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Research Roundup

Strengthening Public Health, Federal Medicaid Rules Hurting Foster Children, More Government Handouts to Corporations, and Ameri

Jul 13 2006

RAND has pulled together a range of research on how governments can strengthen their public health systems to deal with a range of threats, from new infectious diseases to dealing with potential health effects of terrorism. The reports argue that local public health systems are inadequately staffed, technologially obsolete, and not coordinated well with the rest of the public health system.

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Research Roundup

May 24 2007

In a new report, Restoring Prosperity, the Brookings Institution highlights how states can contribute to revitalizing older industrial cities by capitalizing on existing assets like transit systems and universities.  By encouraging reinvestment in those assets to modernize them and encouraging retraining of residents, states can restore these cities as engines of regional economic growth.
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Research Roundup

Oct 25 2007

In two new reports, the Urban Institute highlights data on how government can encourage low-income families to save and acquire assets for long-term economic empowerment:
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Campaign spending, cost of tax credits, enfranchising former felons, voting accessibility, decline of employer-based health care

Oct 19 2006

Out of control campaign spending is enveloping state legislative races, according to a new report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which finds that 78 legislative races in 12 states over the 2003-2004 cycle involved more than a million dollars in spending-- a total of $155 million for these races.

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Research Roundup

Aug 02 2007

Citizens for Tax Justice highlights important reforms adopted by New Hampshire this year to modernize their corporate income tax that will help in-state "mom and pop" stores by equalizing the tax burden between such in-state stores and out-of-state retailers.  Where many states apply corporate income taxes based on "physical presence" in the state, New Hampshire has created a model program to apply the tax based on a company's "economic presence", an approach which CTJ notes has survived court challenge in other states. See an older ITEP paper on the topic for more.
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Research Roundup

Jan 24 2008

Like too many property tax relief programs, the tax savings from the Florida "Save Our Homes" program, which may be expanded by a vote next Tuesday, have gone overwhelmingly to the richest state residents according to a new report to be published in the Journal of Real Estate Research. The result has been a tax bonanza for owners of multi-million dollar homes. Similarly, a new study by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute argues that property tax cut proposals by Georgia political leaders would come at the expense of working families who would likely see higher sales taxes even as richer residents would see tax cuts.
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State of Health Care Reform, Tax Subsidies

Jan 18 2007

A new "State of the States" report by State Coverage Initiatives, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation surveys recent state efforts to expand health insurance coverage. Rising hopes bode well for additional reforms in other states, but the report cautions that because of variations in each state, particular reforms are not always easily replicable in other states.
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Disconnected Poor, Immigrant Benefit Use, Polling on Pre-K, Media & Workers, and Costly Subsidies

Jun 26 2008

Disconnected Families: Some poor single mothers manage to find work after being on TANF or combine work and welfare to make ends meet.  However, a brief by the Brookings Center on Children and Families profiles the 40 to 45 percent of the TANF caseload who are long-term recipients and aren't working because they face multiple barriers to securing and keeping employment.  Yet, because of time limits imposed by the 1996 federal TANF law, many of those families have been terminated from the program, terminations that will only increase with new rules implementing changes in the law passed in 2006.  The brief advocates creation of new state programs to help these long-term disadvantages families outside the traditional TANF programs.
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Research Roundup

Sep 27 2007

Even as Congress debates expanding SCHIP health care coverage for children, the reality is that over half of people (53%) living in low-income families in nine states and the District of Columbia are eligible for neither Medicaid nor SCHIP coverage, according to new analysis from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Center for Social Policy. While eligibility varies across different states, no state covers more than 80% of those low-income families.
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Taxpaying Immigrants, Investment Opportunities for Underserved, and Indexing the Minimum Wage

Jun 08 2006

The Urban Institute has analyzed the income and taxes paid by immigrants in the Washington, D.C. area -- and the million immigrants in the region pay $9.8 billion in taxes, about 18% of all taxes paid in the region. Undocumented immigrants paid and estimated $13,000 in taxes per household (19% of household income), which would likely increase substantially if they were given a path to legalization.
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From the Dispatch - News

Policy Checklist for the New State Legislative Sessions

Jan 06 2009

With legislative sessions getting underway around the country, this Dispatch provides a list of key bills and policies that we encourage legislators to consider introducing.  While not exhaustive of the range of needed reforms in states, they emphasize initiatives of strategic importance that are being considered in multiple states.  Working with our various partners, Progressive States Network is providing staff support for these policies and will work to use movement in multiple states to generate national media and attention.  This in turn will create greater momentum to assist individual states in pushing bills to passage.  The following is a quick checklist of key policies with links to model legislation and policy summaries.
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Inside PSN: 1st Annual Legislative Leadership Retreat

Dec 22 2008

From December 8-10th, over 50 legislators from 26 states joined the Progressive States Network at Bally’s Hotel in Las Vegas for its first annual Legislative Leadership Retreat. These fifty legislators met with key advocacy allies to discuss both policy and legislative strategy for the 2009 legislative sessions. The retreat was held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Economic Research and Analysis Network (EARN) to strengthen the state progressive movement at this key point in history.
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Unemployment Insurance Modernization Should be Part of Recovery Plan

Dec 15 2008

As the federal government considers an economic recovery plan that will most directly address the needs of those suffering and revive the economy, expanding funding for and modernizing state-based unemployment compensation systems should be a central part of any recovery plan. 
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