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off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

In Case You Missed It....

| By CBPP

This week on Off the Charts, we focused on the economy, the federal budget and taxes, health care, and housing policy.

  • On the economy, Chad Stone examined the October jobs report, noting the continued need for federal emergency unemployment insurance.  Also from the jobs report, Michael Leachman highlighted the finding that school districts are finally starting to recover from the effects of the recession.
  • On the federal budget and taxes, we discussed how much additional deficit reduction we need to stabilize the debt and debunked the myth that safety-net programs are exploding in cost.  Chuck Marr showed that extending improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit would strengthen the economic recovery and help millions of families make ends meet.
  • On health care, Judy Solomon cautioned against trying to shrink deficits by moving all seniors and people with disabilities who receive both Medicare and Medicaid into state-run managed care plans and capping funding for their care.
  • On housing policy, Will Fischer described the need for rebalancing federal housing policy by creating a tax credit to help low-income families afford their rent.

In other news, we issued Chad Stone’s statement on the October jobs report and a paper on why $2 trillion in additional deficit savings would stabilize the debt over the next decade.  We also updated our paper showing that low-income programs are not a major contributor to the nation’s long-term fiscal problems, our chartbook on the legacy of the Great Recession, and our backgrounder on the number of weeks of unemployment benefits available in each state.