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April 29, 2024
New “Scorecard” Report Promotes Better Use of Data to Prevent Unemployment Fraud
Criminals inflicted unprecedented fraud on taxpayer benefits during the pandemic, and some of the most abused programs were those that provided temporary federal unemployment benefits. As we documented in a January 2024 report (Pandemic Unemployment Fraud in Context: Causes, Costs, and Solutions), official government tallies of improper payments and fraud stretch toward $200 billion, while unofficial estimates…
April 26, 2024
Washington, District of Benefit Cliffs
As the welfare state expands while policymakers struggle to contain its costs, one unintended result is the creation of significant benefit cliffs. A little-noticed September 2023 report authored by Elias Ilin and Alvaro Sanchez of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (“Mitigating Benefits Cliffs for Low-Income Families: District of Columbia Career Mobility Action Plan as a Case Study”) explains…
April 19, 2024
The New Deal’s Failed Kibbutz in the Desert
At the height of the New Deal, with the Social Security Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Civilian Conservation Corps already enacted, the Roosevelt Administration’s Farm Security Administration (FSA), veered from reform to the outright radical: the establishment of an American version of a Soviet collective farm. The largest of nine such projects…
April 17, 2024
Fiscal Sanity Please, Senators
The Wyden-Smith tax bill, which combines an expanded child tax credit (CTC) with a variety of business tax breaks, has been in limbo in the Senate for the past three months. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to bring up the bill if there’s enough support, but so far, these votes have not been forthcoming…
April 9, 2024
The Child Tax Credit: My Long-Read Q&A with Kevin Corinth
The Child Tax Credit is a tax benefit available to many American families for the purpose of reducing their federal income tax liability. It’s specifically designed to help offset the cost of raising children. The CTC of today, however, differs starkly from its pre-pandemic structure. Many economists, including Kevin Corinth, think that the post-pandemic changes were a step…
February 29, 2024
Recalling Pandemic Lessons on “Self-Certifying” Eligibility
Sometimes what is left unmentioned can be far more important than what is said. A good example is obscure guidance issued last week by the US Department of Labor (DOL) encouraging workforce programs to allow beneficiaries to self-certify their eligibility. That guidance directly affects a handful of programs with limited funding that offer a variety of employment-related…
January 29, 2024
Per-Child Benefit in Wyden-Smith Child Tax Credit Bill Would Discourage Full-Time Work for Families with Multiple Children
The Wyden-Smith proposed tax legislation would make four changes to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). First, it would increase the cap on the refundable portion of the CTC, eventually to the same amount as the maximum non-refundable CTC. Second, it would begin indexing the maximum non-refundable CTC with inflation. Third, it would apply a one-year lookback for…
January 9, 2024
Post-Pandemic Recovery for America’s Prime Age Labor Force: A Tale of Two Sexes
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “monthly jobs report” last Friday closed the book on 2023, recording a continuing expansion of both labor supply and paid work in America last year—and continuation of the lowest annual unemployment rate since the 1960s. America not only missed the 2023 recession that many (including your humble servant) were…
December 8, 2023
Room for Compromise on the Hot Foods Act
Last month, members of the House of Representatives and Senate sent a letter encouraging Farm Bill negotiators to consider the Hot Foods Act. The legislation would allow recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) to use their benefits on hot prepared meals sold at grocery stores. Currently, the program restricts hot foods from purchase…
December 7, 2023
The White House Council of Economic Advisers Contradicts the President’s Poverty Talking Points
Before Thanksgiving, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a blog post titled “The Anti-Poverty and Income Boosting Impacts of the Enhanced CTC.” That’s a reference to the temporary—and now expired—expansion in the child tax credit (CTC) enacted as part of Democrats’ March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. In its FY 2024 budget proposal earlier…