This paper explores the potential impact of the Federal Reserve Board’s decision on interest rates on the budget deficit. The first part recounts the history of the 1990s surplus, correcting the widely held misunderstanding that this surplus was achieved by the Clinton administration’s tax...

Many people in policy debates have argued that means testing, or reducing Social Security payments to affluent beneficiaries, can be an effective way to save money for the program and to reduce the federal budget deficit. This paper examines the feasibility of saving money through various types...

Although the national debate on financial transactions taxes has just begun, there have been a wide range of responses arguing that the tax is either undesirable or unenforceable, or both. This paper presents a brief response to these criticisms.

This joint report by CEPR and the Political Economy Research Institute (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) gives an estimate of $177-354 billion in revenue that could be raised by taxing financial transactions in the United States.

Representative Paul Ryan's proposed 2012 budget has been lauded as a path to prosperity, with much attetion given to his overhaul of the medicare system. Using data from the CBO analysis of the Ryan plan, this issue brief demonstrates that any savings to the government under the revamped...

Representative Ryan’s proposal to replace the current Medicare systemwith a system of vouchers or premium supports has been widely described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. However, the size of this shift is actually small relative to the projected increase in costs...

This paper outlines a proposal for a system of work sharing that would give employers an incentive to maintain workers on their payroll at reduced hours as an alternative to laying them off. The system would be attached to the existing system of unemployment compensation, with shorttime...

This paper covers seven key points about the national debt, budget and trade deficits, and the dollar that the public needs to understand in order to be well-informed and prepared to choose among various policy options.

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market...

During the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama proposed cutting the annual cost of living adjustment for Social Security by switching to an index that would show a lower measured rate of inflation. This alternative index, the chained consumer price index (CCPI-U), shows...