Benefits

As part of year-end tax and spending legislation, Congress may consider delaying or repealing several tax provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA): the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, the fee on health insurance providers (the “health insurance tax”), the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans (the “Cadillac tax”), and the limitation on using tax-advantaged health accounts to buy over-the-counter medicines. These taxes raise needed revenue and represent sound public policy, and further delaying or repealing them would be unwise.

State policymakers can do more to ensure that low-income women and young children participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Just over half of those eligible currently participate, despite WIC’s well-documented role in improving birth, diet, health, and developmental outcomes. By streamlining enrollment and improving services, states can make it easier for families to enroll and stay enrolled as their children grow.

These past two weeks at CBPP, we focused on food assistance, poverty and inequality, housing, health, Social Security, federal tax, and the economy.

Federal rental assistance programs such as Housing Choice Vouchers and public housing provide major benefits to low-income families, our new analysis explains, but more than 3 in 4 families that ne

A bipartisan bill from Reps. John Larson and Vern Buchanan and Senators Ron Wyden and Bill Cassidy would clarify that the Social Security Administration (SSA) must mail statements to almost all workers.

The House will soon consider legislation to use prescription drug savings to reduce health costs for low-income Medicare beneficiaries and improve Medicare benefits overall. As this legislation moves forward, it’s important that Congress retain these low-income protections.

Federal rental assistance can substantially improve adults’ health and children’s chances for long-term success, but millions that need it don’t receive it due to funding limitations.

Today, the Trump Administration issued a draconian rule in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) that will cut off basic food assistance for nearly 700,000 of the nation’s poorest and most destitute people.

Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit, as several proposals before Congress would do, could benefit hundreds of thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) families nationwide, our new analysis shows.

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

High-income taxpayers drive much of the “tax gap” — the gap between what taxpayers owe and what they voluntarily pay on time — finds a new paper from Professor Natasha Sarin and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, citing new IRS data for 2011 to 2013.

Now that the Trump Administration has made public the more than 50,000 comments on its proposal to lower the federal poverty line, the breadth of public opposition is now clear.

In recent years, U.S. fiscal policy has been historically unusual. Instead of the fiscal consolidation we might expect in the midst of a historically long expansion with the economy closing in on full capacity, our fiscal accounts have grown more unbalanced. I’ve sometimes referred to this phenomenon as “upside-down Keynesianism:” applying fiscal stimulus in a pro-cyclical manner, i.e., to an improving economy, versus the much more traditional counter-cyclical approach.

Companion bills from Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and House Majority Whip James Clyburn would impose significant, and welcome, new guardrails on investments in “opportunity zones,” or low-income areas designated for special tax breaks.

An automatic CR raises significant concerns and would cause serious problems of its own, undermining sound budgeting and diminishing Congress’ role in setting national priorities.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will soon release the 2019 Payment Error Rate Measurement (PERM) rate, which measures “improper” payments in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

This week at CBPP, we focused on the federal budget and taxes, health, immigration, state budgets and taxes, and food assistance.

Under two recent state proposals to waive federal Medicaid and Affordable Care Act rules, Georgia would spend at least as much to extend coverage to about 400,000 fewer people than if it adopted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. And one waiver would likely cut, rather than increase, coverage.

Puerto Rico needs a comprehensive economic package that centers around powerful tools such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty programs.

As Massachusetts lawmakers seek to raise revenue to make needed investments in roads, bridges, and public transit, they should abandon plans that rely solely on regressive gas tax and user fee increases in favor of those that also ensure that corporations pay their share to fund these public resources — which, after all, enable corporations to get their products to market and their employees to work.