Fiscal Policy in the US: Build Back Better

(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/15/21)
In this article, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities discusses how the American Rescue Plan will help individuals and the economy. Explaining unemployment benefits, tax credits, food assistance, more affordable health coverage, housing assistance, school funding, and emergency funds.

(US Department of the Treasury, 3/18/21)
The U.S Department of the Treasury focuses on the benefits that will be immediately and directly be applied to families in the U.S. The first is economic impact payments, the second is child tax credits, the third is the homeowner assistance fund, the fourth is emergency rental assistance and the last is the state small business fund. All of these benefits will immediately increase the incomes and decrease the expenditures of families effected by Covid-19.

(Majority Leader Hayes, 3/21/21)
House of Representatives majority leader, Steny Hoyer, outlines how the American Rescue Plan will benefit the middle class. He focuses on child tax credits, more affordable health care, pension plans, and education reform. All aiming to increase the buying power of middle class American incomes.

(Brookings Institution, 4/9/21)
Researchers explain how the funds given to local and state governments will allow for increased spending on education. This will be specifically targeted at early education and reducing child poverty rates.

(Brookings Institute, November 2021)
Stuart Butler and Nehath Sheriff of the Brookings Institute explain how the American Rescue plan will give local governments the funds necessary to train and deploy mental health teams to successfully solve mental health emergencies.

(Commonwealth Fund, 2/3/21)
A professor of Health and Law at George Washington University discusses how the American Rescue plan fails to provide a pathway of attaining affordable health coverage for poor American adults. They focus on how this will be a prevalent issue in various states that have yet to expand Medicaid. With this, they argue that a federally provided emergency coverage for low-income adults will fill the gap that exists with attaining affordance health insurance.

(American Institute for Economic Research, 2/12/21)
A careful analysis on how we will pay for the American Relief plan. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) nonpartisan economic research journals. AIER provides a close analysis to why it is important to know how we will pay for this fiscal bill.

(Forbes, 3/8/21)
A policy director and writer for Forbes discusses how the American Rescue Plan is an abuse-of-crisis by political leaders. They argue that facets of the bill are paving the way for big government policies that will affect future Americans negatively. With this, they analyze the components of the ARP that are expansionary or radical and outlines how politicians can circumvent these problems in future emergency situations.

(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/25/21)
After carefully studying the economy after the American Rescue Plan was enacted, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explain in what ways they bill has succeed and what ways it has failed. The biggest fail so far that they point out is that the labor market is still at a loss. Even though citizens received checks, the overall labor market is still below what it was before the recession.

(American Enterprise Institute, 4/25/21)
Testimony by Angela Rachidi detailing the impacts the American Rescue Plan has had on poverty since its passage. Rachidi makes three points; first, poverty had already fallen below pre-pandemic levels leading up to the passage of the ARP. Second, Rachidi claims the ARP undermines existing anti-poverty policies. Lastly, Rachidi states that the proponents of the bill over estimate its effectiveness.

(Brookings Institution, 9/29/21)
A report from September 29th issued by the Brookings Institute which highlights 11 facts about the pandemic recovery. The report shows that GDP swiftly recovered to pre-pandemic levels by the end of Q2 2021. However, the report emphasizes that this recovery has been largely uneven, with certain retail sectors jumping ahead of their pre-pandemic levels, while others remain severely depressed. The report claims that the high inflationary levels are unlikely to persist as supply chain bottlenecks are worked out, and demand growth in select sectors eases.

(Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 10/18/21)
The San Francisco Fed analyzes the ARP's contribution to inflation by measuring labor market slack. Labor market slack is defined as the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment, a higher ratio indicates tighter labor markets or less market slack. The FRBSF indicates that tighter labor markets lead to higher inflation, and concludes that the ARP will tighten labor markets, thereby increasing inflation by .3 percent per year through 2022.