Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| Real Federal Deficit Dwarfs Official Tally The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit... |
| Examining the Means-Tested Welfare State In fiscal year 2011, federal spending on means-tested welfare came to $717 billion... |
| What End of Bush Tax Cuts Means for You Allowing the so-called Bush tax cuts to expire would have numerous negative consequences, and not just for the wealthy... |
| Needy States Use Housing Aid Cash to Plug Budgets Only 27 states have devoted all their funds from the $25 billion bank settlement to housing programs... |
| U.S. Cities Wrestle with Universities for Cash The city of Boston will receive $10 million from its local universities for the first half of 2012 alone... |
| Public-Sector Pensions: The Transition Costs Myth Pensions for state and local government employees are underfunded by between $700 billion and $4 trillion, depending on whose accounting you use... |
| Ending Congestion by Refinancing Highways The federal gas tax and most state gas taxes are not indexed to inflation, so while highway construction costs increased by about 10 times between 1956 and 2006, gasoline taxes only increased by five times... |
| Three Views of the "Fiscal Cliff" Barring action by the president and Congress, a combination of tax increases and spending cuts are set to be imposed in 2013... |
| Scholastic Books Faces State Tax Overreaching Courts in two states have ruled that bookselling company Scholastic owes back sales and use taxes, despite the fact that Scholastic has neither property nor employees in those states... |
| Reducing Profitability of Oil Companies Would Harm Regular Americans Private and public pensions own 31 percent of all U.S. oil and natural gas companies... |
