I love working on public finance issues and seeing their endless application to so many budget, tax, spending, and charitable issues that go well beyond what can be found in any textbook. I am drawn to Urban because in my view, it leads the nation in so many areas of research—combining its talents for evaluating a broad spectrum of public policy issues, gathering and using related data from a range of sources, and integrating research across disparate program areas; and all the while maintaining a truly nonpartisan approach to analysis, a deep culture of respect for each member of the organization, and a strong commitment to serve the public through its work.
Despite the generosity of Americans most of the needs of individuals are not met through transfers made through charities; thus, charities must choose whom they'll serve.
For a variety of reasons, the current social security system does an increasingly weaker job over time in allocating its additional revenues to providing protection against poverty in old-age.
Depreciation policy seems to be back on the table for the first time since the mid-1980s, so it's again timely to ask: What are the best depreciation policies for the nation?
The issuance of an interim report by the Social Security Commission sparked a firestorm. Nonetheless, the report may be "under-interpreted" for what it suggests about dealing with the problems of the poor and "over-interpreted" for what it says about the reforms it will finally propose. The best...
The 2001 tax act was only one in a long series of tax laws complicating an already byzantine tax system. Ever the bridesmaid, simplification seems never to get the attention it deserves, no matter which political party is in powermainly because broader agendas are always being pursued.
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle argues that in a world with multiple transfer and tax programs, one can't solve the issue of how to set tax rates unless the tax and spending sides of the budget are analyzed together, and unless phaseouts of various tax and expenditure benefits are considered along...
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle describes how tax legislation in 2001 brought to light the difficulty with trying to deal with only one side of the budget at a time, especially with regard to the progressivity issue.
[Financial Times] In many ways, the debate over the tax bill was simply a warm-up for the much larger budgetary issues that Congress and President George W. Bush must face over the next few years. There is little doubt that if healthcare and retirement spending increase as scheduled,...
The Congressional Budget Office and government actuaries for decades have shown that Social Security and Medicare remain on unsustainable tracks, but it is often hard...
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Biden recently agreed to cut back on some of the increased IRS funding enacted through last year’s Inflation...
The recent compromise between Republicans and Democrats on extending the federal debt limit was hailed for avoiding the disaster of a default, demonstrating that both...
Like all presidential budgets, President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 proposals reflect the priorities he would set for the nation. As in prior years, Biden would...
While Congress talks about the federal debt, it’s still hesitating to deal with one major source of rising deficits—Medicare—that it can’t avoid much longer. Medicare’s...
During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Congress substantially increased benefits for children, including big boosts in the Child Tax Credit...
In just 13 years, Social Security trust funds will be unable to pay full promised benefits. Unfortunately, a House bill with broad bipartisan support could...
It’s always tempting to exaggerate the importance of the latest big fight in Congress. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) made some major policy...
The new minimum tax on the income that very large corporations report to their shareholders is the revenue centerpiece of the recently enacted Inflation Reduction...
President Trump was afraid to tackle the dominant set of spending and tax issues facing the federal government. Ditto, so far, for President Biden. Under...
Among its many changes, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act substantially increased the share of federal income taxpayers taking the standard deduction, leaving fewer...
Policymakers and even policy analysts often consider the progressivity of specific proposals independently from the broader systems in which they operate. Consequently, they often leave...
When Congress increases spending and cuts taxes then fails to extend the nation’s debt limit, it effectively orders the president to run deficits while prohibiting...
Buried in today’s partisan squabbles over President Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda is a fundamental question: How can government best increase the nation’s wealth? Does it...
A key feature of President Biden’s effort to expand government support for low-income families is its increase in the earned income tax credit (EITC) for...
Most Social Security reform proposals have focused on one goal: restoring the program’s long-run fiscal balance. Yet under all recent proposed restructurings we have examined—whether...
The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying recession laid bare many of the needs of working families and children, as well as federal, state, and local governments’...
When Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan (ARP), it included an implicit deal: It agreed to reduce the level of additional future weekly federal unemployment...
In 2017 and again in 2020, Congress made deficient—but temporary—changes to the federal income tax deduction for charitable giving. By significantly increasing the standard deduction,...
