PWW Final
How do SCHIP eligibility guidelines relate to Medicaid eligibility guidelines?
- The SCHIP poverty threshold in a state must be higher the Medicaid poverty threshold so that more people qualify for SCHIP. - Unlike Medicaid, SCHIP is not an entitlement; it is part of the normal budgeting process, can run out of money, and can be terminated if there isn't enough in a given year. - SCHIP (created 1997) used federal funds to expand Medicaid eligibility to kids who would have been uninsured under previous state plans
What are two conditions are required in order to be categorically eligible to receive TANF benefits?
-Able bodied poor -Pregnant women
Which tax expenditures are currently most costly according to the CBO?
-Employer-sponsored health insurance -Preferential tax rates on capital gains and dividends -Net pension contributions and earnings
Who was specifically excluded from receiving TANF benefits by the PRWORA?
-Fugitives or probation violators -Unmarried, teen drop-outs -Fraud -People who refuse to cooperate with IRP -People who refuse to cooperate with child support enforcement -People convicted of drug-related crimes
How does Medicaid relate to Medicare? Is it possible to participate in both programs simultaneously?
-It is possible to participate in both. There are 10 million people covered by both. -Medicare would be your primary insurance. Medicaid would be your secondary insurance. -Medicaid pays Medicare expenses (including premiums, deductibles and coinsurance) for individuals whose income is at or below 100% of the Federal poverty level and whose resources are at or below twice the standard allowed under SSI. -Medicaid also can pay Medicare Part A premiums for certain disabled individuals who lose Medicare coverage because of work.
How did Obama's strategy to develop healthcare reform differ from Clinton's?
-Obama learned a key lesson from Clinton's efforts, that submerged state interests need to be accommodated for in order to advance the desired health care reform. -Unlike student loans where submerged state interests were defeated, the ACA represents an accommodation of submerged state interests. It was built on an existing system by expanding Medicaid and private insurance. Forced the purchase of health insurance (forced more people into the market).
Explain why means-tested in-kind are provided as social policy benefits rather than cash...name and describe several programs that provide in-kind benefits.
-Providing in-kind benefits ensures greater government control of how recipients use the benefits; there is a stigma associated with recipients and a common belief in the public that they would abuse the cash to buy not-necessary items like luxury foods. -Examples: SNAP, Medicaid
What is the submerged state? How is the submerged state different from the hidden welfare state?
-The submerged state is a set of government policies that most Americans don't know exist or realize are government policies. -Hidden state policies are known to most but are disproportionately helpful to affluent people, where submerged state policies are policies Americans are not aware of.
Describe the EITC benefit structures. How may benefit structures are there? What is the phase-in? Phase-out? Plateau? How do children affect the generosity of EITC benefits?
-There are 8 benefit structures based on filing status (head of household, single person, or filing jointly) and number of qualifying children: childless, 1 child, 2 children, more than 2 children (only one parent can claim the child, must be living with the parent for the majority of the year and be a son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, brother, sister, niece, nephew, step brother or sister); and the investment income must be $3,500 or less -Phase in: the phase in is when you get more EITC benefits as your income increases -Phase out: you get less benefits as your income continues to increase -The plateau: benefits reach their peak at around $7000, stay there for a bit, then level off during the phase out -The more children you have the more benefits you can receive
What are time limits and why are they thought to be significant to welfare policy?
-Time limits restrict the amount of time a person can receive welfare benefits. Some time limits refer to continuous amounts of time, while others are overall lifetime caps on the number of months you can receive benefits. -They are significant because they force people off the welfare rolls after a set amount of time, and have cut the number of people on welfare overall. -Under TANF no more than 24 months of federal assistance, and lifetime limit of 60 months.
What federal social insurance programs and means-tested transfer programs provide benefits to undocumented (illegal) immigrants?
-Undocumented immigrants are not legally allowed to receive federal welfare assistance. -Undocumented immigrants can receive emergency medical care if they cannot pay (covered by Medicaid) and in some cases can receive TANF and SNAP benefits from a legal child. -School lunch program is available regardless of citizenship.
List and briefly explain three of the special conditions that apply to EITC eligibility when you do not have a qualifying child.
1. Be age 25 but under 65 at the end of the year. 2. Live in the United States for more than half the year. 3. Not qualify as dependent of another person.
List and briefly explain three of the special conditions that apply to EITC when you do not have a qualifying child
1. Be age 25 but under age 65 at the end of the year 2. Live in the United States for more than half the year 3. Not qualify as a dependent of another person
What state tax policies tend to make state tax burdens more progressive?
