President Biden’s 2023 budget calls for a range of policies that would boost opportunity and reduce poverty, improve health and well-being, and advance widely shared prosperity.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, created in 1996, provides temporary financial assistance to few families below the poverty line — including those with no other means...

Understanding which policies states have implemented can help federal policymakers update those program rules.

President Biden’s 2023 budget calls for a range of policies that would boost opportunity and reduce poverty, improve health and well-being, and advance widely shared prosperity, funded by proposals to make the nation’s tax system stronger and fairer.

The temporary pandemic unemployment programs significantly increased the coverage, duration, and adequacy of unemployment benefits compared to regular UI, substantially reducing hardship and providing important stabilization and impetus for recovery for a sharply declining economy.

Policymakers in at least 14 states are using temporary budget surpluses to call for costly and permanent tax cuts targeted more to wealthy people and profitable corporations than to those who need...

The COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn prompted widespread expectations of severe declines in health insurance coverage, as people lost their jobs and saw their incomes plunge. But the federal government swiftly enacted relief legislation and took other policy actions that stabilized health insurance coverage, increased affordability, and mitigated adverse impacts on health care access and equity during the public health emergency.

Once the federal government ends the PHE, which is expected to happen no sooner than mid-July, states will resume their regular processes and begin reviewing all enrollees’ eligibility. The risk of mass coverage loss is high — experts estimated in recent months that over 15 million people will lose their coverage at the end of the PHE, and that number is likely higher today.

Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Michael Leachman, Vice President for State Fiscal...

What Is TANF? Congress created the TANF block grant through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, as part of a federal effort to “end welfare as we...

The robust policy response helped make the COVID-19 recession the shortest on record and helped fuel an economic recovery that has brought the unemployment rate, which peaked at 14.8 percent in April 2020, down to 4.0 percent.

In this and future tax filing seasons, states can help certain current and former Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants meet their basic needs by electing what’s known as the “tax offset option.” That is, states can elect to give families who are owed child support any support that the IRS deducts from a non-custodial parent’s tax refund due to past-due child support.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the nation’s oldest program for providing cash assistance to families with very low income, is instead laden with undignified, coercive requirements designed to exclude people due to past conduct rather than current need, and in some cases even to control their reproductive decisions.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant is designed to provide temporary cash assistance to families in poverty — primarily those with no other means to meet basic needs — but its reach has shrunk considerably over time.

Families use assistance provided by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to pay for rent, utilities, diapers, food, transportation, and other necessities. Yet too few families struggling to make ends meet can access the program, and TANF’s history of racism means that it disproportionately fails to reach families in states where Black children are likelier to live.

As it did in 2021, Mississippi is considering a deep cut in its personal income tax — a first step toward some policymakers’ goal of complete elimination — in a misguided attempt at boosting...

Federal rental assistance enables over 5 million low-income households to afford modest homes. Three major programs — Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and Public Housing — assist about 90 percent of households receiving federal rental assistance.