Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| Revenues Recover but States Still Tight-Fisted For the upcoming 2013 fiscal year, total U.S. state revenues will increase by $27.4 billion, or 4.1 percent, to reach $690.3 billion; general fund spending, however, will rise by only $14.6 billion, or 2.2 percent... |
| Disability versus Work Over the past three years, an additional 1 million Americans started receiving disability benefits, bringing the total number to 10.8 million, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| State Tax Trend No. 7: Collapsing Unemployment Insurance Systems Between 2008 and 2011, $174 billion was paid in unemployment taxes while $450 billion was paid out in benefits, a gap of $276 billion... |
| State Tax Trend No. 8: Insufficient Rainy Day Funds The typical state can expect a revenue shortfall equal to 13 to 18 percent of revenue during a normal downturn... |
| Federal Disability Insurance Nears Collapse The pot of money that funds the disability insurance program is projected to be empty by 2016... |
| Obama's Real Spending Record President Obama has continued spending enormous amounts on bloated government policies while taking advantage of accounting techniques afforded by the repayment of Troubled Asset Relief Program loans... |
| State Tax Trend No. 9: State Abuse of Medicaid Matching Funds During the recent economic downturn, 20 states increased health provider taxes to take advantage of federal matching funds... |
| Corporate Welfare Spending vs. the Entrepreneurial Economy A forthcoming Cato Institute study finds that federal business subsidies total almost $100 billion annually... |
| State Tax Trend No. 10: Cigarette Tax Increases Tapering Off Only six states increased their cigarette tax rate in 2010, and only three states did so in 2011... |
| Crop Insurance Proposal Could Cost U.S. Billions The proposed subsidization of crop insurance has a significant perverse incentive, in that it encourages farmers to exploit land with exceptional risk, overextending their operations... |
