No comments
It’s Not Really About Work: Why Pennsylvania Should Reject Work Requirements
Click here to print or read full screen. Continue reading
Category: My Work
The Trump Tax Bill Wasn’t For You
By Sean Kitchen It’s Tax Day 2018, and you know what that means? The country’s wealthiest Americans are about to experience long-term gains from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center is concerned about the effects of the tax cut law and legislation that would make temporary tax cuts permenant after 2025. A new report from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy shows that the top 1% will receive more federal tax dollars than the bottom 60% in 47 states, and the top 20% will gobble up the majority of returns from the temporary tax provisions that were baked into the bill as tax cuts for the middle class. The top 20% will also receive a larger and more disproportionate tax cut in relation to their income. The report published by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy explains that those in the top 20%… Continue reading
PreK-12 Education Funding in Pennsylvania: Where Do We Stand?
Click here to read full screen or print. Continue reading
Governor’s 2018-19 Budget Overview
With Diana Polson and Stephen Herzenberg In 2018-19, Governor Wolf has presented another austere budget that, within the political limits of Harrisburg, makes progress on issues critical to Pennsylvanians. But because of those political limits- and through no fault of the governor- it does not make fast enough progress. This document presents an overview of the Governor’s proposed 2018-19 budget, and how we believe it continues to move Pennsylvania forward despite difficult circumstances. Continue reading
On Governor Wolf’s Proposed 2018-19 Budget
PBPC director Marc Stier made the following statement following Governor’s Wolf budget address and the press release of his proposed 2018-19 state budget: “Governor Wolf today offered a responsible budget that takes major steps towards reducing Pennsylvania’s public investment deficit without raising taxes on working people and the middle class. His budget embraces the idea that broadly shared prosperity comes from both individual initiative and public investment. His proposals for new investments in pre-k, K-12, and higher education and workforce training will help generate good jobs at good wages as will his proposal to raise the minimum wage immediately to $12 an hour. His call for new investment for human services for children, women, and families; for earned sick days; and for a bold new family leave plan will strengthen the social safety net on which so many of our fellow Pennsylvanians depend. While the budget he proposes is balanced,… Continue reading
It redistributes from working people and the middle class to the rich. And that’s just wrong.
Originally published at KRC-PBPC. With all the controversy over the details of the tax cut bill that is moving towards a final vote in the House and Senate this week it is easy to forget about the basic features of the bill. As they did during the debate over repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans put forward noxious proposals—to radically reduce the state and local tax deduction, to tax graduate student stipends, to eliminate the deduction for teachers who use their own funds in classrooms, and to eliminate the deduction for extremely high medical expenses among others—and then removed them from the final proposal. But we shouldn’t be gratified that these horrible elements of the bill are gone when the basic framework of the bill, which has remained constant in every version considered by the House and Senate, remains so awful. The legislation is basically a huge and… Continue reading
On the Passage of the US Senate GOP Tax Bill
Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, released the following statement on the passage of the U.S. Senate GOP tax bill: “Budgets are, it is frequently said, moral documents. If that is true, and we believe it is, then the tax plan adopted by the Senate today represents an extreme moral failure on the part of the Republican Party. At a time when incomes are becoming ever more unequal, the Republican tax plan will ultimately make the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer. It will benefit corporations at the expense of families. And, because of the repeal of the individual mandate, it will cost 13 million people nationwide — and 500,000 in Pennsylvania — health insurance leading to 1000 to 2000 premature deaths in our state alone. Continue reading
The GOP Tax Bill: An Assault on Economic Equality and Democracy
Budgets, it is frequently said, are an embodiment of our moral ideals and commitments. If so, the tax plan adopted by the Senate on Friday represents an extreme moral failure on the part of the senators from the Republican Party who voted for it. At a time when incomes are becoming ever more unequal, the Republican tax plan will ultimately make the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer. Not only will working people and the middle class suffer, but so will our whole country. And not only that: one has to wonder what kind of democracy America has, when our government acts in such utter disregard of a majority of the country and the common good. Many of the features of this bill that work to help the rich and harm everyone else are now well known. So let’s quickly review them with links to the hard… Continue reading
On Joint Resolution 1, The Constitutional Amendment on Property Taxes
We are getting a lot of questions about what the constitutional amendment on the ballot this year means and where the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center stands on it. We haven’t rushed to judgment on it for a couple of reasons. First, we are not convinced that this amendment will, by itself, have much impact on policy in the state. And second, given that any amendment to the Constitution is important, we wanted to make sure we understood all the implications of it before reaching a conclusion. We have reached a conclusion — that the amendment won’t make much difference. And that’s why we aren’t going to offer any recommendation about how to vote. So let’s begin by explaining what the amendment does and, as importantly, does not do. The background: our uniformity clause The key piece of background information one must know to understand this amendment is that the… Continue reading
For Many Pennsylvanians, Insurance Premiums Increase Are Greater Than Tax Cuts
As we have pointed out previously, because it repeals the individual mandate, the Senate tax cut proposal will not only lead to 13 million fewer people having health insurance in the United States, but it will lead to much higher premiums for many who do purchase health insurance on the individual market. The CBO’s estimate was that premiums nationwide would increase by 10%. Last week we presented a very rough estimate of the impact of repeal of the mandate on the average cost of health insurance premiums in Pennsylvania and suggested that the average increase in premiums is likely to be higher than the average savings in taxes under the Senate plan. New research from the Commonwealth Fund provides more detailed information on the increase in premiums for Pennsylvanians at different ages. And their work reinforces our conclusion. In 2019, much of the benefit of the tax cut to middle… Continue reading