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March 25, 2024
Families Slip Back Into Poverty After Pandemic-Era Child Tax Credit Expires
Watch the full video here. During the pandemic, lawmakers dramatically, but temporarily, expanded the social safety net, including more money for families with children. The impacts of those changes are…
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…
March 7, 2024
Growing Congressional Dysfunction Will Worsen Our Fiscal Problems
Few were surprised when deposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) retired in December. While Republican leaders tend to exit quickly after losing committee gavels or leadership posts, the additional departure of other respected senior lawmakers in both parties is damaging…
February 29, 2024
Recalling Pandemic Lessons on “Self-Certifying” Eligibility
…But policymakers should be on guard that this seemingly innocuous expansion in self-certification for minor workforce programs is not used to someday justify reviving the same policy for far costlier…
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….
January 29, 2024
Pandemic Unemployment Fraud in Context: Causes, Costs, and Solutions
…including eligibility self-certification in new programs, and degraded administrative systems without adequate defenses against various fraudulent schemes. State and federal policymakers should review the causes and consequences of these unprecedented…
January 17, 2024
Tax Extenders Package Would Cut the Child Tax Credit’s Annual Work Requirement in Half
…what happened when Hurricane Katrina struck in mid-2005 and Congress allowed affected adults to use 2004 earnings to claim the EITC and CTC. Lawmakers applied the same logic nationwide during the pandemic emergency. In December 2020, they created a “temporary special rule” letting individuals use 2019 earnings to claim the EITC and CTC for 2020….
January 11, 2024
Tax Credit Nation — Politicians Are Casting New Spending As ‘Tax Cuts,’ Hiding Their True Cost
…benefits. According to a Tax Foundation analysis, between 1990 and 2020 the value of tax credits “increased nearly 10-fold after adjusting for inflation, reflecting how lawmakers have increasingly relied on the tax…
January 11, 2024
To Better Promote Work, Stop Subsidizing More Benefit Collection
…of other government benefits in determining eligibility. Yet liberal policymakers today are proposing not only massive federal benefit increases, but also ensuring that growing largess is ignored by programs designed…