In another special, Washington, D.C., edition of “Get Real” host David DesRosiers welcomed John Yoo, Ben Ritz, Seth Barron, Ellis Henican, and Kenin Spivak.
issue: Fiscal Policies
Ritz on Concord Coalition’s Facing the Future Podcast: Are Democrats Backing ‘Slopulist’ Tax Cuts?
This week on Facing the Future, host Bob Bixby spoke with Ben Ritz, Vice President of Policy Development at the Progressive Policy Institute, about recent tax policy proposals, budget challenges, and the broader implications for fiscal responsibility in the United States.
Critique of Major Tax Cut Proposals
The conversation focused heavily on two significant tax cut proposals introduced by Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen. Both plans aim to exempt a large portion of middle-class Americans from paying federal income tax—up to $75,000 under Booker’s plan and $92,000 under Van Hollen’s. Ritz was critical of these proposals, describing them as “slopulism,” a term he said meant “low-effort and designed to trend on social media algorithms rather than be good policy.”
He explained that with these proposals, “If you say them really quickly to someone – ‘Should we cut taxes on the middle class and working Americans?’– people say, ‘Yeah, sure, that sounds good.’ And then you actually look at the proposal and they have a lot of really bad consequences if you just think about the details for 5 minutes”
Ritz pointed out that the Van Hollen and Booker proposals are actually regressive despite appearing progressive at first glance. Because of the way deductions work, higher earners receive a disproportionately larger benefit. He noted, “Someone who earns $175,000 a year is getting twice the tax cut as somebody who earns $75,000” Furthermore, the cost implications are staggering: Van Hollen’s plan would cost about $1.5 trillion, while Booker’s proposal is nearly $7 trillion—exceeding the size of the Trump tax cuts and COVID relief spending.
Ritz emphasized the importance of fiscal responsibility, especially for Democrats who want to expand government programs. He warned, “If you want to be the party of ‘government can do things,’ you have to make it so that the government can do things.”
Budget Process and the President’s Proposal
Turning to the broader budget landscape, Ritz expressed skepticism about the President’s recent budget proposal, noting it lacked completeness and realism. “I didn’t see a budget proposal from the president. I saw a proposal for maybe 30% of the budget. There’s nothing on revenue and he only talked about discretionary spending, nothing on mandatory spending, which is about two-thirds of the budget when you include interest… I thought it was incomplete and irresponsible.”
“We’re spending $1 trillion a year on interest now and basically every year into the future”, Ritz said. “As a percent of GDP, it is the highest it has ever been. We have never spent as much of our national resources on federal interest payments as we do now, and are going to in the future. It’s more than we spend on national defense, or at least as we were before the war on Iran. We’ll see how that changes. But it’s more than we spend on Medicare and Medicaid, at least individually. And if we keep going on our current path, eventually it’s going to be even bigger than Social Security, which is the biggest program in the budget.”
Potential Solutions: Fiscal Commissions and Automatic Stabilizers
Ritz was “lukewarm positive” about the idea of a new fiscal commission, acknowledging its potential to restart conversations on budget reform. However, he stressed that “the process isn’t the problem, the people and the policy and the politics are the problem.” He advocated for action-forcing mechanisms to be part of a commission process, such as requiring Congress to vote up-or-down on commission recommendations to increase accountability.
On automatic stabilizers—mechanisms that would automatically adjust taxes or spending based on economic conditions—Ritz expressed strong support: “I’m a big proponent of them… I’d rather the default be an ideal outcome rather than an unsustainable one.”
Social Security and Holistic Budget Planning
With Social Security’s trust fund projected to become insolvent by 2032, Ritz supported forming a specific commission to address the issue but cautioned against treating it in isolation. He explained, “Social Security isn’t the only problem we have in 2032. Medicare’s main trust fund is going to run out at the same time, so we’re actually going to have multiple problems hitting at the same time. I don’t think you can look at Social Security entirely in isolation from the rest of the federal budget. What are you going to do about our other fiscal challenges? I think if we’re doing a Social Security-only commission, it needs to be circumscribed so that they can’t take all the solutions for all the other problems we face off the table.”
