First Tuesday Forum: Making Taxes and Welfare Work Together

November 7, 2006
Urban Institute
2100 M Street N.W., 5th Floor, Washington, D.C.
Noon - 1:30 p.m.

Panelists

• Jon Forman, professor of law, University of Oklahoma
• Janet Holtzblatt, financial economist, Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Department of the Treasury
• Iris Lav, deputy director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Robert Lerman, senior fellow, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute
• Eugene Steuerle, senior fellow, Urban Institute; codirector, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (moderator)

Roughly 85 overlapping federal tax and transfer programs provide cash, food, health care, and other benefits to low-income families. This welfare "system" was developed with little regard for coordination among the various programs, and most experts agree that the web of support is unnecessarily complicated, inequitable, and expensive to administer. In addition, as some low-income families make financial progress, higher taxes and benefit reductions can combine to discourage individuals from working more or improving their job skills.

Panelists debated one possible solution: combining as many tax and welfare programs as possible into a comprehensive system of refundable tax credits. The publication of Jon Forman's Making America Work is the occasion for a lively discussion of how the tax and welfare systems coexist.