Our research shows that competitive bidding—a key feature of the Wyden-Ryan plan—could save Medicare $339 billion over ten years while maintaining basic benefits and without raising taxes. Crucially, the elderly would not be exposed to the risk of higher health care costs, as in approaches that would set fixed voucher payments toward the purchase of medical insurance.

In the most recent Education Outlook, AEI scholar Rick Hess and Taryn Hochleitner explain how the inflation of college rankings contributes to a false sense of exclusivity and rising tuitions.

The coming cycle is well worth our attention, not because of the results but because of the political, social and economic contexts in which these elections are going to take place. This cycle is quite different from the three preceding ones, in 2000, 2004 and 2008. And therefore, what might happen after the election could be quite different as well.

There is a way to fix the Medicare program without raising taxes: use market-like arrangements to set prices for both the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program and for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. A fully implemented competitive pricing system for Medicare would save $550 billion over 10 years.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

The prophets of American decline are on the march in numbers not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter and stagflation. Who knows, maybe this time they'll be right--a sclerotic political system, enterprise-stifling regulations, a foolish tax structure and shortsighted public policy may finally send the U.S. economy into the permanent tailspin long predicted by experts with a grim turn of mind.

It's tempting to call the shameful taxpayer subsidy for electric cars - vehicles that are unaffordable for all but a small number of wealthy Americans - this nation's costly little secret.

The goal of this paper is to analyze Race to the Top to identify the program's strengths and weaknesses and to suggest what it can teach future designers and implementers of federal education policy.