Category: Blog post

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Connecting Trump’s Dots

  By Blog post

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 12, 2025. June 12, 2025 By Marc Stier Let me connect some dots between what’s happening in Los Angeles and what’s happening in Congress and a few other places.  Some of the protests in LA have been violent. I, like most people on the Left, oppose that violence.  But let’s be real. Before the Guard and other military were called in, the protests were mainly peaceful. We saw mainly a garden-variety kind of violence, of the kind that happens in our country often, such as when the local sports team wins a championship. Since then, violence has been exacerbated by the presence of the Guard and military. There was no need to call out the National Guard—and if there had been, Governor Newsom would have done so. Trump has been lying through his teeth about what is going on in LA to justify… Continue reading

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A Response to the Philadelphia Inquirer About Business Taxes

  By Blog post, LTE, Penn Policy Center

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 12, 2025. June 12, 2025 By Marc Stier The Inquirer’s editorial endorsement of cuts to city business and wage taxes repeats three widely held but false ideas.   First, Philadelphia’s taxes do not encourage businesses to locate outside the city. Philadelphia business taxes are not based on location but on activity. Businesses that earn income and receipts in the city pay the BIRT whether they are based inside or outside Philadelphia. And businesses located inside the city do not pay the BIRT on income and receipts they earn outside it.   The one exception is for businesses that sell intangible services such as law or investment firms. The City has already enacted a law to fix this problem. It needs approval by the General Assembly, and diverse interests in Harrisburg are ready to support it.  Second, it is not true that the city is… Continue reading

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The Budget Pennsylvania Needs

  By Blog post

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 12, 2025. June 12, 2025 By Marc Stier We are almost at the middle of June, the time when the political leaders of our state begin to get serious about enacting the budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1. So, this is a good time to focus on what Pennsylvanians want to see fiscal year 2025–26 look like. We at the Pennsylvania Policy Center and our partners in the Pennsylvanians Together advocacy campaign have three priorities. We believe that the Pennsylvania budget will not be complete without enacting Governor Shapiro’s plan for K–12 education, his plan to support public transit, and an increase to the minimum wage that puts the state on a short path to $15 per hour. K–12 Education Pennsylvania remains under a court order—as well as a moral imperative— to adequately and equitably fund K–12 education.… Continue reading

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Cutting Business Taxes Is the Wrong Strategy for Philadelphia

  By Blog post, Op-ed, Penn Policy Center, Published Op-Eds

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 4, 2025. June 3, 2025 By Marc Stier Sometime at the beginning of the next decade, the City of Philadelphia’s pension fund will be fully funded. As a result, the City will be able to stop making catch-up payments, which are roughly $400 million per year. The question then is: What should our city do with that money? Mayor Parker’s answer is to deeply cut part of the business income and receipts tax (BIRT) as the recent Tax Reform Commission (TRC) has recommended. But the members of the community advisory committee to the TRC and I have another idea that we think is better. We all know that, despite the great wealth in our city, the share of Philadelphia’s population that lives in poverty is the highest among large US cities. Yet the city does far too little to reduce poverty. Why… Continue reading

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The Republican Budget Plan Will Lead to the Largest Redistribution from the Working and Middle Class to the Ultra-Rich in US History

  By Blog post, Penn Policy Center, Policy Brief

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 16, 2025. House Republicans are moving with a budget reconciliation bill that makes deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax cuts to the ultra rich.  One charts sums up the impact of the reconciliation bill. The cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP total a bit more than 1.1 trillion over ten years.. And that is equal to the tax cuts for people with incomes above $500,000. The Bill Undermines Health Care and Food Security Nationwide While Cutting Taxes Mostly for the Rich Medicaid is and SNAP are on the chopping block. Nationwide, at least 13.7 million people could see their health coverage taken away under the House Republicans’ budget plan attack on both Medicaid and the ACA. In addition, many of the 42 million people who participate in SNAP could lose help affording groceries.   The budget bills passed… Continue reading

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The Energy and Commerce Medicaid Proposal in Context

  By Blog post, Editorial Board Memo, Penn Policy Center

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 12, 2025. May 12, 2025 By Marc Stier The Energy and Commerce Committee Medicaid Plan Release Last Night  Last night the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a chairman’s mark (or chairman’s draft) of its proposals for cutting Medicaid. According to a Congressional Budget Office preliminary analysis, the proposal includes very deep cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, totaling $715 billion over ten years.  This is worse than what we expected.  According to the CBO, the result is that between Medicaid and ACA cuts, 14.2 million people nationwide will lose health insurance. Other cuts not included in the CBO analysis might raise the total to 17 million people. Our rough estimate is that between 548,000 and 680,000 Pennsylvanians will lose health insurance. (We will have a firmer analysis in a few days.) This translates roughly into between 57,000 and 70,000 people losing health insurance in the 8th Congressional District in Northeast Pennsylvania and roughly half that amount… Continue reading

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The Trump–Republican Threat to Fair Taxes and Fiscal Integrity

  By Blog post, Policy Paper

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 12, 2025. VIEW IN A PDF READER. The Trump-Republican Tax Plan RevisedDownload Continue reading

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Projecting the Costs to the Pennsylvania Budget of Federal Safety Net Cuts

  By Blog post, Penn Policy Center, Policy Brief

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 9, 2025. VIEW IN A PDF READER. FINAL Projecting the Costs of Safety Net Cuts to PADownload Continue reading

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Seven Myths About Raising the Minimum Wage—Debunked (2025 update)

  By Blog post, Op-ed, Penn Policy Center, Published Op-Eds

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 5, 2025. May 5, 2025 By Marc Stier Note: This is an updated version of a piece I wrote while I was director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. It was published in the Penn Capital–Star on October 3, 2019. A few things have changed since then—and I’ve added sixth and seventh myths to supplement the original five—but most of the arguments I made at that time not only remain true but are supported by new evidence. Raising the minimum wage in Pennsylvania is long overdue. Yet even though the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a good minimum wage bill in 2023 that was actually modeled on one introduced in the Senate, Pennsylvania’s Senate Republican leadership continues to refuse to hold a hearing or bring it up for a vote where, we believe, it would almost certainly pass. Some legislators remain… Continue reading

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The Trump–Republican Threat to Medicaid

  By Blog post, Policy Paper

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 3, 2025. VIEW IN A PDF READER. The Threat to Medicaid Revised UpdateDownload Continue reading