Features

Back in April of 1998, several employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) came before the Senate oversight committee to testify about a litany of supposed fraud and abuse at the agency. IRS officials, they charged, had pursued vendettas against outside individuals and corporations and fudged audits to help former co-workers who had moved to […]

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Republican from Texas, recently bragged that she was the key instigator in persuading the Senate Finance Committee, as part of its pending “marriage penalty reduction” bill, to raise the income level at which a couple enters the 31 percent income tax bracket. The Finance Committee had already decided to raise […]

How important are tax cuts? Judging from the campaigns of the major presidential candidates, you’d think they were pretty important. Republican George W. Bush has made a huge, broad-based tax cut–$483 billion over five years, as much as $1.7 trillion over 10 years–a centerpiece, if not the centerpiece, of his campaign. And even Democrat Al […]

Hatching Tax Cuts for the Rich Why is it that when Republicans in Congress try to address a real problem–whether it be an inadequate minimum wage, the tax code’s marriage penalty, or whatever else happens to catch their attention–they so often end up calling for big tax cuts for the rich? The latest example comes […]

These days I settle for small and subtle signs of progress. Take the story inthe February 15 Washington Post on the demise of a proposal in the Virginia legislature that would have required public-school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. State Senator Warren E. Barry–the outraged sponsor of the legislation, which was amended by […]

I t’s no accident that politicians kiss babies. America is a nation that professes to love its children. Yet the policies we have in place to raise the next generation are those of a nation that kisses children off. This special report offers a tour of the horizon. In the opening piece, Janet C. Gornick […]

There are 25.8 million family caregivers in America today. According to a recent study by the United Hospital Fund of New York, they provide the equivalent of nearly $200 billion worth of health care services per year. That’s almost double the annual amount the United States spends on nursing home and home health care. Yet […]

F ourteen years old and sullen, he came to the hospital on a Sunday afternoon for evaluation of long-standing abdominal pain. As a first-year pediatric intern, I thought of incredible diagnoses: An intermittent twisting of the bowel? A rare parasite? When the preliminary tests came back negative, I told my patient the good news. He […]

Between 1960 and 1982, the divorce rate in America tripled. By now many researchers have investigated the effects on families and children of this sweeping change. Considerable speculation has been generated as well. But there has been little agreement. To some divorce is a quick fix to marital discontent sought by narcissistic parents and its […]