In fiscal year 2023, the federal government is estimated to spend $6.3 trillion, amounting to 24.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of that $6.3 trillion, over $4.8 trillion is...

North Carolina recently became the 41st state (including the District of Columbia) to expand Medicaid to adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, enacting the move in its 2023-2024 fiscal budget. This leaves just ten non-expansion states that continue to deny lifesaving Medicaid health coverage — and the financial protections that come with it — to hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes.

The federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system helps many people who have lost their jobs by temporarily replacing part of their wages. (See “Policy Basics: Unemployment Insurance.”) Under...

States that run their own state-based health insurance marketplaces (SBMs) are uniquely positioned to help people no longer eligible for Medicaid transition to a marketplace plan and receive...

Our “Unwinding Watch” highlights key developments as states resume determinations on people’s Medicaid eligibility. Previously, the pandemic-related “continuous coverage” requirement...

Raising or eliminating asset limits would reduce administrative burdens without dramatically increasing enrollment.

The proposed budget would narrow opportunity, worsen racial inequities, and make it harder for people to afford the basics.

Major targets in past Republican budgets included Medicaid and the financial help people receive to purchase health coverage in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, as well as other forms of assistance that reduce poverty and hardship and expand opportunity.

Substantial relief and recovery measures helped fuel an economic recovery beginning in May 2020 that made the deepest recession in the post-World War II era also the shortest.

Today’s stunning rise in poverty is the direct result of policy choices — including Congress’s decision to allow the successful Child Tax Credit expansion to expire.

If any programs are protected from cuts, the unprotected programs would be hit much harder. Drag programs back and forth to see how big the resulting cuts would be to unprotected programs.

Poverty may have risen by historic amounts, driven by the expiration of pandemic relief including, notably, the expanded Child Tax Credit. A smaller share of people than ever may have lacked health insurance in 2022 — but figures will not reflect the coverage loss underway in 2023 due to the expiration of pandemic-era Medicaid coverage safeguards.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid help tens of millions of people with low incomes put food on the table and obtain needed medical services. But the traditional...

Public programs transformed what, without the programs, would have been a near-record surge in poverty in the COVID-19 recession into a record one-year overall poverty decline in 2020 and a record one-year decline in children's poverty in 2021.

Policymakers should preserve the program’s vital role for workers and their families and reject proposals that would weaken SNAP benefits as participants cope with the realities of the low-wage labor market.

State tax levels have little effect on whether and where people move — certainly not to a degree that should lead state policymakers to enact unaffordable tax cuts to attract people or avoid...

Work-reporting requirements do not increase employment but are very effective at kicking people off coverage due to excessive red tape and paperwork.

In the wake of a historic pandemic that created enormous economic dislocation, the economy made a much stronger and faster recovery than anticipated. The latest inflation data have been very encouraging, and recession fears have receded.

The House process stands in stark contrast to the work of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which so far has been bipartisan — with several bills being adopted unanimously.

States can and should use the flexibility and financial resources they have to support parents receiving income support from the TANF program and allow them to participate in two- and four-year college programs.

As Congress considers appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024, new data confirm that WIC needs significant additional funding — well beyond the amounts provided in current House and Senate...

The Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously advanced a Financial Services funding bill that passes a minimal test of protecting honest taxpayers by maintaining efforts to rebuild and modernize an IRS decimated by years of steep funding cuts.

The 58th anniversary of Medicaid’s enactment this month provides an opportunity to reflect on the program’s vital role in our health care system and on what can be done to sustain and advance high rates of coverage across the country.

It is critical that policymakers fill Social Security’s financing gap — and that they do so in a way that keeps the program’s promises to workers and beneficiaries and does more to protect people with low incomes from hardship.

What Are Project-Based Vouchers?Most Housing Choice Vouchers are “tenant-based,” meaning people can use them to rent any private apartment that meets program guidelines....