A couple weeks ago, a billionaire set the Internet ablaze when on 60 Minutes Australia he chided millennials to stop buying avocado toast and fancy coffee if they wanted to buy a home. The backlash was swift and deserved. Twenty- and early thirty-something people rightly took offense to the suggestion that they haven’t purchased homes […]

There has been considerable discussion about the human impact of the Trump budget’s draconian cuts to what remains of the social safety net. A long-standing conservative talking point in response to such criticism is that states can pick up the tab when federal dollars disappear. But at a time when many states are facing budget shortfalls and the effect of federal tax reform is yet to be determined, it is outlandish to suggest that states are flush with cash to make up for federal spending reductions.

As ITEP has detailed, undocumented immigrants are taxpayers, contributing close to $12 billion a year in state and local taxes while also paying federal payroll, income, and excise taxes. In spite of these facts, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget director, has spread erroneous information to validate the administration’s cruel proposal to strip a proven anti-poverty benefit from undocumented immigrants and their children.

A month ago, President Trump released a tax sketch that likely would redistribute wealth upward, and today he has poured salt on the wound with a proposed budget that would gut safety net programs and cut funding for other services that help move people out of poverty. Yet the PR refrain is the same Orwellian prattle we’ve been hearing for years: water isn’t wet, tax cuts for the rich will eventually trickle down to the rest of us, and balancing the federal budget must always rely on cutting programs that benefit ordinary people.

A strong voice for working people in federal and state tax policy debates is absolutely critical. Sound, progressive tax policies make all the difference between high-quality educational systems or crowded classrooms with limited resources. They account for the difference between structurally sound roads and bridges or potholes and other crumbling infrastructure. At the federal level, good tax policy means raising enough revenue so the nation can adequately fund child care and early education, health care, food inspection, national parks, and a clean, safe environment among other things.

If the lineup for today's House Ways and Means Committee hearing on tax reform is an indication of how the tax policy debate will unfold in the coming months, businesses and their lobbyists will have outsize influence in the process. This is a mistake.

A new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, details how tax subsidies that funnel money toward private schools are being used as profitable tax shelters by high-income taxpayers. Further, legislation pending in Congress would create new opportunities for corporations and successful investors to earn huge […]