Ritz on The New Liberal Podcast: Do Democrats have a ‘Slopulism’ problem?
Democratic senators are proposing plans that would drastically reduce taxes on the middle and upper middle class. Tax cuts are always popular with the people who receive them – but are they a good idea? Ben Ritz joins the podcast to discuss why Democrats keep proposing ‘slopulism’ ideas about the budget, why the budget math for huge tax cuts doesn’t work, and why this approach is politically dangerous for Democrats.
Ritz on The Gist: Ben Ritz on Slopulism and the Democrats’ 2024 Lesson
Ben Ritz, of the Progressive Policy Institute, joins to discuss his Atlantic piece, “Democrats Learned the Wrong Lesson From 2024,” and his argument that the party is drifting toward “slopulism.” He explains why half-baked promises on taxes, deficits, and affordability may be politically tempting but fiscally hollow.
Ritz for The Atlantic: Democrats Learned the Wrong Lesson From 2024
Despite Donald Trump’s promises, America has not been Made Affordable Again. This has created an immense political opportunity for his opponents. But Democratic lawmakers are failing just as badly to articulate an alternative vision. Instead, some of them seem to be trying to out-Trump the president with their own brand of “slopulism”—half-baked policy proposals that sound good only if you don’t think too hard about them, and that would, if enacted, hurt the people they’re supposed to help. Others are simply reheating the leftovers of Joe Biden’s agenda. Few are reckoning with the fundamental problem that led to the party’s defeat in 2024: an inability to prioritize the most important parts of its agenda and make the case that they’re worth paying for.
These shortcomings might not prevent Democrats from riding an anti-Trump backlash to success in the midterms, but they could doom the chances of any future Democratic administration governing successfully.
Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen recently unveiled bills that would exempt most middle-class households from paying any federal income taxes. Booker’s plan would more than double the standard deduction, to $75,000 per couple, and increase the child tax credit to be even more generous than it was under Biden’s COVID-era expansion. Van Hollen’s would essentially create a parallel income-tax system under which a couple’s first $92,000 of income is exempt. His bill in particular appears to have broad support within the party, rolling out with 18 Senate co-sponsors and a slew of endorsements from major labor unions and activist groups.
Read more in The Atlantic
Trump’s Failing Fiscal Report Card
The newest fiscal forecast from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released this Wednesday, amounts to a damning report card on the Trump administration’s first-year tax and economic policies. It projects staggering deficits, a deteriorating debt path, and rising interest costs. But what makes the assessment especially striking is how much worse these numbers are compared to just a year ago, before the White House’s profligate, short-sighted agenda was put into effect.
The report’s topline numbers are sobering. Annual deficits are projected to exceed $3 trillion by the end of the decade, up from $1.9 trillion this year and nearly $500 billion higher than last year’s forecast. Over the longer term, the picture is equally troubling. The CBO now projects that over the next three decades, our deficit-to-GDP ratio will increase roughly four times faster than it previously anticipated. As a result, federal debt held by the public is expected to rise to 172% of GDP by 2055, well above last year’s 156% estimate.
This deterioration from previous projections is not coincidental. It reflects deliberate choices made by the Trump administration over the past year. Take the One Big Beautiful Budget Act (OBBBA), the administration’s domestic policy centerpiece. The law’s extension and expansion of trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts is projected to add roughly $4.7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. This large cost was no secret during the legislative process, yet many supporters argued that rapid growth would cover the gap. CBO’s analysis tells a different story, pointing to a modest and temporary boost to GDP, with long-run economic growth largely unchanged from a year ago.
The administration’s immigration agenda has also taken a toll on America’s fiscal outlook. By ramping up deportations — while also sharply cutting legal immigration — the administration is precipitously shrinking the labor force, constraining long-term economic output, and eroding the future tax base. CBO projects that overall, the administration’s immigration policies will cumulatively increase the deficit by roughly $500 billion over the next decade.
