News Round-up: November 28, 2016

News Round-up: November 28, 2016

• Under the new Trump administration, local governments will need to build stronger relationships with federal policymakers to preserve safety net programs such as refundable tax credits, according to Bruce Katz, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Katz also argued that since President-elect Trump and Congressional Republicans plan to slash many of the infrastructure and entitlement programs municipalities count on, local governments will be more important than ever in building robust local economies. He encouraged municipalities to lobby the federal government for policies – including refundable tax credits – that will help families and communities thrive (Brookings, Next City).

• Pundits and advocates continued to speculate on how the Trump administration and Republican Congress will handle safety net programs including refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). President-elect Donald Trump has proposed offering child care spending rebates through the EITC and Speaker Paul Ryan has introduced legislation to expand the credit to workers not raising children (Vox, Daily Caller).

• In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signed into law a bill allowing the state’s municipalities to offer earned income and property tax credits to volunteer EMS and firefighters (ABC Harrisburg).

• Jared Bernstein and Ben Spielberg of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities praised campaigns to increase the minimum wage and expand the federal EITC (Washington Post).