Are Americans better off today than they were before Barack Obama was elected to office? Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and economist John Lott, Jr. argue in "Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future" that spending increases, mounting debt, new regulations and higher tax rates answer this question with a resounding “no.”

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With state budgets under considerable strain, the time has come for the federal government to take a hard look at the capacities of state education agencies to fulfill progressive education mandates.

As part of the AEI project Beyond "Repeal and Replace," health industry analyst Stephen T. Parente questions whether The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is likely to overcome longstanding economic disincentives to the use of electronic health records.

So the stimulus--the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA--is starting to wind down. What are the results?

In less than twenty-five years, government “affordable housing” and other housing policies have turned a healthy market into a financial ruin. Until Fannie and Freddie’s market dominance and the government’s role in the housing finance system are substantially reduced or eliminated, the United States will continue to have an inferior and unstable housing market.

Democratic districts received a lot more stimulus money than Republican districts and the districts of Democrats who were reelected in 2010 received even more money than districts of Democrats who were not. These patterns likely exist because more-powerful Democrats were able to capture more pork, and because pork spending helped candidates get reelected.

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal government will spend an unprecedented amount of money on education--nearly $100 billion. Will this money lead to meaningful reform of our K-12 public education system?