1. California, Delaware, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and DC are the least regressive states 2. All have progressive income tax 3. In most of the states, income tax revenue is a large source of revenue (less reliance on sales tax) 4. In many of these states refundable tax credits like EITC are typically available.
*List and briefly explain five important implications of the PRWORA.
1. Cash assistance generosity declined: Real value of cash assistance was eroded by inflation; Most states (39) offer maximum monthly benefits under $550 2. Fewer poor families received TANF 3. More poor mothers started working due to getting kicked off of TANF; however, their earnings are often small 4. States developed new ways to provide assistance rather than monthly cash transfers, such as one time payments, child only cases, and child care assistance: none of these new options counts as a "TANF case" for purposes of federal work requirements or the 60 month lifetime limit 5. The GOP considers the PRWORA a major success and wants to spread its model to other programs
Name and briefly explain the forces that constrain welfare state rentrehcment
1. Conservative nature of democratic policymaking. People want to maintain the status quo. 2. High political price for retrenchment makes politician reluctant to take the lead. And people are more likely to punish them for cutting their benefits than reward them for cost savings. 3. Path dependency. People adjust their expectations and the way they live their lives to reflect expectation that they will receive social policy benefits. -people count on OASDI/Medicare for retirement -People using housing deduction to plan long-term finances -Policies are hard to change once they're path dependent 4. Taking away benefits is unpopular and could trigger people's negativity bias. 5. Policy feedback loops: now that benefits exist, people have a vested interest in having them stay.
Identify the four modes of policy change in Hacker's article:
1. Drift: changes in the operation or effect of policies that occur without significant change in the structure. 2. Layering: proponents of change work around institutions that have fostered vested interests and long-term expectations by adding new institution rather than dismantling old. 3. Conversion: policies are adapted over time rather than replaced or eliminated 4. Revision: formal reform, replacement, or elimination of an existing policy.
What characteristics distinguish the EITC from many of the other means-tested programs we have described?
1. EITC is the only means-tested benefit which increases with income (during the phase-in period). All other means-tested programs have an inverse relationship where as your income goes up, the benefits decrease. 2. EITC is part of the hidden welfare state. To receive the benefit all you have to do is file for it when filing your taxes. This means that there is no social stigma like you have with signing up for a program like SNAP. 3. The EITC is inflation adjusted which protects its value over time.
Under what circumstances is welfare state retrenchment more likely?
1. Electoral slack. A party enjoys wide popularity and safe electoral margins. 2. Budgetary crises. These can create moments where critical decisions for reform are made. 3. Retrenchment is more likely when political visibility is lowered. However, societies with concentrated power can easily low visibility but it's hard to avoid blame. Societies without concentrated power are difficult to lowered visibility but can avoid blame more effectively. 4. Framing is critical. Advocates for retrenchment are more likely to succeed when they can change the nature of institutions. Restructuring the way taxes and benefits are understood.
*List and briefly explain five ways in which the politics of welfare state retrenchment are likely to be different from the politics of welfare state expansion.
1. Expansion was popular, while retrenchment is unpopular. This is because retrenchment has concentrated loses for the groups losing their programs, but only diffuse gains for the public at large. 2. Expansion was about credit-claiming by politicians, while retrenchment is about blame avoidance (because retrenchment triggers human negativity bias). 3. The context is different: Expansion was about giving benefits to people without a pre-existing stake in those programs. Retrenchment involves cutting or damaging programs that some groups already benefit from and have a stake in. 4. Retrenchment uses new strategies: playing different groups off each other (protecting programs that benefit powerful groups while reducing programs that benefit weak/stigmatized groups) 5. Expansion was highly visible, while retrenchment is largely hidden.
List and explain the four reasons why affluent people are more likely to receive more benefits from the hidden welfare state.
1. Higher marginal tax rates increase the value of tax expenditures 2. Affluent people are more likely to have jobs that provide benefits through the hidden welfare state. 3. Affluent people have money to purchase goods favored by the hidden welfare state (homes and education) 4. Affluent people can hire agents to assure they receive their benefits.
What state tax policies tend to make tax burdens more regressive?
1. Low-income people pay higher effective local and state tax rates and as a result state tax programs do little to alleviate the problem. 2. States which tend to rely on sales and excise taxes to generate revenue tend to be the most regressive. -Sales and excise taxes are the most regressive forms of taxation followed by property and income taxes. -The decision to apply sales tax to food is important because when food is taxed the burden is especially regressive. 3. Washington, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arizona, Kansas, and Indiana are the most regressive states -Six of these derive 2/3 of their revenue from sales/excise taxes -Five tax food -Five do not have personal income taxes.
