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September 21, 2022

Lessons from the Unprecedented Fraud and Abuse of the Unemployment Benefits System During the Pandemic

Chairman DeSaulnier, Ranking Member Allen, and other members of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, thank you for inviting me to testify at this morning’s hearing examining the administration of the Unemployment Insurance system. My name is Matt Weidinger, and I am a senior fellow and Rowe Scholar in poverty studies at the…

September 19, 2022

Men Without Work in the Post-Pandemic Era

Event Summary On September 19, Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers and AEI’s Michael Strain joined AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt to discuss the new edition of Mr. Eberstadt’s book, Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (Templeton Press, 2022). Mr. Eberstadt began by describing the decades-long flight from work by prime-age (25–54) men and the broadening of that trend to other demographics…

September 12, 2022

Section 199A and “Tax Parity”

Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included a new deduction for business income: Section 199A. This provision allows taxpayers to deduct up to 20 percent of qualifying business income against their taxable income and provides a special tax benefit for “pass-through” businesses—those not subject to the…

August 30, 2022

Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan is Driven by Politics, Not Economics

On Wednesday, President Biden announced his long-awaited plan to cancel student loans — effectively wiping away up to $10,000 for borrowers with individual income below $125,000 (and couples with joint income below $250,000). The administration’s plan forgives up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients under the same income limits. The move, which will cost taxpayers…

August 10, 2022

A Failure to Respond: Public School Mask Mandates in the 2021–22 School Year

Key Points From September 2021 to late February 2022, school district mask mandates were in place for 61 percent of students in the US.During that period, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance advised all students and teachers to mask indoors, with no flexibility based on local conditions.On February 25, 2022, the CDC adopted…

June 15, 2022

Second Time’s the Charm?

Early last year, Senator Mitt Romney proposed a new approach to family policy that exposed some significant rifts among right-leaning policy wonks who care about fighting poverty and supporting family formation. This week, Romney (together with fellow Republicans Richard Burr and Steve Daines) has offered a revised version of the idea that might just have what it takes…

February 23, 2022

The Case Against Universal Free Lunch

Key Points Read the PDF. Introduction Who should feed children? Parents or the government? Before the pandemic, more than half of American public school students were eligible for free or reduced price school lunch (FRL).1 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has proposed expanding the program to provide free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every American public school…

November 16, 2021

The Changing Face of Social Breakdown

Last month, two of my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute (Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone), along with co-authors from the Wheatley Foundation and the Institute for Family Studies, published an important new paper on the state of family formation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a fascinating study, well worth your while, which reviews…

August 23, 2021

Policies to Help the Working Class in the Aftermath of COVID-19: Lessons from the Great Recession

By Richard V. Burkhauser, Kevin C. Corinth, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated government-mandated shutdowns caused a historic shock to the U.S. economy and a disproportionate job loss concentrated among the working class. While an unprecedented social safety net policy response successfully offset earnings losses among lower-wage workers, the risk of…