The vast majority—92 percent—of non-elderly, non-SSI Medicaid recipients are either working, ill or disabled, taking care of a home or family member, or going to school. The administration’s recent announcement that they will allow states to implement work requirements for Medicaid is attempting to solve a problem that does not exist. It would likely, however, result in many recipients losing their coverage because of difficulty complying with reporting requirements or other technicalities in the law.
Jan 12 2018
Medicaid Work Requirements Just Don't Work
The Trump administration announced yesterday that it is giving states the green light to implement work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. More than 10 states have already proposed some form of Medicaid work requirements. Not only do these work requirements fail to significantly boost long-term employment, they hurt the very people who Medicaid is designed to serve.
Jan 11 2018
Consumer Corner: A Look at Rising Household Debt
Welcome to the first edition of Consumer Corner—a new blog series focused on consumer issues. In this post, we focus on household and consumer debt: what is it; how much is out there; who are the major regulators and interested parties?
President Trump has regularly touted 2017 employment gains as signs that he is making America great again. The truth is that the labor market in 2017 mostly continued down the path that it had been on since well before he took office. The American job market has been slowly and steadily improving since the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In fact, average monthly job growth under President Trump has actually slowed and is at its lowest level since 2010.
The federal safety net lifted nearly 11 million children out of poverty in 2016—led by refundable tax credits raising 4.4 million children out of poverty, SNAP and Social Security 1.5 million children each, and housing subsidies 1 million children. Poverty leads to worse health outcomes, developmental delays, and poor academic outcomes for affected children, all of which have lifelong effects. House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders intend to target many of these successful programs for cuts in 2018.
Dec 18 2017
Republican Tax Cuts Will Mostly Go to Wealthy
Despite claims that the Republican tax cuts are aimed at working families, wealthy owners of pass-through businesses (such as partners in large law firms and hedge funds) will see substantially more benefits than workers. In 2019, primarily-wage workers in the bottom 20 percent of earners would average a $40 tax cut. This contrasts with an average tax cut of $87,000 for pass-through owners in the top one percent. Because of the windfall that high-earners will see by becoming a pass-through, many more will seek to use the pass-through loophole in the future—eroding tax revenues and worsening income inequality.
Congressional Republicans have a plan to fill part of the giant deficit hole created by their tax plan for the wealthy; open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to commercial drilling. Their plan is a shortsighted tactic that arcane budget rules and will ultimately fail to live up to expectations. In fact, early estimates based on recent lease bids of neighboring plots of land underscore how selling these precious protected lands to commercial drilling could generate underwhelming revenues.
Budgets proposed by the Trump administration and House and Senate Republicans would all drastically slash federal investment in nondefense discretionary (NDD) funding. NDD funding includes infrastructure, education, and medical and scientific research, among other programs critical to American families and the economy. Senate Republicans have proposed slashing NDD spending by $800 billion over the next decade, House Republicans by nearly $1.4 trillion, and President Trump by more than $1.5 trillion. The President’s budget would bring NDD spending down to 2 percent of GDP, the lowest level in modern history by a wide margin.
It has been 69 days since Congress failed to reauthorize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides coverage for 8.9 million children across the country. Last week, Colorado became the first state to notify families that they are in danger of losing coverage, and many others may follow. If Congress fails to fully fund CHIP, 36 states and D.C. will exhaust their existing 2017 federal funds by March of next year.
Senate Republicans are pitching their recently-passed tax plan as a middle-class tax cut, but analysis from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation pokes holes in this claim. The vast majority of households earning under $100,000 will see little tax change by the time the bill is fully implemented in 2027. Twice as many households earning under $100,000 will actually see a tax hike rather than a tax cut. In total, 127 million households earning under $100,000 will see a tax increase or little change, compared with 13 million households seeing a tax cut.