Benefits

Tomorrow’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing will put the focus back on the crisis that U.S. territories face due to the looming expiration of federal funds to supplement their inadequate Medicaid block grants — and their need for ongoing, stable, and adequate funding to fund the full range of Medicaid benefits to all who qualify.

These behavioral effects may have hindered the adolescents’ well-being, health outcomes, and socioeconomic trajectories as they transitioned into adulthood.

In a little-noticed move, the Trump Administration is proposing a new roadblock for U.S. citizens who are seeking federal rental assistance, including the more than 9 million citizens who are now receiving aid.

These breaks cost states 7 percent of state income taxes on average in 2013, a figure that will only rise.

The House this week will begin debate on a package of appropriations bills that would, in its 2020 funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), invest substantial resources to help low-income families struggling with high housing costs.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has proposed shoring up his state’s finances with a new millionaires’ tax — a proven tool to raise revenues for vital investments, such as good public schools, while basing state tax codes more on the ability to pay.

The Trump Administration is considering a change to the federal poverty line that would ultimately cause millions of people to lose eligibility for, or receive less help from, health, food assistance, and other programs that help them meet basic needs.

This week at CBPP, we focused on poverty and inequality, the federal budget and taxes, health, employment, state budgets and taxes, and the economy.

President Trump has made clear that his goal remains to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the Medicaid expansion, and to impose rigid caps on the federal government’s Medicaid spending.

The Trump Administration is considering whether to use a lower inflation measure to calculate annual adjustments to the federal poverty line.

Utah proposed a waiver of federal Medicaid rules on May 31 that would add harmful features to an earlier waiver that the federal government approved for the state.

At a hearing tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will discuss a proposal from Chairman Frank Pallone and Ranking Republican Member Greg Walden to protect patients from large bills when they unexpectedly or unknowingly receive care from an out-of-network provider.

The Trump Administration is publicly weighing plans to gradually lower the official poverty line by applying a smaller cost-of-living adjustment each year. Doing so would be unjustified for several reasons.

A bill before the House Appropriations Committee would raise funding for IRS tax enforcement and operations support in 2020 — an important, but too modest, step forward after the damaging cuts in IRS enforcement since 2010. Given the depleted state and critical importance of IRS enforcement, lawmakers need to add more.

But if these well-known models accurately describe the relationship between inflation rates and labor market slack, why are the United States and other advanced economies experiencing such slow to modest wage growth as national unemployment rates keep dropping lower and lower?

This week at CBPP, we focused on federal taxes and the federal budget, health, the economy, food assistance, and Social Security.

The nation lost an extraordinary individual Wednesday in Herbert Sandler, a visionary and path-breaking philanthropist who achieved remarkable results. Herb and his life-partner and wife, the late Marion Sandler, played pivotal roles in starting such notable organizations as, among others, ProPublica, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Center for American Progress, and the Center for Equitable Growth.

House Ways and Means Committee members Dan Kildee and Dwight Evans introduced a bill today to substantially expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), which would boost the economic well-being of 46 million low- and moderate-income households with 114 million people, we estimate based on Census data.

June 2019 is the 120th month since the Great Recession ended in June of 2009, tying this expansion for the longest on record with the expansion of 1991 to 2001 (see chart). This expansion will become the longest on record next month — barring an extremely unlikely collapse in economic activity that would prompt the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized arbiter of business-cycle dating, to later determine that a recession began in June or July.

This chart book tracks the current economic expansion and the evolution of the economy under President Trump, both in terms of how the current expansion compares with other expansions over the past several decades and how it compares with his claims of what his policies will accomplish.