This page shows a chronological list of all CBPP materials.
Health Opportunity Accounts For Low-Income Medicaid Beneficiaries: A Risky Approach
What Are The Effects Of Cutting Domestic Appropriations Another Two Percent?
Key Findings
- To reach its budget targets, the House of Representatives has already approved appropriations bills that cut domestic programs an average of 2.8 percent or $11 billion below the 2005 funding level, adjusted only for inflation.
- Chairman Nussle of the House Budget Committee is proposing that domestic appropriated programs (and defense and international programs as well) be cut an additional two percent.
- If the additional two-percent cut is applied across the board, many domestic programs would undergo substantial reductions from the combination of the cuts made in the appropriations bills the House has already passed and the additional across-the-board cut. This analysis portrays the cuts that would result in a number of programs, including Community Development Block Grants, Head Start, EPA clean water grants, Title 1 education for the disadvantaged, special education for people with disabilities, and Section 8 tenant-based housing vouchers.
Energy and Commerce Committee Bill Imposes New Costs on Low-Income Medicaid Beneficiaries
House Agriculture Committee Reconciliation Package Targets Food Stamp Program For Cuts
House Reconciliation Bill Targets Key Low-Income Programs in Ways and Means Committee's Jurisdiction
Larger Reconciliation Cuts in the House Would Put Low-Income Programs at Greater Risk
Impact of Additional Entitlement Cuts: A State-By-State Analysis
Poverty, Income, and Health Insurance Tables
New IRS Data Show Income Inequality Is Again On The Rise
An Analysis of the National Governors Association’s Proposals for “Short-Run Medicaid Reform”
Changes Needed In Katrina Transitional Housing Plan
Key Findings:
- The amount of rental assistance provided to evacuees is insufficient for some families to secure housing.
- For many families receiving rental assistance under FEMA's Individuals and Households Program, housing will remain unstable because the duration of assistance is uncertain.
- Some families will need relocation and housing search assistance, as well as direct payments to owners through rental vouchers, to secure stable housing.
Adopting MedPAC Recommendations to Reduce Excessive Medicare Managed Care Plan Payments Could Yield Large Budget Reconciliation Savings
Many Katrina Survivors Seeking Medicaid in Louisiana Shelters Remain Without Coverage: Medicaid Categorical Eligibility Rules Continue to be the Major Barrier
Critical Choices: Will Congress Secure Health Care Savings by Targeting “Weak Claims” or “Weak Clients”?
Congress Using the "Reconciliation" Process Again To Make It Easier To Pass Deficit-Increasing Tax Cuts
Dividend and Capital Gains Tax Cuts Unlikely to Yield Touted Economic Gains
Getting Serious About Deficits?
The House Republican Study Committee's Proposals to Offset the Costs of Hurricane Relief
Key Findings
- Some $375 billion in cuts over ten years— or nearly 40 percent of the cuts in the RSC package — would come from programs that assist people with low incomes. The package includes large cuts in Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and help to the world’s most poverty-stricken nations to fight AIDS and other diseases.
- The package also would squeeze millions of middle-class households; for most elderly couples, premiums and co-payments under Medicare would be raised an average of $1,700 in 2006 and about $10,000 over five years.
- The RSC package also includes large reductions in grants to help local governments improve “first responders” capabilities, in funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and in funding for environmental protection and energy conservation, among other areas.
- While including these cuts, the package would not delay or scale back any tax cuts or close any tax shelters. It would leave fully in place tax cuts that now average $103,000 a year for people with incomes over $1 million a year, and would allow two new tax cuts exclusively for high-income households to take effect January 1.
Failing to Deliver: Administration’s Medicaid Waiver Policy Excludes Many Katrina Survivors and Provides No Guarantee of Full Federal Financing
Benefit Levels for Unemployed Hurricane Victims are Too Low
Medicaid Categorical Eligibility Rules are Proving a Major Obstacle to Getting Health Coverage to Impoverished Katrina Victims in Louisiana: Pending Legislation Would Address Coverage Gaps in Louisiana and Other States
An Estate Tax with a 15 Percent Tax Rate Does Not Represent a Reasonable Compromise
What the New CBO Report Finds About Social Security “Grow Accounts”
Statement on Proposed Katrina-Relief Budget Package Presented by Republican Study Committee
Another Round of Economic Stimulus?
