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.
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle makes the case for addressing the retirement of the baby boomers in economic policy sooner, rather than later. Delay, he argues, reduces the chances of long-term structural reform, makes large tax increases almost unavoidable, puts the oldest and most vulnerable of...
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle offers retiring Senator Moynihan a suggestion for one last bill to propose: a simple requirement that the poor and middle class should pay no higher tax rate on their next dollar of income earned than do the rich. If they do, then tax and expenditure authorities...
In this essay, Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle argues that it is in developing--or failing to develop--tax, accounting, and legal institutions that a significant part of the economic and democratic fate of Russia, China, and much of the rest of the second and third world rests. The corollary is...
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle offers his take on upcoming challenges facing the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees after the 2000 election.
Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle examines how the nation turned from a period of significant fiscal slack to one in which concern over deficits ruled federal policymaking for more than two decades, and why presidential candidates today feel so constrained from proposing major policy shifts despite...
Senior Fellow discusses a major dilemma facing the nation: best described as the lack of fiscal slack -- the inability to shift resources either to the greatest needs of society, reflected in no small part by the proportion of government revenues available for new domestic initiatives that...
Senior Fellow Euegene Steuerle discusses the sensibility of the Schedule 5500 EZ, a form used by so-called "one-participant retirement plans." The taxpayers involved are self-employed, with no employees or leased employees.
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,...