Even more worrisome is that CBO projections are likely overestimating the government’s only major new source of revenue. It credits the Trump administration with roughly $3 trillion in new tariff revenue, which, despite tariffs’ many other damaging economic effects, has partially offset the impact of their deficit-fueling policies elsewhere. But the bulk of this new tariff revenue is built on legally dubious emergency declarations currently being litigated in the Supreme Court. If the justices strike down the tariffs, America’s fiscal trajectory could soon look even worse than CBO’s already somber projections.
This lack of fiscal discipline in Washington is especially reckless given the nation already pays more than $1 trillion annually for debt servicing, which reached its all-time high as a percent of GDP in 2025. Now should be the time for lawmakers to reduce the deficit and bring interest payments down to a manageable level. But instead, the CBO projects that debt servicing costs will continuously break new records going forward. By 2047, interest costs are expected to eclipse Social Security to become the largest federal expenditure. By 2055, they will constitute a whopping 6.8% of GDP, more than double what they are today and 25% higher than last year’s projections.
Beneath these interest projections lies an equally troubling structural shift. When the government’s average interest rate rises above the economy’s nominal growth rate, debt begins to compound faster than the economy can grow its way out of it, setting up a dangerous spiral. In that environment, even modest deficits can cause the debt-to-GDP ratio to climb, forcing policymakers to embrace extreme austerity measures and run sustained primary surpluses just to stabilize the fiscal outlook. The CBO projects that this will be the case within the next few years — far earlier than its previous forecast of 2045 — making today’s deficit binge even more perilous than it may appear.
A worsening fiscal outlook ultimately means lower living standards. Americans face the prospect of higher interest rates across the economy, appearing as higher mortgage payments, auto loans, and small business financing costs. Persistent deficits can also crowd out private or public investments, dampening productivity and wage growth over time. And for the millions of people that rely on government programs, rapidly increasing interest costs will force more and more revenue just to pay for yesterday’s consumption, leaving less available for critical public services and programs.
This administration remains wholly uninterested in fiscal discipline, choosing to embrace fantastical promises about cost-cutting and growth rather than confront the dismal reality its policies are ushering in. But to prevent the biggest consequences of runaway debt, Washington must act as soon as possible to reverse course and confront our nation’s fiscal challenges. Bringing the deficit down to 3% of GDP, as one recent bipartisan resolution proposes, would be a sensible step in the right direction. But words alone won’t be enough. Lawmakers must deliver a comprehensive, balanced package to do so, including pro-growth tax reform that raises adequate revenue, sensible entitlement adjustments that reflect demographic realities, and a retreat from this administration’s economically damaging trade and immigration policies.
The Pro-Growth Tax Reform Hidden Inside a Fiscal Trainwreck
Six months after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law, the country is already beginning to feel its consequences. Cuts to state-administered programs like Medicaid and SNAP have left massive holes in state budgets, forcing cuts to important programs. Meanwhile, the law’s tax cuts have kept deficits near record highs, leading to stubbornly high inflation. But tucked within this regressive and fiscally irresponsible tax law, there is one change that will benefit everyone. This provision, known as full expensing, will reduce our tax code’s penalty on business investment and lead to heightened economic growth.
In America, corporations are taxed based on their profits, meaning companies may deduct most business expenses from their taxable income every year. Historically, however, the corporate tax code included one major exception. When companies invested in long-lived assets — such as vehicles, machinery, or computers — they were required to spread deductions over several years, rather than immediately deducting the full cost. Because a tax deduction received in the future is worth less in inflation-adjusted terms than one received today, this feature of the tax code effectively penalizes investment. In some cases, the penalty was extreme — businesses had to wait 39 years to fully deduct spending on some classes of investment, for example, reducing the real value of the deduction by over half.
