Arkansas is on a bumpy, but at least downhill, path towards lower poverty rates according to census data released this morning. While still far above national averages, our child poverty rate is down to about 24 percent. It hasn’t...
Despite public outcry and their subsequent failure to pass health care legislation, Senate Republicans still are attempting to find a way to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The law expanded Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of...
Arkansas’s uninsured rate for children dropped to just 4 percent in 2016, a new record and a remarkable achievement for our state. This follows a trend in recent years, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, of uninsured...
Families across the nation are doing better, and public programs like SNAP and refundable tax credits continue to play a critical role in those improvements. This morning, data from the 2016 Current Population Survey was released, giving us insight...
Now that the state’s Tax Reform and Relief Task Force has a consultant in place, we expect to see some big tax policy questions debated over the next few months. The Task Force’s first round of recommendations is due...
The Trump Administration failed America’s children AGAIN this week. It failed them like it has so many times already during the administration’s first year in office. While heartbreaking and disappointing, we should not have been surprised by the repeal...
The bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which turns 20 this year, provides health insurance to kids from low- and moderate-income families who are not eligible for Medicaid. Like Medicaid, it is jointly funded by federal and state governments....
President Trump has promised to pass federal “tax reform” that will create jobs and higher wages and provide middle-class tax relief. How to fulfill this promise will be one of the big issues facing the U.S. Congress when it...
Arkansas is a hardworking state. In fact, we have over a million employees who work here. That number has been growing recently, as our unemployment figures hit record lows. That is a positive and welcome change for working families...
Updated with the Trump administration’s 9/5 DACA announcement: We need your urgent help to protect more than 10,000 Arkansas Dreamers, those young immigrants who are studying and working in the United States, lawfully contributing to our state in countless...