In this week’s Research Roundup a brief from the Economic Policy Institute outlining why raising revenue from high-income earners should be part of any deficit reduction plan, an analysis from Policy Matters Ohio and EPI showing that regressive cuts enacted during the budgeting process will harm meager gains in job growth and a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report details how raising the Medicare eligibility age would actually increase health costs across the economy.
The facts support raising revenues from the highest-income households [1] - A new issue brief from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) outlines several reasons why an effective, balanced, and fair approach to deficit reduction would include raising revenue from high-income earners, “particularly now, when income distribution is extraordinarily skewed to the top and federal revenue is at the lowest level relative to the economy since 1950.”
Job Watch - August 2011: Ohio is Still Suffering in the Wake of the Great Recession [2] - This analysis from Policy Matters Ohio and the Economic Policy Institute finds that although Ohio has experienced job growth recently, it is far from what is needed to foster recovery and bring the state’s employment to pre-recession levels. What’s more, the regressive cuts enacted through the budget will only further the state’s economic woes. The authors write, “[t]he Great Recession of 2007-9 only deepened Ohio’s ills. The state budget signed into law in June adopted a cuts only approach to balancing the budget. Cuts to education alone are estimated to cost Ohio tens of thousands of jobs.1 Putting workers back to work needs to be the primary goal for lawmakers.”
Raising Medicare’s Eligibility Age Would Increase Overall Health Spending and Shift Costs to Seniors, States, and Employers [3] - A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65-67, a proposal likely to be considered as a deficit reduction measure, would actually increase health care costs across the economy.