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December 1, 2023
Making the Child Tax Credit “Fully Refundable” Converts It into Welfare Checks
In what is becoming an annual ritual, news accounts and DC sources suggest liberals’ end-of-year legislative wish list once again includes reviving the worst part of Democrats’ partisan 2021 child tax credit (CTC) expansion. That proposal would convert the pro-work CTC into new federal welfare checks for nonworking parents, which Congress should flatly reject. Here’s how the respected Committee for a Responsible Federal…
November 21, 2023
Defining Poverty Up
Thirty years ago, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) wrote a seminal essay titled “Defining Deviancy Down.” He argued that Americans had “become accustomed to alarming levels of crime and destructive behavior” such as soaring out-of-wedlock childbearing behind increased welfare dependence. Policy-makers responded to Moynihan’s call, and the bipartisan 1994 crime bill (which Moynihan…
November 20, 2023
The Next Time States Are “Swimming in Money” Make Them Repay Their Federal Loans
The pandemic was full of firsts, including the first time states received hundreds of billions of federal dollars they could use to shore up their depleted state unemployment insurance (UI) programs. The March 2020 CARES Act provided $150 billion in a flexible “Coronavirus Relief Fund,” whose potential uses included covering states’ “unemployment insurance costs.” Then the March 2021 American…
October 31, 2023
Lawmakers Continue Trying to Revive Pandemic-Style Benefits
In 2008, Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama, famously issued Rahm’s rule: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Lawmakers applied Rahm’s rule liberally during the pandemic, providing record stimulus…
October 25, 2023
Dispelling Myths About The Child Tax Credit
Every culture has its famous myths, such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, and the world of politics is no different. Take, for example, President Joe Biden’s claims that he is a unifier or that ” Bidenomics” is working . The president offered another mythical claim last month when he said that “we cut child poverty by nearly half ……
October 17, 2023
Understanding Poverty Measurement
COSM scholars and AEI affiliates include some of the nation’s foremost experts on poverty measurement. On October 17, COSM gathered several of these scholars to provide a primer on opportunity in the United States. Angela Rachidi began by exploring the meaning of poverty, outlining the most fundamental decisions in measuring it and describing how different…
October 12, 2023
Now the Administration Is Legislating on Welfare, Too
Last week the Department of Health and Human Services issued a proposed rule related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF is the cash welfare block grant Congress created in the 1996 welfare reform law, which was central to that legislation’s efforts to promote more work and less welfare receipt. For a capital already familiar with…
September 29, 2023
Solutions to Reduce Government Improper Payments Involving Unemployment Benefits
OverviewThe coronavirus pandemic tested the nation’s unemployment benefits system more than any prior recession. Not only did far more individuals file claims for weekly benefits than ever before, but lockdowns and mass layoffs concentrated those record claims starting in March 2020, creating an unprecedented surge in demand for benefits that quickly rose to an apparent…
September 29, 2023
Up To $135 Billion In Pandemic Unemployment Fraud – And Still Counting
Last week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) added a startling new figure to the ever-growing estimates of abuse inflicted on unemployment benefits during the pandemic, finding that “between $100 billion and $135 billion” was lost to fraud. As a dismal Washington Post headline summarized, “Fraudsters may have stolen $1 of every $7 in covid jobless aid.” Unfortunately, this disastrous episode…
September 19, 2023
House Budget Plan Proposes Commonsense Welfare Changes
The House Budget Committee, headed by Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), today released a draft budget proposal detailing the majority’s spending priorities and proposed changes across a range of government benefits and programs. Several policies would promote higher levels of work among welfare recipients, which is especially necessary while benefit rolls remain elevated despite plentiful job openings. According to recent research by our AEI colleague Angela Rachidi, less…