Two Tax Cuts Primarily Benefiting Millionaires Slated To Take Effect In January
Essential Facts About The Victims of Hurricane Katrina
Katrina Relief and Federal Spending and Deficits
States Are Decoupling From the Federal “Qualified Production Activities Income” Deduction
Medicaid and SCHIP Retention in Challenging Times: Strategies from Managed Care Organizations
A State of Decline: What a TABOR Would Mean for Kansas
Key Findings
Kansas state expenditures would have been $890 million, or 19 percent, lower in FY 2005 if a TABOR had been in effect since 1993. Large cuts would have been required to accommodate the TABOR limits, potentially including:
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Cutting 10,000 K-12 teachers
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Increasing the average pupil-teacher ratio from 15 to 23
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Eliminating the HealthWave insurance program for low-income children
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Increasing university tuition by an average of $1,400
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Incarcerating 1,300 fewer inmates
Meeting the Basic Needs of Hurricane Katrina Victims
Reconciliation Bills Would Increase the Deficit and Favor the Well-Off
Key Findings
- Taken together, the two planned reconciliation bills — one cutting programs, the other cutting taxes — would increase the deficit by more than $35 billion over five years.
- Never before has Congress split reconciliation into two separate bills when the overall effect of reconciliation would be to increase deficits, rather than reduce them.
- The separation into two bills may be intended, in part, to divert attention from the fact that the cuts of almost $35 billion in programs such as Medicaid, Food Stamps, and student loans would be used not to reduce the deficit, but to offset partially the $70 billion in tax cuts.
- A significant part of the budget cuts would come in programs serving low- and moderate-income Americans, while the benefits of the tax cuts are likely to go overwhelmingly to the best-off taxpayers.
Should States Suspend Their Gasoline Taxes?
Statement of Robert Greenstein on Challenges Facing Congress and the Nation in the Wake of the Devastation of Hurricane Katrina
Statement: Robert Greenstein on Administration Mischaracterizations Regarding the Economy and New Data on Poverty, Income, and Health Insurance
The Number of Uninsured Americans Continued To Rise In 2004
Economic Recovery Failed To Benefit Much of The Population In 2004
Appendix 1: Summary Analysis of Voucher Provisions of House
HUD Data Show Housing Voucher Costs Leveled Off Starting In 2003 As Rental Market Cooled
Public Benefits: Easing Poverty and Ensuring Medical Coverage
Key Findings:
Assistance provided through public programs:
- reduces the number of poor Americans by 27 million people, including 14 million elderly people and nearly 5 million children;
- reduces the severity of poverty for those who remain poor, by increasing their average disposable income from 29 percent to 57 percent of the poverty line; and
- reduces the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions.
Food and Nutrition Programs: Reducing Hunger, Bolstering Nutrition
Supplemental Security Income: Supporting People With Disabilities And The Elderly Poor
Supplemental Security Income:
SSI assists people who are aged (age 65 or over), disabled, or blind and who have very low incomes and very limited resources.
In 2005, the SSI benefit for an individual who lives alone and has no other income is $579 a month, or 73 percent of the poverty line. Some states supplement the SSI benefit with an additional payment that brings beneficiaries closer to — or, in a small number of instances, just above — the poverty line.
If an SSI beneficiary receives income from other sources or lives with other people, his or her SSI benefit may be reduced. In 2003, the average SSI benefit received by a person with a disability was about $433 a month. Close to 30 percent of all SSI recipients have no other income and receive the full SSI benefit. Another 35 percent have a small Social Security benefit and receive a modest SSI benefit to supplement that income.
The SSI eligibility criteria are stringent. SSI’s definition of “disability” is the same as that used in Social Security. A person must have a physical or mental impairment that will last at least 12 months or is expected to result in death. In addition, the person must prove that he or she is not able to engage in any “substantial gainful activity” as a result of the impairment.
The definition is stricter than definitions commonly used in private disability insurance. It also is stricter than definitions used in many public employee benefit systems for federal, state, or local employees.
In addition, people with countable assets of more than $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple are ineligible for SSI.