HR 1968 gives the “Trump administration significantly more leeway to spend federal dollars without Congressional approval,” according to the Economic Policy Institute, as well as preventing any member of Congress from attempting to terminate Trump’s recent declaration of national emergencies over immigration and the U.S. border.
UPI
March 17, 2025
Child care costs more than public college tuition in 38 states, including California, Florida and Texas, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research nonprofit.
“Child care is one of the largest expenses in a family’s budget partly due to early care and education requiring long operating hours for better access and a low student-to-teacher ratio for better quality,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Gould said that government-funded programs are necessary because “care costs cannot be made less expensive without sacrificing quality.”
Consumer Affairs
March 17, 2025
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tells BI that different parts of the economy, like the job market, won’t recover from a recession at the same rate.
“You can have job losses that persist quite a bit after an official recession ends — and you can certainly have unemployment rise well after the end of a recession,” he says.
Business Insider
March 17, 2025
“The administration seems determined to squander and wreck the strong economy,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote earlier this week. “Each of the individual policies they are pursuing—illegal layoffs of federal workers, mass deportations, constant threats and retractions of broad-based tariffs, and Medicaid spending cuts—would be bad for the economy. But each policy is also being pursued with maximum levels of chaos and incoordination, creating unprecedented levels of economic uncertainty. This uncertainty is itself a serious economic threat.”
Common Dreams
March 17, 2025
Margaret Poydock, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, said this doesn’t bode well for organized labor.
“There will still be organizing, but unions and workers may be hesitant to bring cases to the NLRB,” said Poydock. “President Trump has made it clear that he expects members to rule in favor of employers.”
…
Despite the stance of the Trump administration, unions remain extremely popular among the general public. A Gallup poll in 2024 found that 70% of Americans view unions favorably.
That’s up from a low of 48% in 2009. Poydock said support for unions from the general public – even those who don’t belong to a union – is key to keeping momentum strong.
“Public solidarity helps support unions, when they’re trying to win a union contract or when their employer violates labor law,” said Poydock. “So public support is key in the mix of union organizing right now.”
Public News Service
March 17, 2025
States with the most federal workers graph.
Source: Economic Policy Institute
Pluribus News
March 17, 2025
This episode of Planet Money was produced and also reported a little bit by Willa Rubin. It was edited by Jess Jiang and engineered by Jimmy Keeley, with fact-checking help from Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. We also want to give a special thanks to Ben Zipperer at the Economic Policy Institute. He also really helped us understand who the federal workforce is. I’m Sarah Gonzalez.
NPR Planet Money
March 17, 2025
Federal employees “underpin every part of our economy and public safety,” Jennifer Sherer of the Economic Policy Institute and one of the rally’s speakers told The Catholic Messenger.
Catholic Messenger
March 17, 2025
Medicaid covers more than 50 percent of children in small towns and rural areas in six states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, and South Carolina, according to the Economic Policy Institute,
New York Amsterdam News
March 17, 2025
“The most damaging way to finance TCJA extensions would be with spending cuts for programs like SNAP or Medicaid,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank, wrote in a February analysis.
The Hill
March 17, 2025