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Pre-2005 Content Archive

Report

Out in the Cold: How Much LIHEAP Funding Will Be Needed to Protect Beneficiaries from Rising Energy Prices?

January 18, 2006 | and

Key Findings

  • The Department of Energy projects that home heating prices will average 31.1 percent more this winter than last winter.
  • Because the spike in prices will substantially increase the number of low-income households in need of assistance, LIHEAP participation is likely to grow by at least 10 percent.
  • Suppose LIHEAP funding increases sufficiently to cover the projected price increases (and to cover the expected increase in program participation). Even so, poor LIHEAP beneficiaries would still see their own share of their heating bills rise by 31.1 percent.
  • To accommodate increased need and hold LIHEAP beneficiaries harmless for rising home heating prices would require LIHEAP funding of at least $4.4 billion.
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Report

Still Risky Business: South Carolina’s Revised Medicaid Waiver Proposal

January 11, 2006 |

Key Findings

  • South Carolina’s proposal to replace its Medicaid program with a system of private accounts would reduce health coverage for many vulnerable state residents and raise their out-of-pocket health care costs significantly.
  • The funds provided by the state for health care would very likely be inadequate for people with above-average health care needs, such as those with disabilities, chronic diseases, or other serious illnesses.
  • The proposal rests on key untested assumptions, such as the belief that a system of managed care plans and provider networks will rapidly emerge in South Carolina to serve Medicaid beneficiaries.
  • The waiver is unlikely to reduce the state’s Medicaid expenditures, because it focuses on beneficiaries whose care already is the least expensive, on average, while entailing a substantial increase in the state’s administrative costs.
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Report

Assessing the Effects of the Budget Conference Agreement on Low-Income Families and Individuals

January 9, 2006 | , and

Key Findings

  • The budget agreement would cause considerable hardship among low-income families and individuals and is closer in key respects to the original House-passed bill than the Senate bill.
  • Cuts in the final bill include: $16 billion over 10 years in increased Medicaid co-payments and premiums and benefit reductions; new federal mandates in the welfare area that would lead to a loss of an estimated 255,000 child care slots for low-income working families not receiving cash welfare assistance; and nearly $8 billion in lost child support collections over the next 10 years.
  • Such cuts could have been largely or fully averted had the conferees not dropped several Senate provisions that would have achieved substantial savings in reining in excessive Medicare payments to managed care companies and securing better prices from pharmaceutical companies for drugs dispensed though Medicaid.
  • The savings that the budget agreement produces are expected to be used not to reduce the deficit, but to help finance several tax cuts slated to be enacted early next year that will primarily benefit high-income individuals.
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Report

House Pension Bill Would Make Some 2001 Tax Cuts Permanent For The First Time

January 6, 2006 | and

Key Findings

  • The House pension bill would, for the first time, make permanent some of the tax cuts enacted in 2001, without offsetting the costs. This could open the door to piecemeal tax-cut extensions that could add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years.
  • The bill would protect from inflation all of the retirement-related tax cuts for high-income taxpayers enacted in 2001, but would not do the same for the only retirement-related tax cut aimed at people under $50,000.
  • As a result, the bill would protect large tax breaks for those who least need help saving for retirement, while the main retirement-related tax incentive for people with modest incomes — the saver’s credit — is allowed to erode sharply.
  • A married couple without children that earns $30,000 now gets a $1,000 tax credit if it contributes $2,000 to a retirement account. Under the House bill, if the couple’s income simply keeps pace with inflation, the couple’s tax credit will be reduced from $2,000 to $200 within several years.
  • Under the bill, the pension tax breaks for upper-income people enacted in 2001 will swell in cost over the next ten years, while the principal retirement tax incentive for moderate-income families is sharply scaled back and eventually disappears altogether, due to the failure to index it for inflation.
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Report

Senate Cuts LIHEAP Funding

December 22, 2005 |
On Wednesday, December 21, the Senate voted to strip from the conference report on the defense appropriation bill for fiscal year 2006 (H.R. 2863) legislative language that would have opened the...
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Report

House Budget Reconciliation Bill Includes Highly Flawed TANF Provisions That Have Repeatedly Failed To Garner Support

November 30, 2005 |

Key Findings

  • TANF provisions in the House budget reconciliation bill would impose rigid and costly new requirements on state TANF programs and could force some states to abandon successful welfare-to-work initiatives.
  • The House bill contains grossly insufficient funding for states to meet its new requirements. Funding for the TANF block grant would remain frozen, and funding for child care would not even keep pace with inflation.
  • The House bill also contains a severe cut in child support enforcement funding that would cause $24 billion in child support to go uncollected over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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Report

FEMA Action Raises More Doubts about Federal Commitment to Aid Katrina Victims New Policy Puts Vulnerable Families at Risk

November 18, 2005 | and

Key Findings:

  • FEMA’s plan to terminate reimbursements for hotel or motel stays on December 1 is likely to leave many Katrina evacuees without adequate temporary housing.
  • FEMA’s plan could place substantial burdens on state and local governments that have assisted Katrina evacuees and undermine the effectiveness of local government efforts to relocate families into stable housing.
  • FEMA should fix the shortcomings of its cash rental assistance program that are likely to make it ineffective for many low-income families.
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Report

President Bush Embraces House Budget

November 18, 2005
The Administration has now released its official “Statement of Administration Policy” (or SAP) on the budget bill that passed the House of Representatives early this morning.[1] In it, the...
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Report

False Promise of Prosperity: For Kansas Economic Growth, TABOR May Do More Harm than Good

November 3, 2005 | , and

Key Findings

  • A proposed TABOR amendment in Kansas would not help the state's economy. It would undermine education, transportation, public safety, and other services important to economic development.
  • Business leaders in Colorado, the only state with a TABOR, say it endangers economic growth.
  • Differences between Colorado's economic growth rate and that of Kansas are attributable to differences in the states' geographies, populations and economic bases that long predate TABOR.
  • Since TABOR's enactment, Colorado's economic growth rate has not improved relative to that of its Rocky Mountain neighbors.
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Report

Unshared Sacrifice

November 2, 2005 | and
The eight House Committees charged with making cuts in a wide range of mandatory (or “entitlement”) programs under this year’s budget process have all completed their work. The reconciliation...
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