Benefits

In about one-quarter of middle-income families with private health coverage, a family member lost coverage at some point between 2004 and 2007, analysis of Census Bureau survey data reveals. Nearly all of these family members ended up uninsured, often for several months. While the survey only extends through 2007, these problems have almost certainly worsened due to the recession. Enactment of comprehensive health reform that provides affordable, meaningful insurance options, particularly for …

The President’s $350 million Transforming Rental Assistance (TRA) initiative, outlined in his fiscal 2011 budget, would enable local housing agencies and private owners to more easily preserve affordable housing, in part by giving them more adequate and sustainable funding to operate it. As a result, TRA would help preserve an estimated 300,000 affordable apartments (both publicly and privately owned) in its first year and more in later years. Most of these apartments house low-income …

An amendment to pending aviation legislation by Senators Jeff Sessions and Claire McCaskill that would establish binding limits on discretionary appropriations for the next three years poses a series of problems for short- and long-term budget policy. Specifically, the amendment (SA 3435) to Federal Aviation Administration legislation that is now before the Senate would require substantial cuts in funding for nondefense discretionary programs below the levels that President Obama has proposed; …

A legislative tool called “reconciliation” and its role in health reform are discussed by a Senior Fellow at the Center, Paul Van de Water. Duration: 4:08

We are quite disappointed that, in responding to our analysis of his budget plan, Rep. Paul Ryan accuses the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of “partisan demagoguery” as well as “factual errors and misleading statements.” Quite the contrary, we applied the same rigorous analytical process to Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future that we do to every issue we study. We worked for more than a month on our analysis, and we believe that, if anything, we …

Nicholas Johnson weighs in on tax hikes in response to the recession on Fox Business News.

Robert Greenstein and Paul Van de Water discuss the radical priorities in Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal in a media call on March 10, 2010. Duration: 21:34

I. Summary The Roadmap for America’s Future, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee — released in late January, calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.[1] The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households; …

Last month, Colorado enacted a law that requires Amazon.com and other Internet retailers that do not collect and remit Colorado sales tax on what they sell in the state to tell their Colorado customers that they may owe sales tax on their purchases, and also to tell the state each year the total dollar value of items purchased by each purchaser. Yesterday, Amazon told its small business partners in Colorado that it would immediately stop doing business with them unless Colorado repeals that law.…

The latest information showing that the Recovery Act is creating jobs and boosting the economy is discussed by Senior Policy Analyst Michael Leachman. Duration: 3:12

The national recession has had such a devastating effect on state finances that states took in $87 billion less in tax revenue from October 2008 through September 2009 than they collected in the previous 12 months. This 11 percent decline, the steepest on record, resulted from the impact on tax collections of lost jobs, reduced wages, and lowered economic activity. At the same time, the recession has driven up the number of people needing various state services. This, along with the …

The jobs report for February is discussed by Chief Economist, Chad Stone. Duration: 2:48

Today’s jobs report shows that job losses continued at a moderate pace in February and unemployment remained unchanged at 9.7 percent. While noting that these numbers may include the impacts on hiring and hours worked of the severe winter weather that paralyzed major Northeastern cities in February, the Labor Department said that it could not quantify the impact. These weather effects are transient, however, and the more important fact is that we still have a very long way to go to …

Senior Policy Analyst, Zoë Neuberger, discusses the Hunger Free Schools Act before the House of Representative Subcommittee on Agriculture, at a hearing titled “Child Nutrition” on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Duration: 6:06

In considering “jobs legislation” in the weeks ahead, Congress will decide whether to extend the temporary increase in federal support for state Medicaid programs that last year’s economic recovery legislation provided. Failure to do so would lead to deeper state budget cuts that cost substantial numbers of jobs, as well as to what the evidence increasingly suggests would be severe cuts in the Medicaid program in many states that would cast hundreds of thousands, and perhaps …

Millions of American school children rely upon the federal nutrition programs as a basic support even during the best of economies, but with unemployment hovering near 10 percent and long-term unemployment at record levels, children need them more than ever to help them grow and thrive. The reauthorization of the child nutrition programs offers an important opportunity to expand access to them. In 2008, the most recent year for which these data are available, nearly one in five children (19 …

In recent weeks, a few commentators have sounded an alarm about the recession’s impact on Social Security’s near-term prospects, which may lead some people to think that the program faces financial problems in the next several years. Fortunately, that is not the case. Social Security continues to run annual surpluses and remains capable of paying scheduled benefits in full for the next three decades or so. The deep recession has indisputably affected the Social Security …

The President’s health reform plan would raise the Medicare tax rate for single filers with incomes over $200,000 and married filers with incomes over $250,000 — a provision that was included in the Senate-passed health bill — and also would extend this tax to the unearned income these affluent households receive such as income from capital gains, dividends, and royalties. These proposals, which would help finance the expansion of health coverage to more than 30 million …

Chairman Kaufman, Chairman Downing, and other members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning. For the record, I am a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a non-partisan research and policy institute which works at the federal and state levels on fiscal policy and public programs that affect low- and moderate-income families and individuals. Prior to joining the Center in January, I was a …