Bruced Meyer News Today

A new book shows how government contracts are serving vendors, not American veterans and families. “Recoding America” offers solutions. Read more.

Extended unemployment insurance benefits cause some unemployed workers to take longer to find new work.

In 1962, Michael Harrington wrote The Other America: Poverty in the United States. Harrington’s book was a catalyst for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty. Harrington explained that in the early 1960s, amid the affluence of post-war America, between 40 million and 50 million citizens of the United States were poor. In the early 1960s, the U.S. had a significant poverty problem.

Experts worry Congress may not be functional enough to get much done.

The labor market's perceived weakness has led to calls for anotherextension of temporary unemployment insurance benefits, but thiswould increase spending by roughly $1 billion per month and isunnecessary given the demonstrated strengthening of the labormarket. Any extension of jobless claims generates exactly the wrongincentives and increases the average duration of unemployment forthose who qualify.

The Healthy Families Act (HFA, S. 910), sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), would require businesses with 15 or more employees to provide mandatory paid sick leave. While the law should help workers taking time off when they or a family member needs medical care, a paid sick leave mandate would lead to wage cuts, forcing workers to take their pay in the form of sick leave whether they want to or not.

The Social Security payroll tax is not the only federal taxaccumulating excess tax dollars in Washington, D.C.

The Social Security payroll tax is not the only federal taxaccumulating excess tax dollars in Washington, D.C.

Monthly payments could bring down poverty — or blow up the deficit

An expansion of the child tax credit is ending, just as the latest wave of coronavirus cases is keeping people home from work and threatening to set off a new round of furloughs.