To eliminate this bias against productivity-enhancing investment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) added new permanent full expensing provisions for most business investments, including research and development, and allows businesses to now immediately deduct the cost of many of their capital investments. It also temporarily extended full expensing to manufacturing structures like factories, though the provision is set to expire in 2031. In the long run, the bill’s permanent expensing provisions account roughly for just 5% of its projected cost. Yet their economic impact could be substantial: one analysis estimates that the changes could increase America’s economic output by more than $200 billion per year.
Unfortunately, however, much of full expensing’s benefits will be offset by the rest of the Republican tax bill’s provisions, which will severely damage our economy. The majority of the law’s tax cuts were spent on needless giveaways to wealthy Americans and special interest groups. These costly provisions left limited space for pro-growth reforms, so full expensing for most physical structures was excluded from the final law. Worst of all, Congress refused to pay for the law’s multitrillion-dollar price tag, which is projected to increase our national debt by 50% of GDP over the next 30 years. This debt burden will lead to higher inflation and lower economic growth, which will completely crowd out and overtake full expensing’s economic benefits.
Both policymakers and Americans might wonder why they should care about a tax penalty placed on profitable corporations; some progressive Democrats even oppose full expensing as a windfall for wealthy corporations. But this critique overlooks that business’s investment decisions don’t just impact shareholders — they affect the entire economy. When profitable firms reinvest earnings in new capital, they expand production, raise worker productivity, and support job creation. Over time, these gains all translate to higher living standards, increased wages, and more opportunities for American workers. By contrast, when the tax code discourages investment, firms are more likely to return profits to shareholders, a choice that does little to improve wages or economic opportunity for most Americans.
So how can lawmakers build on the success of full expensing, while also addressing the GOP tax bill’s economic harm? Comprehensive reforms to the corporate tax code, outlined in PPI’s 2024 budget blueprint, would allow it to raise more revenue from profitable companies without compromising economic growth. To start, Congress should expand pro-growth full expensing by permanently enabling it for physical structures, which would promote investments in housing, factories, and more.
It should also prioritize paying for not only new expensing provisions, but the mountain of spending it has already piled onto the national debt. Phasing out inefficient tax expenditures and loopholes such as the deduction for interest on corporate debt, the corporate state and local tax deduction, and more would be a promising start. To increase revenue even further, it should also raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25%, closer to the average rate in the developed world.
Lawmakers across the political spectrum should agree: America needs a corporate tax code that raises more revenue without sacrificing economic growth. Building on existing full-expensing provisions to encourage investment, while pursuing other tax reforms to offset the cost, would move our tax code decisively in that direction.
Ritz for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas: Wealth Taxes Are a Dangerous Distraction
In a written debate for Democracy, a Journal of Ideas, PPI’s Ben Ritz debates the question: should billionaires exist? In his responses, Ritz argues for a pragmatic approach to reduce inequality in America, rather than a large wealth tax designed to tax billionaires out of existence.
Ritz acknowledges that inequality is a major problem in America, and that we need new laws to prevent wealthy Americans from wielding unfair political influence. But he also stresses that billionaires are not responsible for every problem in American society, as his opponents all but assert. By blaming billionaires for issues like climate change and housing affordability, activists distract from real solutions to those problems
Furthermore, implementing a wealth tax to combat inequality would have enormous unintended consequences. In countries where they have been tried, wealth taxes have been difficult to enforce, leading to astronomical rates of tax evasion. Furthermore, wealth taxes damage the economy by incentivizing wealthy Americans to spend down their fortunes, rather than investing in the American economy. These incentives would slow economic growth and reduce wages for working people across America
Instead of focusing on an unrealistic wealth tax, Ritz calls for real solutions to reduce inequality in America. He recommends that lawmakers raise the top tax rates for income and capital gains, close loopholes in the tax code, and implement a progressive inheritance tax to combat intergenerational wealth concentration. These pragmatic solutions would combat inequality, without destroying the economic system that made America one of the most prosperous countries in the world.
Read the full argument in Democracy.
