In Case You Missed It...

April 4, 2014 at 11:22 PM

BY

CBPP

This week on Off the Charts, we focused on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget, health care, the federal budget and taxes, jobs, state budgets and taxes, and our year-long initiative on full employment.

On Chairman Ryan’s budget, we excerpted a paper previewing why we expected Ryan’s new budget to be at least as extreme as last year’s. We pointed to CBPP President Robert Greenstein’s statement on why Ryan’s new “Path to Prosperity” is, sadly, anything but that for most Americans. Edwin Park noted that Ryan’s efforts to block grant Medicaid would add millions to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured. Richard Kogan illustrated that Ryan’s new budget gets 69 percent of its cuts from low-income programs. Will Fischer explained that Ryan uses a faulty number to argue that Housing Choice Voucher program costs have risen excessively and floats a proposal that could lay the groundwork for deep, harmful cuts in the voucher program.

On health care, Jesse Cross-Call highlighted important lessons from New Hampshire’s and Michigan’s Medicaid expansions for states currently debating whether to expand. Paul Van de Water explained why raising health reform’s threshold for full-time work would be counterproductive.

On the federal budget and taxes, Chye-Ching Huang excerpted her New York Times “Room for Debate” op-ed, cautioning that policymakers who want to use the tax code to help children should be sure that their policies reach working-poor families.

On jobs, Chad Stone noted that the March employment report shows a labor market that continues to improve gradually, but that remains far from healed.

On state budgets and taxes, Chris Mai explained that although the news of state tax collections reaching their pre-recession levels is welcome, it’s not cause for celebration.