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November 30, 2023
A Valuable New Perspective on America’s War on Poverty
…done to help lower-income Americans live the sorts of lives that our society decides are at least minimally acceptable — especially lives built around better-paying jobs. What we do matters,…
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…
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…
October 12, 2023
Now the Administration Is Legislating on Welfare, Too
…at stake. It’s a task for another day to compare the differences between recent congressional and the new administration proposals on all these counts. In the end, those distinctions matter far…
September 25, 2023
A Bad Bipartisan Housing Bill: Connecting the Dots on the Helper Act
…American Dream of homeownership. Demand-enhancing policies such as the HELPER Act may be well intended, but as long as a severe housing shortage persists, they will only make matters worse….
September 19, 2023
House Budget Plan Proposes Commonsense Welfare Changes
…Rachidi and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, was released last fall. A chapter in that volume authored by Rachidi, Scott Winship, and one of us (Matt Weidinger), titled “A Safety Net for the Future: Overcoming the…
September 8, 2023
Is Vote Dilution Necessarily Bad?
…mobilizing pressure “wherever Jews lived, but most particularly in their hometowns—no matter how small.” A memo set out the plan: “Your local Congressman may be the man who will make…
September 5, 2023
Audit Finds California Continues to Mismanage Unemployment Benefits
A scathing report released by the California State Auditor on August 24 finds that the state’s Economic Development Department (EDD) continues to mismanage the unemployment insurance (UI) program, resulting in “a substantial…
September 1, 2023
Despite Staggering Improper Payments, New Labor Department Report Calls for Reviving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
As America prepares to celebrate Labor Day, it’s timely to wonder what the US Department of Labor (DOL) has been up to. One noteworthy recent action was DOL’s August 21…
August 23, 2023
Labor Department Report Finds Pandemic Unemployment Program Had a Staggering 36 Percent Improper Payment Rate
On August 21, the US Department of Labor (DOL) released its long-awaited “improper payment report” on the troubled Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. PUA was an unprecedented federal unemployment benefit program that…