Health Care

How Welfare Reforms in the OBBB Protect Pennsylvanians

  • June 24, 2025

Summary Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as Food Stamps, were intended to help provide health insurance and food for low-income seniors,…

Fact Sheet

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Taxes & Economy

The Basic Economic Mistake Both Candidates Make

  • Nathan Benefield
  • September 10, 2024

Originally published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Poll after poll reveals what’s on voters’ minds: It’s the economy, stupid, as it was in 1992 when Bill Clin­ton’s cam­paign ad­vi­sor James Car­ville…

Media Hit

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Op-Ed: Dissecting Pennsylvania’s Realignment

  • Charles F. McElwee
  • November 10, 2020

In Pennsylvania, Biden prevailed because enough voters in rural counties, working-class regions, and suburban towns found him inoffensive, if not appealing, during a turbulent period. Outside Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, this…

Commentary

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Health Care

Five Medicaid Work Requirement Truths

  • Elizabeth Stelle
  • August 24, 2017

Work leaves families better off. To ignore this fact and urge people to trust a failing Medicaid system is nothing short of a moral scandal.

Fact Sheet

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Criminal Justice Reform

Policy Memo: Principles for State Budget

  • Nathan Benefield
  • June 14, 2017

With the 2017 budget, lawmakers have an opportunity to double down on the idea of reinventing government and adopt meaningful reforms that will save taxpayers money, stimulate economic growth, and improve services…

Memo

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Taxes & Economy

Welfare to Work Helped Reduce Poverty

  • Elizabeth Stelle
  • August 22, 2016

Twenty years ago President Clinton signed a law creating Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), better known as sweeping welfare reform grounded in work requirements. In 1996, 531,000 adults and…

Media

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Health Care

Whoops, We Were Wrong…

  • Nathan Benefield
  • September 9, 2009

One of our goals at the Commonwealth Foundation is to predict the effect of proposed public policies.  Most of the time, we are proven correct, and humbly announce, "We told…

Commentary

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Public Union Democracy

Which Obama Will Be President?

  • Matthew Brouillette, Nathan Benefield
  • November 13, 2008

Will an Obama presidency bring a lurch to the political Left in America?  This is of great concern for those of us who believe that our prosperity and security do…

Commentary

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