*List and briefly explain six important changes that the PRWORA made in welfare policy. Repealing AFDC and replacing it with TANF is one...five more to go.
1. Repealing AFDC and replacing it with TANF 2. Ends entitlement to cash assistance, because AFDC was cash assistance and TANF isn't; no more than 24 months of federal assistance at a time; lifetime limit of 60 months (with some hardship exemptions) 3. Provides block grants to states with approved TANF plans (ends entitlements to cash assistance ; no more than 24 months of consecutive fed assistance 60 in a lifetime) 3. Repeals JOBS 4. States establish own goals for reducing illegitimate births (kids born out of wedlock) 5. Eliminates child care programs (consolidating several of them into a block grant) 6. TANF plan must include work requirements
Describe the eligibility conditions for the EITC.
1. Your adjusted gross income must be less than a certain threshold, which differs based on your family structure. 2. You must have a valid SSN 3. Your filing status can't be married filing separately 4. You must be a US citizen or resident alien all year. 5. You can't file Form 2555 or Form 2555-EZ (relating to foreign earned income) 6. Your investment income must be less than $3,500 or less 7. You must have earned income. Rules if you have a qualifying child: 1. Your child must meet the relationship, age, residency, and joint return tests. 2. Your qualifying child can't be used by more than one person to claim the EIC. 3. You can't be a qualifying child of another person. With no qualifying child: 1. You must be at least age 25 but under age 65. 2. You can't be the dependent of another person. 3. You can't be a qualifying child of another person. 4. You must have lived in the United States more than half of the year.
What attributes of submerged state policies help them to overcome partisan difference and institutional gridlock?
Because most people won't realize the government is involved in the programs, they are generally more popular and have more support, therefore making it easier for them to be bipartisan in their efforts.
Who is eligible for the SNAP program? That is, what conditions are required to participate? What must able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDS) do to qualify for SNAP benefits? Is eligibility to receive SNAP benefits based on individual, family, or household characteristics? What are the income and asset guidelines?
Financial: assets and monthly income must be below limits set by law. Gross income test (130% of the federal poverty standard). Net income test (subtract housing and child care costs). Assets must be under $2250 unless elderly or disabled then it's $3250 (home is excluded and a vehicle is excluded in most states as well) Employment: Abled-bodied adults must register for work, accept a suitable job if offered one, fulfill any work/job search/training requirements established by administering welfare agencies, provide welfare agency with information to allow a determination with respect to their job availability, not voluntarily quit a job without good cause, not reduce work effort below 30 hours a week. Categorical: Automatically eligible if TANF or SSI recipient in most states -Denied if strikers, many non-citizens, postsecondary students (with few exceptions), people living in institutional settings (group homes, prisons)
What is Hacker's second face of conservative influence? How does it influence the evolution of the welfare state in the US?
From the Hacker article: "Critics of existing programs have not had to enact major reforms to move toward many of their favored ends. Merely by delegitimizing and blocking compensatory interventions designed to correct policy drift, opponents of the welfare state have gradually transformed the orientation of social policy. Fights over the welfare state concern more than whether programs will be cut or scrapped. They also concern the degree to which social policies will uphold longstanding goals and adapt to the world around them. We vastly understate the strength of the welfare state's opponents if we do not see the extent to which they have succeeded in this latter debate."
Briefly explain Hacker's critique of Pierson's work on Welfare state retrenchment. How and why does Hacker think Pierson's analysis was limited?
Hacker says that Pierson was wrong to look only at formal policy change and direct action by government. Instead, Hacker thinks that when considering retrenchment you also need to look at other retrenchment strategies, like drift. Hacker says that politicians often accomplish retrenchment by playing defense: allowing the effect of policies to erode over time due to changing societal circumstances and refusing to update them.
List and briefly explain the benefits provided by the three primary (largest) federal housing assistance programs that target low-income people.
Housing choice voucher program: -Federally funded to pay for housing in private markets Project based rental assistance: -Federally contracted and subsidized rent in designated private buildings Public housing: -Federally subsidized rent in buildings that are publicly owned and operated
*Name and explain four activities that qualify as "work" under the PRWORA.
Meeting "work requirements" doesn't necessarily mean getting a job. It means complying with a 'personal responsibility plan' set out by your state. Possible things that could be part of it include: 1. Education 2. Job search 3. Volunteering 4. Child care 5. Job preparation -Work requirements did not apply to child only cases. -Many states complied to work requirements through exemptions, caseload reductions, and child-only cases, without putting TANF recipients to work.