A Smarter Path Forward on Premium Tax Credits
Two weeks ago, Congress let another deadline pass by, failing to act on the year-end expiration of tax subsidies that help millions of Americans afford health insurance. This legislative failure has already begun to hurt Americans, with 1.4 million fewer people enrolling in health insurance plans on the federal marketplace. And despite months of legislative attention, Congress is no closer to a real solution to reduce health care costs for the American people.
Most Democrats are still demanding a three-year extension of the pandemic-era subsidies, with no way to pay for it. But while their plan did advance in the House, it stands no chance in the Senate. Meanwhile, most Republicans are still clueless on health care, unable to offer any real solutions to reduce costs. Even the Senate’s “pragmatic dealmakers” have failed to make progress, with deliberations stuck in the mud.
It’s time for a compromise like the one that PPI proposed in September. Our plan would strike a sensible middle ground, preserving many benefits for low-income Americans but saving money by targeting subsidies to those who need them most. The subsidies would also be permanent, paid for by cracking down on unfair practices that insurance companies and large hospitals use to overcharge the federal government.
Congress Shouldn’t Repeat the Mistakes that Got Us Here
To understand why a compromise is needed, it’s worth recalling how these enhanced subsidies came to be. In 2021, Democrats temporarily expanded the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance subsidies as part of their pandemic relief bill. The enhanced tax credits were designed for a health emergency, and were therefore unusually generous. But once the pandemic had subsided and the tax credits were set to expire in 2022, many Democrats argued that they should be made permanent.
To some extent, these Democrats had a point — the enhanced subsidies provided real financial relief and helped push America’s uninsured rate to a record low. They also eliminated the ACA’s “benefit cliff,” which caused enrollees to lose all of their benefits if their income rose above an arbitrary threshold. But moderate Democrats realized that the pandemic-era subsidies were deeply flawed. The benefit formula was skewed toward higher-income enrollees, with some families making over $300,000 per year being eligible for taxpayer support. And a permanent extension would have cost roughly $300 billion over ten years, adding fuel to our ballooning national debt.
At the time, my colleagues at the Progressive Policy Institute called for a permanent compromise. But instead, Congress chose the worst possible approach, extending the full pandemic-era subsidies for three years. Rather than solving the problem, lawmakers guaranteed that it would return in 2025.
A Better Way Forward
While Congress failed to meet its 2025 deadline for action, a bipartisan group of Senators is still hoping to find a solution (and make it retroactive). The details of this plan are still unfinished, but negotiators will surely be tempted to propose a temporary, deficit-financed version of the subsidies — nothing more than a repacked version of the ideas that have failed to gain traction for months. Instead of rehashing failed ideas, negotiators should get behind a sustainable and permanent solution to make health care more affordable.
If Senators are willing to take the second approach, they should turn to PPI’s proposal, which would enact a more affordable version of the subsidies and pay to make them permanent. Our plan would preserve free health insurance for Americans in poverty and would provide more generous support than the original ACA for people earning up to 350% of the federal poverty level. It would also eliminate the ACA’s benefit cliff, meaning middle-income Americans wouldn’t immediately lose all of their tax credits if they receive a modest raise. Crucially, the plan would cost just half as much as the pandemic-era subsidies, generating the greatest savings by scaling back subsidies for upper-income enrollees that don’t need them.
This proposal would be fully paid for through savings in the health-care system. It cuts costs by adopting site-neutral payments in Medicare, ensuring that the program pays the same rate for a procedure regardless of whether it is performed in a doctor’s office or a hospital. It would also crack down on upcoding in Medicare Advantage, the practice in which private insurers make their patients appear sicker than they really are in order to secure higher government reimbursements.
Not only are these proposals smart policy, but they would also undercut the strongest argument against the subsidies — that subsidies, on their own, do not drive down the underlying costs of health care. By cracking down on large hospital systems and insurance companies that siphon money from our medical system, these reforms could do more to reduce costs than any law since the Affordable Care Act.
