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The Cabinet met with the president in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on a sultry day in the summer of 1996. Many of us recommended that he not sign the welfare bill that the Republican Congress had sent him (the third one it had sent, only slightly less punitive than the first two, […]

I like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) a lot. I also really like brownies with gobs of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. But I don’t have them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The EITC–a refundable tax credit that subsidizes the wages of low-income workers–is everyone’s darling. New Democrats love it. President Clinton expanded […]

The stage is set for Vice President Al Gore. There’s a lectern at center stage with the vice presidential seal. Off to the left is an antique television, which Gore will later tell us is a vintage 1946 model. This is in the auditorium of the Herbert C. Hoover Building, which houses the United States […]

With Bill Bradley out of the presidential race, Vice President Gore’s proposal to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remains the one comprehensive proposal on the table in the presidential election to address the plight of the 44 million Americans who lack health insurance. But CHIP is far from an ideal foundation for expanding […]

Hazel Dews is slightly embarrassed when you ask about her salary. She pauses and then confesses that after 25 years cleaning the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington five nights a week, she makes barely $22,000 a year. That’s not what really bothers her, though. What irks her is that men who do the same […]

ACROSS: 1 DI(STANCE)S; 6 FOSSE (hidden rev.); 7 P(ROVER)B; 9 IGUANAS (anag.); 10 BE(N)DS; 11 HEBRON (hidden); 13 BRID(G)E; 16 FERRY (fairy hom.); 18 CHOW + DER (red rev.); 20 LOO + K-SEE (seek anag.); 21 E(MEN)D; 22 EGYPTIANS (anag.) DOWN: 1 DI(STUR)B (ruts in bid rev.); 2 STERN (2 defs.; ref. Howard Stern); 3 […]

For baseball players and fans, winter is the “off-season.” But for team owners and their executives, it is the season for deal making. As most fans are looking back on another season of what might have been (except for New York Yankee fans, who get to savor another World Series victory), the deal makers are […]

It is no secret that the institution of marriage is in trouble. The median age at first marriage is at its highest since the United States began keeping reliable statistics: 24 for women and 26 for men. Nearly six of every 10 new marriages will end in divorce, and the propensity to remarry has also […]

Deconstructing the Income Distribution Debate

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