I have been accused of introducing bills after reading an article in the New York Times.

“Don’t Look to States for New Ideas” is the headline for an op-ed in today’s paper.

Justice Brandeis called the states the laboratories of democracy.  The minimum wage and welfare reform are prominent examples.

Ideas grown in the petri dish of a state legislature will no longer survive in the partisan hot house of Capitol Hill, contends the op-ed’s author, an economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2010 to 2011.

I must confess, however.  I’m already working on a bill prompted by a Times op-ed.

When welfare reform was enacted by the Congress in 1996, Ron Haskins was the Republican staff expert in the House Ways and Means Committee.

I met him then, when I served on a task force on welfare reform.  He’s now at the Brookings Institution.

I read his Times op-ed, “Social Programs That Work,” two weeks ago.  It discusses how several evidence-based policy initiatives were created and implemented by the Obama administration.

I’m working with Ron on legislation that would do the same for a pilot program in Maryland.

We will seek bipartisan support.