The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is now the primary anti-poverty program in the U.S., but it has not kept up with wage stagnation. Berkeley faculty recently proposed an increase in the federal EITC, California has adopted an expansion of its own state EITC, and Congress passed a tax bill that fails to help EITC…
Tag: welfare
Welfare and the politics of poverty
Great recap of the welfare reform travesty – in which Clinton admits that the poorest families in the U.S. are worse off after welfare reform. Also describes how state control, combined with fiscal downturns, pulled money away from the poor.
States budget cuts leave poor in a fix – SFGate
California has apparently “fixed” its budget deficit, but at what cost? One of the fallouts from the unfolding budget crises in cities and states has of course been cuts to social programs. But the scale of those cuts often gets masked by the noise of political fighting. One could be forgiven for not being able…
The Myth of the Exploding Welfare State
A great piece from Martin Eiermann in the Huffington Post last month about the assumption (“myth”) that the welfare state (public spending, entitlements, etc.) is blamed for fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The same narrative prevails in U.S. politics, especially as we teeter over the “fiscal cliff.” Five years have passed since the…
Deep cuts to the federal safety net, continued
As we head into the home stretch of the presidential election, Congress is working on the budget. Much of the work is now being done in committees, and over the next months we’ll see a lot of extreme Republican proposals, Democratic pledges to halt them, and all the politics that precedes an actual budget. But…