This week on Off the Charts, we focused on the federal budget and taxes, unemployment insurance, state budgets and taxes, the minimum wage, and income inequality.
On the federal budget and taxes, Richard Kogan noted that Congress has already agreed to its 2015 budget plan, through last December’s budget deal between Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray and House Budget Chair Paul Ryan. Chuck Marr pointed to his commentary on growing bipartisan support for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
On unemployment insurance, we showed where things stand for the unemployed, including the number of weeks of unemployment insurance available in each state.
On state budgets and taxes, Michael Leachman listed three reasons why caution is the right approach to state surpluses.
On the minimum wage, we highlighted CBPP Senior Fellow Jared Bernstein’s column in the latest edition of CQ Researcher that explained how raising the minimum wage would help the economy.
On income inequality, Chad Stone recapped three animated graphs from our Illustrating Income Inequality blog series that showed how most of the income growth in recent decades has occurred at the very top.