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December 23, 2025
The Policy Lessons from Minnesota’s Massive Welfare Fraud
…tax credits, extended, expanded, and far more widely available unemployment checks, and much more. Liberal lawmakers have introduced legislation to make permanent some of the now-expired pandemic expansions. No one…
December 2, 2025
What To Do About Benefit Cliffs?
…reforms that program administrators and policymakers can implement within the existing system to offer relief to families facing benefit cliffs. Often, that doesn’t require legislation, just administrative action by federal…
November 10, 2025
The Welfare Program You Never Heard About During the Shutdown
…large part because it continued to pay full benefits as scheduled. The reasons why offer important policy lessons for how lawmakers could make food stamps and other benefit programs more…
May 19, 2025
The Case for Shifting More Welfare Costs to States
…grim federal fiscal outlook suggests that, even if cost shifts are not enacted through this reconciliation legislation, in the long run federal policymakers will have no choice but to transition…
April 23, 2025
In Case of Emergency, Open Block Grant: Part 2
…of means-tested programs. Part 2 reviews several rhetorical advantages for policymakers of similarly converting other open-ended entitlement programs to block grants, and offers concluding thoughts. Part 2: Rhetorical Advantages of…
April 23, 2025
In Case of Emergency, Open Block Grant: Part 1
…of means-tested programs. Part 2 reviews several rhetorical advantages for policymakers of similarly converting other open-ended entitlement programs to block grants, and offers concluding thoughts. Part 1: The TANF Block…
March 11, 2024
How Many Forms of “Wage Insurance” Do We Need, Exactly?
…lookback policy as “a form of wage insurance,” recalling a program some liberal lawmakers proposed—and failed to enact—before the Great Recession. Authors affiliated with the liberal Center on Budget and…
February 27, 2024
Options for Improving the Child Tax Credit Provisions in H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024
…policy reforms better suited to the current fiscal environment. We recognize policymakers’ urge to expand benefits for families that have weathered recent high inflation. Nevertheless, if lawmakers intend to pass…
February 8, 2024
CTC Expansion Rooted in Desire to Roll Back Work-based Welfare
…frequently call them. For these reasons, the refundable CTC should not be labeled tax relief, and policymakers should consider changes to it in the context of the broader safety net….
September 15, 2023
Putting This Year’s Poverty Numbers in Context
…subsidies also contributed more to child poverty reduction in 2022 than 2021. As discussed extensively at Tuesday’s AEI event, policymakers and the public are in dire need of a poverty…