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From the Dispatch

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    Focus on Jobs: The Next Step in National Economic Recovery and State Fiscal Relief

    Dec 10, 2009

    On Tuesday, December 8th, President Barack Obama delivered an address to the Brookings Institution on the need for increased focus on the job crisis that is affecting so many working families across the country. 
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    Assuring Accountability and Equity in Recovery Spending

    Jun 01, 2009

    In this Dispatch, we emphasize that any stimulus spending has to be tied to increased accountability and transparency in spending decisions, especially by government contractors who often operate like a shadow government with little oversight.  One key reality is that those most in need often don't...
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    Helping Poor and Working Families Build Financial Assets

    Aug 04, 2008

    By one estimate, the federal government spent over $367 billion in 2005 aloneon subsidizing Americans' retirement savings and tax breaks to build upother assets like buying a home.  Unfortunately, those subsidies gooverwhelmingly to those Americans who already have high-incomes; almostnone of it...
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    Building a Better Measure of Poverty Rates

    Jul 17, 2008

    States don't really know how many of their residents are poor.  The current federal poverty measure uses a forty-year old, widely criticized methodology.  It neither accounts for many of the resources poor families receive from the government, such as Food Stamps and the EITC, nor does it,...