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Perhaps the top qualification for State Rep. Valerie Gaydos (R-Allegheny) to serve as an elected official is that, for most of her career, she never set out to be one. Her first passion was business, where she developed her cardinal rule for making business and government run properly – fiscal accountability. “I’ve been involved in ...

One of the highlights of a recent two-week trip to Taiwan for PMA’s Vice President of Government Affairs, Carl Marrara, was a side-visit to a Pennsylvania trade office. The Office of Trade and Investment in Taipei is bursting with Pennsylvania trade deals from ice cream to tanks to what could be a whole lot of ...

Nuke bailout is radioactive for PA politicians, poll shows. Lawmakers would be unwise to ram through nuke bailout legislation during the traditional rush of activity leading up to the June 30 budget deadline, an opinion poll shows. The poll, commissioned by the PMA and conducted by the Omega Research Group, shows that 68 percent of ...

“Free markets and the celebration of capitalism” was the theme of the 30th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference (PLC), and as U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) pointed out in his speech kicking-off the two-day event, there has been plenty about capitalism of late to celebrate. “We have the strongest economy in 50 years,” Toomey ...

Lawmakers are again gearing up to send Governor Tom Wolf legislation that would not only help break the poverty cycle for many, but also rein in runaway costs in providing health care for the poor. Medicaid is on the verge of becoming the single costliest program in the state budget. The bill, now being drafted ...

The nuclear industry in Pennsylvania finds itself begging for admission to the final phase of President Reagan’s description of how government imposes its will on business: “If it stops moving, subsidize it.” The first two stages, “If it moves, tax it, and if it keeps moving, regulate it,” are the setup to the sad punchline. ...

Pennsylvania’s leading advocacy group for manufacturers recently received a national business group’s top award for its work engaging businesses and their employees in key elections this past November.The STAR Achievement Award from the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) recognized PMA for both its voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts as part of the larger Pennsylvania Prosperity ...

Last year, former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz caused a stir when a group they founded — the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) — came out in support of a carbon tax. More than a year later and after several failed attempts, voters and lawmakers (state or federal) have yet to be ...

A 2017 Wall Street Journal article covering the massive (and still growing) investment in the petrochemical industry in the United States contained a warning of sorts for Pennsylvania. Not for what it said about Pennsylvania, but for what it didn’t say about Pennsylvania’s role in the $185 billion investment in the industry cited in the ...

Pennsylvania has mastered the art of rigging a waiver system under the federal food stamp program, the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), to preserve the cycle of government dependence for able-bodied recipients. Despite unemployment at historically low levels, Pennsylvania has managed to keep roughly 230,000 able-bodied recipients on food stamps, according to a recent study ...