OKPOLICY.ORG
The Weekly Wonk is a summary of Oklahoma Policy Institute’s events, publications, blog posts, and coverage. Numbers of the Day and Policy Notes are from our daily news briefing, In The Know. Click here to subscribe to In The Know.
OK Policy released a statement that the proposed tax cuts would do little to help average Oklahomans, take $237 million from schools and other core services, and make Oklahoma more vulnerable to an energy bust or economic downturn. Our outreach coordinator, Megan Benn was featured in an interview on KOKH Fox 25 discussing why tax cuts would not be beneficial to our state. The Oklahoma Watchdog.Org featured an article highlighting policy analyst Kate Richey’s featured lecture for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services “Practice and Policy Lecture Series.” OK Policy Executive Director David Blatt was quoted in an Oklahoma Gazette article, in which he argued there was already too much uncertainty about state revenues to introduce a tax cut.
On our blog we announced that OK Policy is now accepting applications for our summer internship and the first Summer Policy Institute, where 40 to 50 students from across the state will learn from policy experts from government, academia, and community organizations. We also reported that while most attention this year has focused on income tax cuts, another proposal that would cut taxes for corporations by some $50 million has been quietly making its way through the Legislature and showed why arguments that previous tax cuts in Oklahoma have led to revenue growth are easily debunked. Lastly, we featured a guest post looking at Oklahoma’s foster care system through the eyes of a child.
- 92 percent – Percentage of children in poverty in Oklahoma who are not enrolled in the state’s TANF or ‘welfare’ program
- 51 percent – Percentage of restaurant chains in Oklahoma that are ‘fast-food’ chains, compared with just 27 percent nationally in 2013
- $237 million – Amount that a tax cut proposed by state leadership would take from Oklahoma’s schools and other core services
- 10 percent – Percentage of Oklahoma’s 342,000 veterans that are women
- 8.2 percent – Percentage of babies born in Oklahoma that are low birth weight, compared to 6 percent nationally in 201
Policy Notes
- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why most of the people who would benefit from expanding Medicaid are working for low wages and still cannot obtain health coverage.
- Wonkblog summarized a Kaiser Foundation report on why health care costs are slowing.
- The Tax Policy Center discusses how state and local government budget cuts are hurting the economic recovery.
- Governing reported that the U.S. Senate is on the verge of approving a sales tax for online purchases.
- Wonkblog debunked a story making the rounds that Congress is trying to exempt itself from Obamacare.
