Budget Matters Blog


The work of the lame duck

Congress is scheduled to return on November 15 for what is known as a lame duck session – a post-election period when members who have been voted out of office return to Washington to continue work prior to January when the new Congress will be sworn in. Members will work ...

Jobs, Deficits & Taxes

On election night, Democrats and Republicans agreed - it's all about jobs, deficits and taxes.While they agree on the problem, they absolutely disagree on the solutions.And the big question is, what's going to happen in Congress?Join us as NPP demystifies three of the most pressing issues of our time from ...

Remembering Recovery on November 3, 2010

NPP very recently updated all its Federal Priorities Database expenditures and indicators to the state level with the latest data available. We invite you to use the database – especially if you want a post-election memory of the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). See what funding ...

Framingham, MA Schools & Parents Struggle with Tough Budget Choices

I recently participated in a panel discussion sponsored by members of the “Save Our Schools” campaign in Framingham, MA, as an expert on the federal budget process and the impact of the recession on communities. Like most cities and towns in Massachusetts and across the country, Framingham has been experiencing ...

After the Mid-Terms, A Budget?

With Election Day just around the corner, the question on the minds of many people is “what’s going to happen in Washington?” Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s elections, members of Congress will return to Capitol Hill for their “lame duck” session with one huge piece of unfinished business – ...

Social Security's Flat Line

Yesterday, the Social Security Administration released an extraordinary amount of data – all the way to the ZIP code-level – focused on Social Security beneficiaries (categorized by the government within three groupings: Old Age, Survivor and Disability). The data lets us see not only the number of folks in a ...

Worried About The Deficit? Why Not Choose Sustainable Defense?

That’s the message Congressmen Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX), along with 55 of their Capitol Hill colleagues are pushing.On October 13, 2010 they sent a letter to the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform advocating defense cuts. The letter contains a broad range of options for ...

It's All In the Numbers: What's the impact of increased funding for education in Newark, New Jersey?

I was recently a guest lecturer at William Paterson University (WPU) in Wayne, New Jersey. Part of the New Jersey state system, WPU is home to a very diverse and dedicated student body – many of them the first in their families to attend college and virtually all of them ...

A “Depression” by Any Other Name

President Harry Truman once said, “It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.” And while economic experts may tell us that the current recession ended in June 2009, for almost 15 million Americans, this is still a depression.According to the September 2010 ...

Obion, Tennessee: the story of Gene Cranick and an un-paid fire fighting fee

On the afternoon of September 30, a fire destroyed Gene Cranick's home in Obion County, Tennessee. The fire department was on-hand before the fire became un-controllable, but didn't move to extinguish it. It turns out, firefighters arrived because Mr. Cranick's neighbor paid his annual rural fire service fee guaranteeing his ...