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POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

In Case You Missed It . . .

| By CBPP

Happy New Year from all of us at CBPP. We started the year at Off the Charts by focusing on health reform, Social Security, food assistance, the federal budget and taxes, and jobs.

  • On health reform, Paul Van de Water explained that raising the threshold for the employer mandate to 40 hours would place more workers at risk of having their hours cut. Robert Greenstein rebutted the claim that raising the threshold would safeguard the 40-hour work week. Judy Solomon noted that residents of 34 states with federally run health insurance marketplaces won’t have to repay their premium tax credits regardless of the outcome of a related Supreme Court case.  Matt Broaddus highlighted data showing that the uninsured rate among adults fell sharply in 2014, the first year of health reform’s major coverage expansions.
  • On Social Security, Kathy Ruffing described how a new House rule will make it harder to replenish Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund. She also explained why DI is an essential part of Social Security and listed key factors affecting disability receipt rates in different geographic areas.
  • On food assistance, Ed Bolen warned that about 1 million unemployed childless adults will lose SNAP (food stamp) benefits in 2016 as a three-month time limit for benefits returns in many states.
  • On the federal budget and taxes, we highlighted our recent report on a new House rule on “dynamic scoring,” which could ease the passage of deficit-increasing tax cuts.
  • On jobs, Chad Stone illustrated the December employment figures. Mike Leachman pointed out that local school jobs rose in December but are still far from recovered from the recession.

This week, Chad Stone issued a statement on the December jobs report. We published reports on the geographic pattern of disability receipt, the loss of SNAP benefits for 1 million unemployed childless adults, and the impact of adopting dynamic scoring for official cost estimates. We updated our papers on the federal estate tax and health reform and part-time work. We also updated our backgrounder and chart book on SNAP, our chart books on the Legacy of the Great Recession and the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, and our backgrounder on unemployment insurance.

 CBPP’s Chart of the Week — From Our Report on the Geography of Disability

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A variety of news outlets featured CBPP’s work and experts recently. Here are some highlights:

Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
January 9, 2015

How a better economy could mean more poor Americans go hungry
Washington Post
January 8, 2015

Do Republicans misunderstand Social Security, or just feign ignorance?
LA Times
January 7, 2015

EJ Dionne: The right’s wrong idea of governance
Washington Post
January 7, 2015

Tax Cuts Get Boost From Republican Change to U.S. House Rule
Bloomberg
January 6, 2015

Don’t miss any of our posts, papers, or charts — follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Applications are due February 1 for our paid summer internship program, so apply today!