In Case You Missed It...

This week on Off the Charts, we talked about the economy, the federal budget, federal taxes, state budgets, and housing.

• On the economy, Arloc Sherman highlighted new information showing that the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) had an even greater effect on preventing struggling Americans from falling into poverty than previously thought.
• On the federal budget, Richard Kogan explained why a recent proposal to insert the President into the process of crafting and adopting a budget resolution would do more harm than good.
• On federal taxes, Chuck Marr noted the importance of a Senate report that outlined the failure of the 2004 repatriation tax holiday, and Chye-Ching Huang pointed to new data from the Congressional Research Service showing the extent to which the federal tax system violates the so-called “Buffet rule.”
• On state budgets, Nick Johnson discussed the cuts that states have made this year in per-pupil spending on K-12 education and how they compare to what states spent on K-12 education in 2008.
• On housing, we featured a portion of Will Fischer’s testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity on the need for Congress to pass core provisions in the Section 8 Savings Act (SESA).

In other news, we released reports on the threat that House and Senate funding bills pose to low-income rental assistance and on why a proposed second repatriation tax holiday would increase deficits and push investments overseas without generating the promised increase in jobs. We also published a statement by Paul Van de Water on the CLASS Act and Will Fischer’s testimony on SESA before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity.