Budget

Monday, the House Republicans announced new domestic budget cuts to SNAP/Food Stamps, which would include lowering benefit levels and reinstating the federal asset test of $2000 for most families. The Budget Control Act pledged to cut budget deficits by $2.1 trillion between 2012 and 2021, with almost $500 million designated to come from defense. Automatic spending cuts would begin to take place in January—apparently prompting House Republicans to seek sufficient savings from other programs to fund future defense spending without resorting to new taxes. You’re reading that correctly, in order to prevent cuts in defense spending the House GOP has chosen to scale back food support for struggling families. Note the chart here that designates the amount of spending on the Defense budget and the amount of spending on the safety net (of which SNAP is a fraction.)In addition, these new rules will not only hurt millions of families struggling in the wake of the recession, but also impose additional administrative costs on states that are already dealing with their own budgetary shortfalls.

It is fitting, and perhaps ironic, that today is both Tax Day and Financial Literacy Day. Taxes and finances are intimately intertwined, and as the U.S. budget crisis underscores, that relationship is not always a positive one. Today, as our elected leaders ask households around the country to take a look at their own balance sheets, they might be wise to do the same. What they will find isn’t pretty — a ledger filled with a mountain of debt and no real long-term plan to bring spending and revenues more closely in line.

Going to college and getting an education has long been regarded as a reliable path out of poverty. And for good reason. Research by the Pew Economic Mobility Project shows that children in the bottom income quintile have a forty-five percent chance of remaining in the bottom quintile if they only have a high school education; those who get a college degree only have a sixteen percent chance. Likewise, the average college graduate makes $29,000 more per year than someone with only a high school diploma.

Yet when a college education isn’t even an option because of its excessive cost—as is increasingly the case for many U.S. families—this narrative falls apart. Today, the average American household must devote a significant portion of their annual income to tuition in order to make attending college a reality. Although in the long run the educational system needs greater structural changes, two policy reforms that would facilitate saving for college from a young age—the ASPIRE Act and improved 529 accounts—would allow a greater number of low-income students to access higher education.

In many ways, the asset poverty line is a better and more complete indicator of how a particular family is faring financially than the traditional poverty measurement. Asset poverty acknowledges that income only goes so far; even earning a wage sufficient to meet basic expenses, a household without any savings is always one emergency away from disaster. Unfortunately, while some segments of the U.S. population are strongly encouraged to save, others, such as most recipients of public benefits, are effectively banned from saving due to restrictive asset tests. Additionally, lower-income households have inadequate access to products and incentives that facilitate saving. Two policy interventions that could significantly increase the abilities of lower-income families to save include the elimination of asset tests in public assistance programs, and the implementation of the Saver’s Bonus.

The Asset Building Program’s analysis of the President’s FY 2013 budget reveals two key trends about the accessibility of homeownership and its relationship to overall wealth over the past few years. First, the benefits of the2013 federal budget’s investment in homeownership, which are delivered primarily through tax deductions, accrue chiefly to those who already have high incomes and substantial assets. Second, the housing crisis disproportionately affected black and Hispanic families, significantly widening the racial wealth gap and creating further barriers to savings and economic mobility.

Every year, the Asset Building Program analyzes the President's budget request to see how much goes to support asset building policies. More importantly, we keep tabs on how this money is spent because this is the key to understanding who the spending is benefiting.

Few things shock anymore, but it came as a bit of a surprise last week when Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, revealed how little he knows about the making of the budget.

The moment occurred on March 29, when Ryan told a National Journal forum in Washington, “We don’t believe the generals are giving us their true budget.”

If you’ve been fretting about faltering math education and falling test scores here in the United States, you should be worried based on this campaign season of Republican math.  When it comes to the American military, the leading Republican presidential candidates evidently only learned to add and multiply, never subtract or divide.

Today, CBO released its latest budget projections for the next ten years, again showing the appearance of a declining debt trajectory. These projections based on current law, however, do not incorporate the costs of current policies that lawmakers have extended many times in the past and are likely to do so again, such as the annual “patch” of the Alternative Minimum Tax.