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The best way for Congress to tackle the budget deficit is to do nothing for the next year. That's because, under current law, the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012 and a range of spending cuts will take effect. As well, tax cuts enacted under President Obama will also expire or be reduced, including expansion of the EITC, the Child Tax Credit, and the temporary payroll tax cut.

Every single working day of the year, American women pay a 22.6 percent gender tax on their income.  By gender tax, I mean a negative transfer imposed upon women’s wages which reduces the wealth they control and increases the amount of time they work.

The credit reporting industry likes to argue that credit checks reveal something about an individual’s character or ability to act responsibly.

The April 2012 employment situation summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a continuation of the apparent slow-down in job growth that began in March.  With just enough jobs added in April to keep up with the expanding population and fewer people participating in the weak labor market, the drop in the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent denotes a lethargic recovery rather than the kind of improvement that workers can celebrate.  As is typical, young people faced higher unemployment

In great news this week, Vermont became the first state to legislate the adoption and use of an alternative to GDP called the Vermont Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). While Vermont isn’t the first state to calculate genuine progress, we’ve highlighted Maryland’s groundbreaking work in this area, it is the first state to actually adopt a GPI through legislation.

The Washington Post ran a remarkable article yesterday on how huge layoffs by state and local governments -- with over 600,000 jobs lost since 2009 -- have been a leading obstacle to economic recovery.

Earlier this week, I argued that Apple's moral failings -- tax avoidance and sweatshop labor practices -- were all the more inexcusable because this a company drowning in profits and cash. It can afford to pay its fair share of taxes and to pay its workers better.

Now, thanks to Isaac Shapiro at the Economic Policy Institute, we have some hard numbers to back up this point. Here's what Shapiro found:

Last summer, a Western Beef store in the East Tremont section of the South Bronx became the first supermarket in the city to receive funding through the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) program. The FRESH initiative provides financial and zoning incentives to entice supermarket chains to build new stores in neighborhoods that lack access to fresh, wholesome foods.

Not everyone, however, buys the argument that medical credit checks are beneficial to consumers. For example, consumer advocates worry that the credit checks open an avenue for health care providers to pressure patients into immediate payment.  

"The danger, really, is that health care providers, particularly hospitals, may find lines of credit that people have open and really ask people to tap those lines of credit," says Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at the think tank Demos.