Fiscal Policy

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.”

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is looking hard for demand. Without a “more-rapid expansion of production and demand from producers and consumers,” the Fed chairman does not see the recent employment gains as “sustainable.” That’s an understatement.

Recently, Japan and Korea have begun to express deep concerns about the “ability of the United States to address profound problems in its political and economic system.”

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.

On Feb. 29 the World Bank announced that the proportion of the planet’s population living in absolute poverty -- on less than $1.25 a day -- had halved from 1990 to 2010. That rate of poverty reduction is unprecedented, driven by rapid rates of economic growth in poor countries from China to Ghana.

Should Barack Obama win reelection this fall, he’ll almost immediately face one of the biggest issues of his second term: the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. George W. Bush originally passed the tax breaks in two quick bursts—slashing income taxes in 2001, and lowering taxes on investment income in 2003. Then, just before these cuts were set to expire on Jan. 1, 2011, Obama struck a deal with congressional Republicans to extend them for two more years.