Summary

The growing number of low-income workers in Oregon’s rural counties calls attention to their diverse transportation needs. The sparse populations concentrated in these areas, combined with the types of occupations available, require flexible transportation arrangements that cannot be provided by fixed-route public transit. Private car ownership can empower these workers to reach jobs in our rural communities. . . . Read more!

Summary

Government health insurance mandates intended to increase health care coverage for all, especially for lowerincome Oregonians, actually make insurance coverage more expensive and reduce low-cost benefits available to low-wage workers. Basic packages should be offered to allow more individuals to have some level of insurance, rather than mandating “deluxe” insurance packages employers and employees alike cannot afford. . . . Read more!

Summary

Central economic planning suffers from the fallacy of composition: assuming that what is true of the parts is true of the whole. But there is no collective mind in a city, state or nation that can do for the whole what countless individuals and organizations can do better for themselves. Oregon should remove the central planners and let individuals and businesses make economic decisions based on real-world market and consumer signals. . . . Read more!

Sally C. Pipes is President and CEO of Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. In addition to her Oregon State legislative testimony below, she was the feature speaker at Cascade’s Legislative Leadership Forum at the Capitol on March 28th talking about the quest for universal health care coverage. . . . Read more!

Finally, low-income students and their parents will be able to see the Oregon legislature consider a bill that could give them the same access to school choice that higher-income Oregonians already enjoy. House Bill 3010 was submitted at the request of the School Choice Working Group, which is a partnership between the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) and Cascade Policy Institute in Portland.

The Freedom to Choose My School Grants bill will create a . . . Read more!

HB 3244 is similar to HB 3948, which was enacted during the 2001 session. As currently written, the bill has a number of problems, including:

1. The preamble of HB 3244 implies that market economies are not “sustainable” and therefore need intervention from government planners, but empirical evidence demonstrates that we already have a sustainable economy. . . . Read more!

• Electronic waste is a challenge, not a crisis.
• Disposing of e-waste in a regulated landfill is not a negative externality; the costs are fully internalized into the price of disposal. Moreover, many garbage ratepayers are forced to pay for other social programs that have nothing to do with waste disposal, so they create positive externalities. Examples: Metro tipping fees, Portland OSD financing.
• The bill purports to impose personal responsibility for the eventual disposal of consumer products, but in fact does just the opposite. It places cost burden on manufacture to create another free entitlement.

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My name is John Charles, president of Cascade Policy Institute. Cascade is a non-profit, non-partisan research center dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, economic opportunity and personal responsibility.

I was not asked to be part of the REWG and therefore am not bound by any informal deals that may have been made among its members. My primary concerns about SB 838 can be summarized as: (A) The bill is unnecessary given Oregon’s low-carbon energy supply system (B) it interferes with the existing green power marketing programs which are voluntary; and (C) SB 838 imposes high costs on ratepayers with no offsetting benefits. . . . Read more!