Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| Romney, Obama and Simpson-Bowles: How Do the Tax Reform Plans Stack Up? Economic growth would only increase by 1 percent a year under Obama's tax plan, in contrast to the 4 percent per year growth under Romney's plan... |
| How Are Baby Boomers Spending Their Money? Home mortgages comprise almost three-quarters of all consumer debt, and three-fourths of middle-aged and older workers' households have mortgages, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| The Estate Tax: Even Worse than Republicans Say The estate tax is the smallest source of revenue of any major tax in the United States; in 2011, it raised roughly 0.05 percent of all federal revenue... |
| Is It Too Late to Fix Social Security's Finances? If a financing solution cannot be reached, then Social Security's self-financing construct would need to be abandoned... |
| Total State Debt over $4 Trillion The aggregate debt across all 50 states totals $4.17 trillion this year; this is an improvement over last year's $4.24 trillion total debt... |
| Social Security's Woes Are Worse than You Think By 2035, Social Security will cost 6.4 percent of the economy while Medicare will cost 5.7 percent... |
| The Grim Reapers of Crop Insurance Subsidies for crop insurance do nothing more than allow farmers to adopt risky production practices because they are insulated from the consequences of their own bad decisions... |
| The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays? The top 10 percent of tax filers make up 45 percent of the total federal taxes paid... |
| The State Gambling Addiction Oklahoma predicted their lottery would raise $150 million; the actual revenue raised was $70 million... |
| How the States Would Be Affected by Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and Other Provisions The Alternative Minimum Tax patch would save middle- and high-income taxpayers $193 billion; extending the Bush tax cuts would save all taxpayers $179 billion... |
