March 10, 2026
Don’t Tax the Public Housing Poor Like They’re Rich
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed the most dramatic low-income housing policy change in decades, potentially affecting the more than 5 million tenants in public and voucher-subsidized housing. The new proposed regulation, announced on March 6, would permit local housing authorities to adopt both time limits and work requirements for these tenants, who are among…
March 5, 2026
Summary and Analysis of the “Stop Unemployment Fraud Act”
Background This week, senior House and Senate Members are introducing legislation designed to prevent a repeat of runaway fraud and abuse that afflicted unemployment benefit programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors of the legislation are Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK),…
March 5, 2026
States Can Strengthen Families and Fight Welfare Dependence and Fraud
For six decades, Washington has waged a War on Poverty with ever‑increasing sums of money. According to the House Budget Committee, federal means‑tested welfare spending now exceeds $1 trillion a year, with more than $12 trillion projected over the next decade. When counted as income for recipients, all that spending has reduced poverty, even as it has left growing…
February 25, 2026
What Can We Learn from Guaranteed Basic Income Pilots in the United States? Evidence on Employment Effects
Abstract Between 2017 and 2025, at least 122 pilots across 33 states and the District of Columbia evaluated a guaranteed basic income (GBI), allocating $481 million in GBI payments to more than 40,000 recipients. We summarize the methodologies and findings of these studies, with a focus on employment effects. Among the 30 pilots that are…
February 25, 2026
On the Federal Deficit, Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit Won’t Be Enough
If you look closely, you can see some progress on cutting federal spending. At least that’s the conclusion of the respected Kim Strassel, writing recently in the Wall Street Journal before the Congressional Budget Office released its broad budget and economic forecast for the coming decade. Strassel compared the past two fiscal years and found that “overall discretionary spending is down by $1 billion.”…
February 13, 2026
What Harvard’s Raj Chetty Overlooks About Upward Mobility
The Harvard economist Raj Chetty, justly famous for his studies of the factors that enable upward mobility in America, is back with a new analysis that has attracted wide attention. Thanks to access to the individual tax records of a million former public housing residents whom his Opportunity Insights team tracked, he determined that a move from “the projects” to a…
February 10, 2026
Trump Houses Are a Good Idea—If
Facing public concern about high home purchase prices, the Trump Administration is said to be considering the idea of “Trump Houses,” starter homes to be built privately but with some sort of federal backing to encourage the private investors. Potential buyers would start off as renters and make the transition to owners after three years….
January 27, 2026
How to Prevent a Repeat of Massive Fraud and Abuse
Welfare fraud scandals in Minnesota have focused the nation’s attention on benefit abuse, and the US Department of Labor recently detailed a team there to investigate whether unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been ripped off. There’s a good chance the answer is yes, and that some of the blame resides with how we pay for…
January 22, 2026
Democrats Face Stark Choice on Housing Affordability
Affordability, especially lowering housing costs, enjoys bipartisan political support — at least in theory. But affordability is a goal, not a specific program, and even progressive Democrats can break with each other on how to achieve it. That’s the lesson learned from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent housing proposal, one that sets the relatively moderate Democrat…
January 21, 2026
Funding the Administration of Unemployment Benefits: Overview and Reforms to Improve Efficiency and Program Integrity
Executive Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant flaws in the nation’s unemployment insurance (UI) system, which resulted in the improper payment of at least $191 billion—and potentially upwards of $400 billion—in taxpayer funds. The direct causes of those extensive losses included the poor design of temporary federal benefit programs, which opened the door to abuse,…