President Bush has proposed a tax package to spur economic recovery and promote growth. The President's plan includes accelerating scheduled tax rate cuts, ending the double taxation of corporate income and increasing the amount of capital expenditures small businesses can deduct from their taxable income.
In the early 20th century, state governments and the District of Columbia set up Workers' Compensation (WC) systems to pay employees' lost income and medical expenses due to job-related accidents.
National energy policy is a more prominent issue now than at any time since the "energy crisis" of the 1970s. Congress is debating legislation that would create a new national energy policy in response to electric industry deregulation, rising and wildly fluctuating energy prices, deteriorating relations with energy exporting countries, energy implications of the war with Iraq and various environmental concerns.
Access to safe and affordable child care has been a major issue in the congressional debate on reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform law.
Foreigners have invested more than $1 trillion in capital in the United States since 1984, when Congress and the Reagan administration established a policy of not taxing interest they earn on U.S. bank deposits.
America's health care system is an uneven playing field. Government subsidizes employer-provided health insurance by excluding the premiums from taxation.
Social Security reform is one of the nation's most prominent domestic policy issues. A common feature of many leading Social Security reform plans is that they would prefund benefits by integrating personal retirement accounts into the current system.
About 31 million Americans live in households with incomes below the poverty level, according to the latest U.S. Census data. Poverty is more than a lack of income. It is also the consequence of specific behaviors and decisions.
The idea of sustainable development, the focus of the recent United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, is both commonsensical and contentious.
In March 2001, President Bush announced that the United States would not be a party to the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change.
Medicare currently pays only five percent of the cost of prescription drugs used by Medicare beneficiaries. Proposals to add a comprehensive prescription drug benefit to the program could shift as much as two-thirds of senior drug costs to Medicare.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris affirmed the constitutionality of the publicly funded school voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio.
All Americans would benefit from Social Security reform, but African Americans would benefit the most. African Americans rely more heavily than other demographic groups on Social Security for a secure retirement; thus they stand to lose the most from an unreformed system.
Charter schools are independent public schools that are freed from many of the bureaucratic rules and regulations preventing innovation and flexibility in traditional public schools.
Throughout its history, the United States has been a nation of immigrants. However, in recent years, and even more so since September 11, 2001, Americans have favored a stricter immigration policy.
The number of Americans receiving cash welfare – called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) – has fallen in half; the number of Americans living in poverty has fallen 21 percent; and the annual incomes of the poorest women have increased nearly $1,000.
Reports about the enormous federal debt abound, as do dire predictions about the impact of that debt on future generations. But just how big is the debt?
A new survey sheds light on the relative merits of the health care systems in five English-speaking countries. This is the latest in a series of studies conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund in New York City.
The essential problem in our health care system is that consumers are divorced from the cost of the services they consume. We have become so dependent on third-party payment that patients pay directly for only about 15 percent of total health care services, down from 56 percent in 1960.
Eighty-eight percent of Americans with private health insurance coverage get it through employers, and the employment-based health insurance system has served millions of Americans for more than 50 years.
Unprecedented numbers of individuals have moved from welfare to employment since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), making it the most successful welfare reform ever.
World leaders are making critical decisions based upon predictions of General Circulation Models or Global Climate Models (GCMs) that humans are causing global climate change or global warming.
Is Social Security in financial trouble? If you believe a press release issued by the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, the answer is no. If you go to the fine print of their annual report, however, the answer is a resounding yes.
401(k) retirement savings plans have been popular over the past three decades. However, the Enron debacle and the recent stock market slump are spurring Congress and the Bush administration to propose changes in the law. Wise reform could lead to higher returns and safer portfolios for the vast majority of workers. On the other hand, unwise reforms could induce employers to drop these plans altogether.
Tuesday, April 16, 2002, is Equal Pay Day – the day on which many organizations protest wage discrimination between men and women. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median income for all women is about three-quarters that of men, although the results vary significantly among demographic groups. Feminist organizations and some politicians point to these statistics as evidence of the United States as a patriarchal society that discriminates against women. But a closer examination leads to a different conclusion.