The White House has argued the updated rule will help restore overtime privileges that have dwindled significantly over the decades. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that repealing the overtime rule would increase inequality, lower incomes and increase the hours of almost a million workers. “The only clear beneficiaries of repeal would be business owners and shareholders, who would see higher profits from reduced payroll costs,” EPI said in an email statement provided to InsideSources. “It makes no sense to reverse the rule and take those raises away from hard-working employees.”
Inside Sources
November 16, 2016
ADetails are scarce, which makes it difficult to assess the plan’s potential effects, said Daniel Costa, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of immigration law and policy research. “It’s hard to know if he’s really going to do all of this,” Costa told ATTN:. “I’m certainly worried, and other people who care about immigrants’ rights are worried.” A Republican-controlled House and Senate could grant Trump’s plan the funding it needs. “There may be some push-back from business Republicans and people who are more fiscally conservative, but I think the Republican Party has shown a willingness to go down this route,” Costa said. But the proposals’ ultimate cost could turn off fiscal conservatives: Cost estimates for Trump’s immigration plan run as high as $166 billion, according to Politico.
ATTN:
November 16, 2016
A report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute last year found that the top 10 recipients of the visas in 2012 “were all in the business of outsources and offshoring high-tech American jobs.”
The Hill
November 16, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute is out with a new paper that once more pounds the drum for higher taxes on the wealthy, as a way to avoid dragging down the recovery and to keep long-term deficits in check. Those kind of tax increases, Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair contend, would also finance what they believe is important spending on issues like health care and battling income inequality.
Politico
November 15, 2016
“I think this election in many ways was a referendum on the negative consequences of globalization and the failure of Democrats and Republicans to come up with effective policies to hold working people harmless,” said Robert Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
The Plain Dealer
November 14, 2016
Robert Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. (@RobScott_epi)
On Point
November 14, 2016
Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute, added that investing $18 billion a year into transportation infrastructure could create more than 200,000 jobs in just the first year and a $29 billion rise in GPD. In addition, private companies may also work more efficiently and complete projects much faster than public agencies. And according to Arcadis’ 2016 Global Infrastructure Investment Index, the U.S. is one of the top targets for business and others looking to invest in infrastructure.
Forbes
November 11, 2016
“It will encourage importers to switch to other countries — Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia,” says Robert Scott, a trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Tariffs are “a very ineffective weapon. It would be very costly and it would not do a very good job of rebuilding manufacturing.”
CNN Money
November 11, 2016
But financing construction projects through tax credits might minimize the benefits, said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. This is because the credits often improve the profit margins for existing projects while failing to help projects in impoverished communities that are less likely to generate a sizeable return. “You run the risk of using the money to provide a windfall to people who would have been building anyway,” Bivens said.
Associated Press
November 11, 2016
Trump did exceptionally well with the white working class, by some counts pulling in 49% of voters in union households. But while Trump and labor are aligned on one of his most oft-cited policies regarding trade, said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, workers would have plenty to fear in a Trump administration. One concern has to do with funding for the Labor Department, Bivens said, which might be weakened — and therefore less powerful as a tool for fighting on behalf of workers… “There’s the broad concern that Trump is running on an absolutely enormous tax cut, and anytime you do that there’s going to be a reduction in benefits,” Bivens said. “Enforcement in the Labor Department has never been a priority among Republicans.”
Mic
November 11, 2016