On Monday June 10, the Senate passed its 5-year farm bill (S. 954) by a vote of 66-27, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats on passage. The Senate bill includes a $4.1 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over ten years. The House will attempt to pass its own bill starting the week of June 17. The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee and now headed to the floor goes even further than the Senate-passed bill, cutting $20.5 billion from SNAP over the same ten-year period. Read More »
Between 1979 and 2012, after accounting for inflation, the productivity of the average American worker increased about 85 percent. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted wage of the median worker rose only about 6 percent, and the value of the minimum wage fell 21 percent. As a country, we got richer, but workers in the middle saw little of the gains, and workers at the bottom actually fell behind. Read More »
On Monday June 10, the Senate passed its 5-year farm bill (S. 954) by a vote of 66-27, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats on passage. The Senate bill includes a $4.1 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over ten years. The House will attempt to pass its own bill starting the week of June 17. The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee and now headed to the floor goes even further than the Senate-passed bill, cutting $20.5 billion from SNAP over the same ten-year period. Read More »
On Monday June 10, the Senate passed its 5-year farm bill (S. 954) by a vote of 66-27, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats on passage. The Senate bill includes a $4.1 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over ten years. The House will attempt to pass its own bill starting the week of June 17. The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee and now headed to the floor goes even further than the Senate-passed bill, cutting $20.5 billion from SNAP over the same ten-year period. Read More »
Between 1979 and 2012, after accounting for inflation, the productivity of the average American worker increased about 85 percent. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted wage of the median worker rose only about 6 percent, and the value of the minimum wage fell 21 percent. As a country, we got richer, but workers in the middle saw little of the gains, and workers at the bottom actually fell behind. Read More »
Republicans have started to set their sights on enacting tax reform and on more spending cuts, by making these goals the price of raising the federal debt limit. On May 7, the Washington Post quoted House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as saying, “The debt limit is the backstop…we need to get a downpayment on the debt; we need entitlement reform; we’re very serious about tax reform because we think that it is critical to economic growth and job creation.” In addition, interest in reforming the tax code has led to bi-partisan work in House and Senate committees to spell out options. Read More »
It looks like we’ve moved to talking about possible scandals just in time, because according to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt disaster that has obsessed the political class for the last three years is pretty much solved, at least for the next 10 years or so. The last time the CBO estimated our future deficits was February– just four short months ago. Back then, the CBO thought deficits were falling and health-care costs were slowing. Today, the CBO thinks deficits are falling even faster and health-care costs are slowing by even more. Read More »
Personal stories about federal programs building the American Dream
“Head Start is the reason my daughter is alive. The reason my family is intact. The reason I can still smile at my daughter’s beautiful face each morning.” -Amanda
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Latest Edition: June 17, 2013
Read articles from the June 17th edition, including pieces on immigration reform and cuts to SNAP in the farm bill. Read More »
