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February 9, 2024

Resolving to Learn Lessons from Record Pandemic Fraud

Congress doesn’t make New Year’s resolutions, but if it did, digesting our new report on pandemic fraud would be a good one. Released last week, the new report (“Pandemic Unemployment Fraud in…

February 8, 2024

CTC Expansion Rooted in Desire to Roll Back Work-based Welfare

Modifications to the child tax credit (CTC) are included in H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, which the House of Representatives approved on…

February 6, 2024

Research by a Top Biden Administration Economist Reinforces the Importance of Work Incentives in the Child Tax Credit and the Safety Net

…building a pro-work safety net, which has occurred alongside declining poverty rates among children and single-parent families. Corinth and I, with our colleagues Angela Rachidi and Matt Weidinger, have argued…

January 31, 2024

The Wyden-Smith Child Tax Credit and Work: Responding to Critics

Matt Weidinger, recently released an analysis of the incentives built into one overlooked feature of the CTC reforms proposed in the bill—the so-called “look-back” provision. This policy change would allow…

January 29, 2024

Per-Child Benefit in Wyden-Smith Child Tax Credit Bill Would Discourage Full-Time Work for Families with Multiple Children

…children. (In general, the phase-in rate would be 15 percent times the number of dependent children.) In a recent paper, we (with our coauthors Angela Rachidi and Matt Weidinger) provided the…

January 29, 2024

Pandemic Unemployment Fraud in Context: Causes, Costs, and Solutions

Key Points The nation’s unemployment benefits system, which was significantly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, suffered unprecedented losses to fraud and improper payments.  Official—and still partial—estimates of improper payments approach…

January 21, 2024

Portland’s Encampment Kids

…need support more than ever.” She was particularly disturbed that the DA’s office is “no longer representing the state in general juvenile dependency matters.” Previously, cases where a child is…

January 19, 2024

The Work Incentive and Employment Effects of Eliminating the Child Tax Credit’s Annual Income Requirement

Abstract Senior House and Senate tax committee leaders agreed to a framework for modifying the Child Tax Credit on January 16, 2024. The most consequential reform would eliminate the Child…

January 12, 2024

Small-Dollar Demonstration Projects Can’t Hide That a National Guaranteed Income Program Would Cost Trillions

Abstract While some have declared that short-term guaranteed income demonstrations (patterned on universal basic income schemes) are working almost universally, such cheerleading misses a major drawback: the enormous costs that…

January 11, 2024

Tax Credit Nation — Politicians Are Casting New Spending As ‘Tax Cuts,’ Hiding Their True Cost

With the national debt soaring past $34 trillion, liberal politicians hoping to expand the federal leviathan face a conundrum. How can they convince Americans wary of the effects of runaway…