Michael Leachman
Center on Budget
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Past articles by Michael:
As Relief Talks Resume, Don’t Forget Fiscal Aid
The fact that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicates he’s now interested in a new COVID-19 relief package is welcome news, particularly if it leads to substantial new federal fiscal aid to help states, localities, tribal nations, and U.S. territories address their massive budget shortfalls. → Read More
Congress needs to send state governments billions of dollars to avoid an economic disaster
The federal government must provide significant fiscal relief to states as soon as possible – or face a deep economic recession. → Read More
State “Mansion Taxes” on Very Expensive Homes
One way states can build more broadly shared prosperity is by adopting a tax on high-value housing, often called a mansion tax, to help fund schools, health care, roads, and other services and infrastructure critical to residents’ long-term future. → Read More
North Carolina Tax Cap Threatens Funding for Public Services
North Carolina voters will decide in November whether to tighten the cap on the state’s income tax rate, which would make it harder to fund schools, health care, and other public services while overwhelmingly benefiting the state’s wealthiest families. → Read More
California House Members May Settle for Bad SALT “Compromise”
Republican House members from California are reportedly pushing to change a provision in the emerging GOP tax bill that eliminates much of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which lets taxpayers deduct state and local property taxes and either state and local income taxes or general sales taxes. → Read More
A Punishing Decade for School Funding
Public investment in K-12 schools — crucial for communities to thrive and the U.S. economy to offer broad opportunity — has declined dramatically in a number of states over the last decade. → Read More
House Tax Bill’s Changes to State and Local Tax Deductions Would Hurt States
The House tax bill released today ends the federal deduction for state and local income and sales taxes and limits the deduction for state and local property taxes to taxes under $10,000 — all to pay for marginal income-tax rate cuts. That would be a bad deal for most Americans. → Read More
SALT “Compromise”: Similar Harm to States as Full Repeal
The tax bill that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady plans to release tomorrow will reportedly end the federal deduction for state and local income and sales taxes, but keep it for state and local property taxes. → Read More
Repeal of State and Local Deduction Is a Poor Trade for Tax Cuts for Wealthy
The tax plan from President Trump and congressional Republican leaders would end the federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) — which allows taxpayers who itemize deductions on their federal income taxes to deduct state and local property taxes and either state and local income taxes or general sales taxes — and use the revenue to pay for marginal income-tax rate cuts. → Read More
Eliminating State and Local Tax Deduction to Pay for Tax Cuts for Wealthy a Bad Deal for Most Americans
Eliminating the SALT deduction would a bad deal for most Americans, especially low- and middle-income people. → Read More
A Lost Decade in Higher Education Funding State Cuts Have Driven Up Tuition and Reduced Quality
A decade since the Great Recession hit, state spending on public colleges and universities remains well below historic levels, despite recent increases. Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the 2017 school year (that is, the school year ending in 2017) was nearly $9 billion below its 2008 level, after adjusting for inflation. (See Figure 1.) The funding decline has… → Read More
Timeline: 5 Years of Kansas’ Tax-Cut Disaster
Five years ago this week, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed one of the biggest income tax cuts a state has ever enacted, promising that they’d act “like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” Tax cut promoters Art Laffer and Stephen Moore, who helped design the cuts, said they would produce an “immediate and lasting boost” to the state’s economy. Rather than fueling an… → Read More
Common-Sense Principles for Solving Kansas’ School Funding Crisis
Kansas lawmakers continue to debate how to find the revenue needed to fix a huge fiscal mess caused by the ill-advised, unaffordable tax cuts that Governor Sam Brownback signed into law in 2012. It’s a challenge: they need both to close the latest massive shortfall in the state’s beleaguered budget and also raise hundreds of millions of additional dollars so that school funding reaches the… → Read More
Nevada Joins Maryland, New Mexico in Rescinding Calls for a Constitutional Convention
Nevada lawmakers yesterday unanimously rescinded the state’s past resolutions calling for a national convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. That’s important because other states — misled by arguments from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other groups — are calling for a convention, which would put at risk the cherished rights and freedoms that the Constitution provides… → Read More
Kansas Can’t Afford Its Cut to the Top Income Tax Rate
Kansas voters overwhelmingly want their legislature to reverse the damaging tax cuts enacted five years ago at the behest of Governor Sam Brownback, but the governor and some of the state’s lawmakers are determined to keep a particularly costly provision — the state’s deep reduction in its top income tax rate. → Read More
Bills Suggest Kansas Is Moving in the Right Direction
Five years ago, Kansas cut income taxes deeply, on the theory that it would generate a burst of economic growth. → Read More
More States Legalize and Tax Marijuana
The number of states in which marijuana is now legal more than doubled this week as Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, and California approved ballot measures. As marijuana sales emerge from the shadows, their modest revenues may make it a bit easier for states to fulfill voter expectations for high-quality schools and other public investments. → Read More
Voters Boost Minimum Wages in Four States
Voters approved minimum wage increases in all four states — Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington — with Election Day ballot measures. More specifically: → Read More
Capital Spending to Build and Renovate Schools Also Down
State cuts in K-12 funding over the past decade, which we outline in our new report, haven’t just affected schools’ operating funding for things like teacher salaries and textbooks. Capital spending — to build new schools, renovate and expand facilities, and equip schools with more modern technologies, for example — also fell sharply in most states. → Read More
Study Shows Money Matters for K-12 Education
Better funding for schools leads to better long-term outcomes for students, a careful study concludes. That’s a timely and important message. As our new report shows, public investment in K-12 schools — crucial for communities to thrive and the economy to offer broad opportunity — has fallen dramatically in a number of states over the last decade. → Read More