Budget

Medicaid Work Rules Approved for South Carolina

By Michael Rainey

The Trump administration on Thursday approved South Carolina’s request to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid...
Watchdog Questions $6.7 Billion in Medicare Payments

By Michael Rainey

Health insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program have received billions in extra payments after making adjustments to their patient charts – changes that the Department of Health and...
Congressional Negotiators Strike Spending Deal to Avoid a Pre-Christmas Shutdown

By Yuval Rosenberg

Congressional appropriators have reportedly reached a deal “in principle” to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year and avert a potential shutdown at the end of next week. The...
Judge Blocks Trump Plan to Divert $3.6 Billion in Military Funds to Border Wall

By Yuval Rosenberg

A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to divert $3.6 billion in military funds toward construction of barriers along the border with Mexico. District Court Judge...
$738 Billion Defense Bill Authorizes Space Force and New Benefits for Federal Workers

By Michael Rainey

It looks like Space Force has earned its wings. The leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees announced late Monday an agreement on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which...

The Terrible Cost of the War in Afghanistan

By Yuval Rosenberg

The war in Afghanistan is the longest armed conflict in U.S. history, and throughout the 18 years of fighting, U.S. officials have publicly said they were making progress. Yet a new investigative...
The Fiscal Challenge for the Next Recession

By Yuval Rosenberg

The federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2019 was nearly $1 trillion. “In the next downturn, don’t be surprised if this number hits $2 trillion,” writes Nick Timiraos, The Wall Street Journal’s...
Is Trump's $28 Billion Bailout Paying Farmers Too Much?

By Michael Rainey

The Trump administration is spending $28 billion to bail out farmers hurt by the president’s trade war with China – a huge sum that some experts say overestimates the economic losses inflicted by the...
New Trump Food Stamp Rule Will Cut 700,000 from Program

By Michael Rainey

The White House said Wednesday that it has finalized a rule that will tighten work requirements for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The new rule could result...
Navy Awards Largest Shipbuilding Contract Ever

By Michael Rainey

The U.S. Navy awarded a contract Monday worth more than $22 billion to build nine new attack submarines. The agreement with General Dynamics Electric Boat includes an option for a 10 th sub, which...

Democrats Are Right, the Tax Bill Is a Disaster — but They're Wrong About Why

By Marc Joffe

No, Nancy Pelosi , the recently enacted tax bill does not “raise taxes on a breathtaking 86 million middle class households.” By focusing on the distributional effects of the GOP tax plan — in an...
Why the US Spends More on Health Care Than Other Countries

By Yuval Rosenberg

Over the last three decades, health care spending as a percentage of the economy has grown much faster in the U.S. than in other industrialized countries. As professors Austin Frakt and Aaron E...
The GOP Tax Bill Will Add $1.8 Trillion to the National Debt: CBO

By Michael Rainey

The Congressional Budget Office released new estimates Tuesday of projected federal deficits over the next decade. On top of the deficits already forecast for the next decade, the CBO said the tax...
What We'll Be Fighting About in 2018

By Yuval Rosenberg

Happy New Year and welcome to what promises to be a jam-packed January as lawmakers look to hammer out a budget deal to avoid a government shutdown by the 19th while also dealing with a long list of...
Republicans Pivot to 'Entitlement Reform' as Budget Battle Looms

By Reuters Staff, Reuters

The head of a conservative Republican faction in the U.S. Congress, who voted this month for a huge expansion of the national debt to pay for tax cuts, called himself a “fiscal conservative” on...