help still has value. Fox News reported that Warren did not use Direct File, the IRS-run tax filing system she spent years promoting, when it became available in Massachusetts. Her publicly released tax return showed that she used a private accountant instead. Fox also re

Large “nonprofit” hospital systems have spent years using tax preferences, payment rules, and market power to enrich themselves while patients and taxpayers carry the cost. Congress is finally taking a serious look at how that system works, and the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee is right to put hospital costs under the microscope. A new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget shows how much money is on the table. The options include reforms that coul

SNAP enrollment is finally moving in the right direction. A new analysis from Jack Salmon at The Unseen and The Unsaid finds that participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fell by nearly 4.3 million people between January 2025 and January 2026, with roughly 3.5 million of that decline occurring after Congress passed and President Trump signed H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” This is good news for taxpayers and for the program itself because SNAP

It is wrong when one part of the business sector uses government power to enrich itself and mug its competitors. It is even worse when that effort is sold as a plan to protect ordinary people. The “Main Street Depositor Protection Act,” S. 4198, fits that pattern. The bill sounds like it protects small businesses, but it would expand government-backed deposit insurance, weaken market discipline, and let smaller banks shift the cost of their preferred subsidy onto larger compe

New York City’s budget mess is quickly becoming a warning to every small and family-owned business in the country. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are pressing Albany to cut the New York City Pass-Through Entity Tax credit from 100 percent to 75 percent. They are presenting the plan as a way to raise new revenue from high earners while the city faces a budget crisis. The political sales pitch is familiar, but the target is far broader than the slogan

The fastest way to make a credit card useless is to let Washington decide who deserves one. A new Committee to Unleash Prosperity analysis reinforces the warning CFE has already made: capping credit card interest rates would hurt the same consumers politicians claim to protect. Supporters may call it relief, but a government cap would push millions of Americans out of the credit market, shrink credit lines, weaken rewards programs, and leave families with fewer safe options w

Hospital giants went before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and showed why Washington’s health care affordability debate should start with the hospital industry. The system pays hospitals more, taxes many of them less, shields them from competition, and then asks patients and taxpayers to cover the bill. The hearing featured CEOs from some of the nation’s largest health systems, including major for-profit and tax-exempt hospital chains. Under questioning from Ways and

Health care fraud is not a paperwork problem. It is a taxpayer rip-off that drains money from patients who need care, providers who follow the rules, and workers who fund the system. At Paragon Health Institute’s National Press Club event, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz laid out the scale of the challenge facing federal health programs. Dr. Oz estimated health care fraud at about $100 billion per year and warned that fraud in Medicare,

The Labor Department just delivered a major win for 401(k) workers, retirees, and Main Street investors. Under the guidance, proxy advisory firms can be treated as fiduciaries under ERISA when they exercise control over shareholder voting rights or provide paid advice to retirement plans about how to vote. That means these firms cannot use other people’s retirement money to push ESG, DEI, or other political agendas. They must act for the financial benefit of workers and retir