The stakes are too high for politicians to waste time on unrealistic proposals or temporary fixes. It’s time for Congress to get behind a credible solution to reduce health-care costs and provide long-term security for the millions of Americans who purchase health insurance through the ACA’s marketplace.
Ritz on Concord Coalition’s Facing the Future Podcast: Government Reopens With All The Same Problems
This week on Facing the Future, Ben Ritz joins to take a look at the daunting agenda facing Congress after passing a budget deal to temporarily reopen the government.
Trump’s New “Affordability” Agenda Would Just Make Everything Worse
The results of last week’s elections made it clear that the top-of-mind issue for voters is the rising cost of living. Democrats Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger both won their gubernatorial race by double digits after focusing their campaigns on affordability. Their victories coincided with new polling showing widespread distrust in President Trump’s handling of the economy, underscoring just how politically vulnerable the White House is on cost-of-living issues.
In the days that followed, the administration responded by releasing a new “affordability agenda.” The plan includes a 50-year mortgage, $2,000 tariff rebate checks, and cash to help people with health-care expenses. Unfortunately, each of these proposals would push prices higher, not lower.
To start, the administration’s proposal to shift from 30-year to 50-year mortgages may sound like a break for homebuyers because monthly payments would likely fall by a few hundred dollars a month. But stretching loans across half a century dramatically increases total interest paid, delaying the building of equity and leaving homeowners more financially vulnerable. For a $400,000 home with a 10% down payment, a 50-year mortgage at today’s 6.25% fixed rate would reduce monthly payments by roughly $250 compared with a standard 30-year loan. But over the life of the loan, total interest payments would almost double, from $438,000 under a 30-year mortgage to $816,000.
Meanwhile, the policy does nothing to expand housing supply–the real driver of long-term affordability. We face a multi-million-unit housing shortage, driven by restrictive zoning, slow permitting, and years of underbuilding. Without addressing those barriers, cheaper financing simply fuels more bidding for the same limited number of homes, causing home prices to inflate. Real relief requires adding more housing, not just stretching mortgage plans.
The administration’s second proposal — sending Americans $2,000 checks funded by tariff revenue — is equally misguided. Tariffs are taxes paid by U.S. consumers, so any “rebate” would simply return money Americans already paid through higher prices. Moreover, the revenue might not even be collected because the administration claims tariffs as an effective tool to pressure trading partners into new trade deals. If those deals ultimately involve lifting tariffs — as the White House frequently suggests–then the revenue they are counting on will never materialize.
And even if the tariffs raise real revenue, the Trump administration has already spent it. The White House has argued that the massive tax cuts in The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) didn’t add to the deficit because their costs would be offset by tariff revenue. That isn’t true, but even if it was, it would mean any new checks would have to be financed with more borrowing. Americans already saw the costly consequences of deficit-financed payments in 2021 when both Presidents Trump and Biden supported an identical stimulus check. In the end, the biggest effect of this policy was to help push inflation to its highest level in four decades. Trump’s rebate checks would repeat this mistake — injecting a fresh burst of demand into an economy constrained by supply shortages. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates these rebates would cost roughly $600 billion per year, a staggering amount of new deficit-financed stimulus.
A similar dynamic plays out in the administration’s proposed health-insurance plan. With enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, the White House and Congressional Republicans have floated a plan to send unrestricted cash to consumers to buy any plan they want. This would hollow out the ACA marketplaces by encouraging healthier individuals to buy cheaper, less comprehensive coverage. As healthier people leave the marketplace, premiums will rise for everyone else (by definition, more sicker people), prompting insurers to exit and leaving millions with fewer options and higher costs.
Republicans frame this approach as one that prioritizes consumer choice, but that narrative ignores the structural barriers that prevent health care markets from functioning like ordinary markets. Most patients lack the information needed to shop for value when prices are unclear and providers hold the negotiating power. Simply handing people cash does nothing to change these underlying dynamics.
