OpenMarket

The question of the minimum wage is a hot topic this week, as the voters of the District of Columbia just approved Initiative 77,  which will change how tipped workers, like restaurants servers, are paid and require their employers to provide a $15-an-hour wage by 2025, whether the workers in question also earn substantially more in tips or not.

Today’s Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair is extremely disappointing and will likely cost online sellers and consumers dearly. Stopping state regulatory and tax power at each state’s border should be the default rule for online commerce, but the court has chosen to set state tax authorities loose on small Internet retailers and their customers across the country.

It has now been more than decade since the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was last revised, and the program is not getting any better with age.  It unnecessarily interferes with the motor fuels marketplace, hurts consumers, and even fails to deliver the promised environmental and farm economy benefits. The 115^th Congress deserves some credit for taking a critical look at the program, but it lacks the resolve to definitively address its problems. This is unlikely to change as we head into the 2018 elections.

When Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, there was an unprecedented allocation of power to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP—previously known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB), a new federal regulator created under the Act. Not only were a vast number of statutes transferred from other federal regulators, but the Bureau was also vested with new powers. Since then, little effort has been made to assess how these new rulemaking authorities are shaping out, until now.

Bad Internet sales tax legislation (mercifully) continues to stall in Congress. Pro-tax expansionists like Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) made a big political push to tie the ill-advised Remote Transactions Parity Act to the omnibus-spending bill in March, but to no avail.

With a possible party change in play this November in one or both chambers of Congress, the time might be now or never to pass substantive regulatory reform. President Trump is amenable to reform legislation, and both chambers of Congress have GOP majorities. A number of bills are already in play, and some have even passed the House.

Washington, D.C. has a $12.50 per hour minimum wage. But for tip-earning workers, such as servers and bartenders, the minimum is $3.33 per hour—tips are supposed to make up the difference. And if they don’t, then employers make up the shortfall. Ballot initiative 77, due for a vote on Tuesday, would raise tipped workers’ minimum wage to $12.50. It would also raise D.C.’s minimum wage to $15.00 in steps through 2025. The proposal has divided the restaurant community.

Thanks to the great Nick Gillespie of Reason for Friday’s exciting announcement that the Competitive Enterprise Institute short film “I, Whiskey: The Human Spirit” has been nominated for the 2018 Reason Video Prize. We’re proud of the recognition that the film has received since its initial release, including Best Editing for Erin Michelle Kruger and Lucas Abel at the Southern Shorts Awards and an Excellence in Commercial Filmmaking award at the 2017 Anthem Film Festival.

Congress and President Trump recently gave Main Street banks and credit unions some much-need but still modest relief from the mountains of red tape stemming from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Yet, as I have pointed out, some of the most onerous and nonsensical provisions were left untouched.

Angry allies, North Korea, and Chinese tariffs dominated the news last week. Under the radar, regulatory agencies closed in on their 1,500th new regulation of the year. The newest batch of rules range from air cargo to dietary fiber.