Please briefly explain the experiments Mettler conducted and presents in required class reading. What did the results of the experiments suggest support for the submerged state?
One experiment, described on page 53, examines how people's opinions were formed based on differing amounts of information on the submerged state. To do this, a national sample of 526 adults was randomly divided into three groups, which were given: (1) no information, (2) a basic description of policy goals and mechanisms, (3) the basic description plus "full information" about the distribution of the benefits across income levels. The members of each group were then asked their opinions about three major tax expenditures: two of which primarily benefit the upper class (the Home Mortage Interest Tax Deducation (HMITD) and the Retirement Savings Contribution Tax Deduction (RSCTD)) and one that primarily benefits the lower class (the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)). This experiment found that people in group 1 were highly likely to offer no opinion, people in group 2 were likely to say they supported all three tax credits, and people in group 3 were likely to say they supported the EITC but opposed the others. However, if you look in more detail support for the HMITD and RSCTD actually did increase among group 3 respondents who are rich enough to benefit from them.
*What specific reforms does Mettler propose to make the submerged state more democratic? Please list and briefly explain each reform that Mettler proposes.
Reforms during the legislative process: -Reconfigure the role of vested interests -Reveal the submerged state through policy communication: e.g. discuss it at high-profile public events -Reveal the submerged state through policy design: make government's role explicit through direct visible policies Reforms after policy enactment: -Reveal through policy delivery: use statements and procedures that make government's role clear -Reveal through state, local, or organizational efforts: use campaigns, newsletters, magazines, and websites, to make policy operations/effects apparent
How are OASDI and SSI eligibility similar? How are they different?
Similar: Elderly people and disabled people can receive both OASDI and SSI Different: SSI can serve people without a work history or without a relationship that would qualify them for OASDI. Example: Disabled children would not receive OASDI without work history but could receive SSI
What is the difference between an income tax credit and an income tax deduction? What is the significance of whether or not a tax credit is refundable? Name and briefly explain two refundable federal income tax credits we covered in class.
Tax credit decreases the amount of tax you owe while a deduction lowers your overall amount of taxable income. The significance is that refundable tax credits can reduce your tax liability to less than $0, which results in a refund, you get more back than what you paid in taxes. -Earned Income Tax Credit is aimed at low-income families, especially those with dependent children. Must have earned income for the year and no more than $3,500 investment income. -Additional Child Tax Credit Up to $1,000 per child and 15% of earnings above $3,000
What are tax expenditures? Please be prepared to name and describe at least three different types and provide an example of each.
Tax expenditures are special provisions of the tax code that benefit specific activities or groups of taxpayers. 1. Exemption: Health Insurance. Money spent on health insurance is exempt from taxation. 2. Credit: EITC These reduce the amount due in taxes rather than decreasing the amount of taxable income. 3. Deduction: Mortgage interest deduction. The interest paid on a home mortgage is deducted from the taxable income.
*Mettler argues that the submerged state undermines democracy. Please briefly outline and explain the argument that leads Mettler to this conclusion.
The submerged state hides government's role from the people; the public does not understand how the government is affecting and benefiting their lives. For example, many student loan recipients don't understand that they would not be able to get such loans without government help. Because the people don't understand the submerged state, they cannot make informed decisions about what they want in terms of policy or hold elected officials accountable for their actions. Therefore, the submerged state undermines democracy.
What is a "qualifying child" and how does it relate to EITC eligibility?
To be a qualifying child your child must: 1. Son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, or descendant of any of them OR brother, sister, half brother/sister, stepbrother/sister, or descendent of them. 2. Must be under 19 at the end of the year and younger than you OR under 24 and a student and younger than you OR permanently and totally disabled at any time during 2018 3. Must have lived with you in the United States for more than half of 2018 4. Qualifying child cannot be used by more than one person to claim EIC 5. If you are a qualifying child of another taxpayer you can't claim the credit. -This is important because your number of qualifying children affects the amount of credit you are able to claim. Additionally, you can claim the EITC even if you aren't between 25 and 65.
Briefly explain the development and evolution of the student loan marketplace for higher education? When/how/why did federal policy move to direct student loans?
When: In 1965 the fed gov created the program to encourage private lenders to give students loans. Sallie Mae was created in 1972 to create a secondary market for student loans. SAFRA was signed into law as an amendment to the ACA in March of 2010 and moved federal policy to direct loans. How: There was a strong Democratic majority in Congress, push for deficit reduction, great recession, and no real viable alternatives due to a lack of private capital. There were claims it would cut the federal deficit by $87 billion over 10 years Why: There was no other viable option due to a lack of private capital following the recession.