Even if the policy were good, it would be almost impossible to implement in the middle of an active enrollment cycle, potentially creating serious operational and regulatory risks. The health-care marketplace is built on stable rules and predictable subsidies. Abruptly moving to an entirely different model could confuse consumers and create administrative chaos for insurers precisely when millions are looking to secure coverage for the coming year.
These policies are all classic demand-side subsidies that put more government-funded purchasing power into the hands of consumers while doing nothing to improve supply. We have already seen how this movie ends. As PPI has written, the central flaw of President Biden’s economic approach four years ago was its overwhelming focus on subsidizing demand: spending trillions in stimulus while doing far too little to expand supply. That imbalance contributed to the highest inflation in 40 years, effectively negating Biden’s most significant legislative accomplishments and ultimately contributing to the political backlash that cost Democrats the White House.
Now, the Trump administration is repeating those same policy mistakes, only with more damaging consequences. Like Biden, President Trump is making his “affordability agenda” all about boosting household purchasing power without addressing the supply-side challenges that are actually responsible for higher prices. And the risks are far greater this time around following the passage of the fiscally-irresponsible OBBBA that will already stand to add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade.
If the goal is to actually cut costs, policy should focus on expanding supply and lowering structural prices, not simply subsidizing demand. In health care, PPI has proposed a pragmatic reform of the ACA’s premium tax credits that would lower premiums instead of inflating them. On trade, reducing tariffs — and avoiding economically destructive trade wars — remains one of the most direct ways to cut consumer prices. And PPI has long argued for zoning and land-use reform in order to build enough homes to bring down housing costs.
Americans need lower prices, stronger competition, and policies that expand supply rather than simply encourage people to bid against one another for scarce goods and services. A serious affordability agenda would start there. Right now, the administration’s plan offers the illusion of relief — and the certainty of higher prices. It’s time for a more pragmatic strategy that tackles the real drivers of high prices.
Ritz on SiriusXM POTUS Mornings with Tim Farley
Ben Ritz joined SiriusXM POTUS Mornings with Tim Farley to discuss the end of the shutdown, including how Congress’s reliance on continuing resolutions undermines updated policymaking, locks in outdated funding levels, and creates mounting challenges the longer they remain in place.
Ritz on CSPAN: Democrats and Fiscal Policy
Economic and public policy analysts familiar with Democratic policy talked about how Democrats can assert fiscal responsibility in both their policies and messaging. The panelists addressed topic including how Democrats can differentiate themselves on the campaign trail when discussing fiscal issues, the growing national debt, Social Security solvency, and how Democrats could use fiscal elements of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act to their advantage when campaigning in the next election. This discussion was part of the Center for New Liberalism’s 2025 New Liberal Action Summit.
Ritz Talks Shutdown Solutions on SiriusXM POTUS: The Briefing
PPI Vice President Ben Ritz joined The Briefing on SiriusXM to discuss the consequences of this government shutdown, why it happened in the first place, and ideas for how Congress can bring it to an end.
A Better Way to Fix the Pandemic Premium Tax Credit Than Income Caps
One of the biggest obstacles to ending the government shutdown is partisan disagreement about how to address the looming expiration of a pandemic-era expansion of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) premium tax credit (PTC). Established in 2014, the PTC gave subsidized health insurance to Americans who didn’t receive it through their employer or the government. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) made this program substantially more generous, including to higher-income households that were never supposed to receive assistance under the original ACA. Democrats want to continue the pandemic PTC expansion in its entirety, while most Republicans want it to expire.
A bipartisan consensus appears to be emerging that the way to better target assistance moving forward and end the shutdown is to impose an income cap on eligibility for the PTC. Unfortunately, this compromise would restore the biggest flaw in the original ACA design that ARP solved: the benefit cliff. Before ARP expanded the PTC, households with income greater than 400% of FPL were not eligible for the ACA subsidy. That meant a single extra dollar of income could trigger thousands of dollars in higher premiums — an abrupt cutoff that discouraged work. Bringing back an income cap today would leave households vulnerable to sudden increases in health-care costs as a penalty for working.
Instead of repeating past mistakes, a better approach would be to establish a gradual phase-out of benefits for households as their income increases. This would smooth out the benefit cliff established under the ACA and avoid giving windfalls to high-income households.
Under PPI’s preferred approach, households with incomes under 300% of FPL would be eligible for the same expanded subsidies next year that they are today. But rather than capping health-care premiums at a certain percentage of recipients’ income, premiums would steadily increase as household income increases. As a result, high-income households’ subsidies would taper off as their earnings increase, thus reducing unnecessary benefits for high earners without recreating the benefit cliff. Subsidies would also fully phase out at lower income levels than they do today.
If lawmakers are concerned about high-income households still qualifying for subsidized health insurance, the best solution is to adjust the phase-out such that a household’s premiums are set to increase starting at a lower level of income. Accordingly, PPI proposes that the phase-in threshold gradually decreases for each of the next two years — similar in concept to a recent proposal from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) to gradually phase down the credits back to pre-pandemic levels. But PPI’s proposal preserves free health insurance for families in poverty while still requiring reasonable contributions from middle-income households that can afford it, and lowering benefits for high-income households that don’t need the support.
Along with providing generous support to those who don’t need it, the other problem with simply extending the pandemic PTC expansion is that it is expensive, costing at least $23 billion per year. Rather than cutting health-care costs, it merely shifted the burden onto taxpayers. Fortunately, there are solutions that will both pay for the proposed expansion — letting taxpayers off the hook — and cut health-care costs in the long run.
Medicare Advantage, which allows seniors to receive their Medicare benefits from private insurers, costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars per year because certain loopholes allow insurance companies to make patients appear sicker than they actually are, which artificially increases their government reimbursements. The No UPCODE ACT would end this practice and save at least $125 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Medicare also currently pays far more for services provided in hospital outpatient departments than in independent physician offices, a disparity that encourages hospitals to buy up clinics and drive consolidation — raising costs for patients and taxpayers alike. Adopting site-neutral payments could save $175 billion over the next decade.
Together, these two reforms would fully offset the cost of PPI’s proposed PTC expansion extension on a permanent basis. By eliminating the benefit cliff under the original ACA and establishing gradual phase-outs, PPI’s plan would prevent middle-class families from experiencing a sudden loss in benefits, ensure the poorest families remain protected, and avoid unnecessary tax subsidies for high-income households. These values reflect the goals of the ACA: affordable coverage and strong work incentives. Now is an opportunity for Democrats to push Republicans to adopt thoughtful reforms to the PTC. Millions of Americans are depending on them to get it right.
Ritz and Kilander for Forbes: Consecutive Continuing Resolutions Could Lead To Deep Spending Cuts
Disagreements over the future of pandemic-era health insurance subsidies are threatening to prevent Congress from passing a continuing resolution (CR) needed to prevent a government shutdown on Wednesday. But all the focus on health care has drawn attention away from the effects of the CR itself, which could lead to lawmakers unintentionally imposing some of the deepest spending cuts in modern history.
Congress is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills each year to fund the roughly 30% of government spending that doesn’t operate on autopilot. When lawmakers fail to pass a new appropriations bill before the previous one expires, they use CRs to temporarily continue government funding using the previous year’s funding levels and policy directives. From 1998 to 2011, CRs covered about one-third of the average fiscal year. But Washington’s dependence on them has risen in recent years: the federal government has been funded by a CR nearly half the time since 2011. And in four years — 2007, 2011, 2013, and 2025 — a CR lasted the entire year, meaning Congress simply declined to pass an appropriation bill.
Now, Congress may rely on a year-long CR yet again to continue avoiding the plethora of policy issues more directly related to the appropriations process than the expiring health-insurance subsidies (which are considered mandatory spending not normally part of the appropriations process). That approach would be unprecedented because Congress has never before gone two consecutive years without passing any original appropriations bills. And there are serious consequences to operating the government at funding levels set more than 18 months ago.