Podcasts about fiscal policy institute

May 13, 2025 - New York was granted flexibility to spend some of its federal Medicaid dollars, but the Trump administration has indicated the waiver could be short lived. We discuss the ramifications of this decision with Michael Kinnucan, health policy director at the Fiscal Policy Institute.

April 11, 2025 - Emily Eisner, chief economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, discusses the various ideas on how to tackle the extra billions of dollars that businesses have been asked to pay as a result of unprecedented unemployment benefits paid out five years ago.

On Thursday Feb. 27 the State Legislature held the last, but certainly not the least, public hearing on the state budget. The topic was taxes and state revenues as well as the likely loss of federal funding for New York under President Trump and a Republican Congress. We hear from Nathan Gusdorf, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute; Charles Kahn of the Strong Economy for All Coalition; and Ron Deutsch of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness. With Mark Dunlea of the Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Dec. 23, 2024 - Michael Kinnucan, a senior health policy advisor with the Fiscal Policy Institute, discusses his papers on the pace of home care enrollment growth in the state and the trajectory of Medicaid spending on long-term care.

Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: Police say an NYPD officer and a bystander are expected to survive after being shot during a confrontation with a robbery suspect in Jamaica, Queens, on Tuesday night. Officers returned fire, killing the suspect. Meanwhile, a report from the nonprofit Fiscal Policy Institute shows New York City rents and home prices have risen 18% from 2019 to 2023, far outpacing income growth. Plus, the City Council passed legislation to clean up damaged and defaced newspaper boxes citywide.

October 2, 2024 - The presidential candidates have shined a spotlight on taxes on tips, prompting a GOP state lawmaker to propose ending state taxes on tips. In light of this attention, we consider whether this is the best way to help low-income workers with the help of Nathan Gusdorf, director of the Fiscal Policy Institute.

This week we interview Nicole Heller, senior policy analyst with the NH Fiscal Policy Institute, about her recent report on the fragile economics of NH's child care sector and what is being done to strengthen it.  For more information about the NH Fiscal Policy Institute, click here.

April 23, 2024 - Fiscal Policy Institute Executive Director Nathan Gusdorf weighs in on the topline spending figures in the new state budget and argues that New York could have spent more given inflation.

Over the past three decades, "economic dynamism" - an aggregate measure of an array of factors - has fallen across the U.S., with the average state dropping by 30 percent between the early 1990s and the start of the pandemic in 2020. The measure was created by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a think tank based in Washington, D.C., and updated most recently in May in a report called Dynamism in the West, Stagnation for Much of the Rest. While New York is the fourth most populous state, it has not fared well compared to Florida, Texas and California. New York has dropped 24 spots on EIG's index in the past five years and is now at No. 46. The other three states have been consistently in the top 10. (The most dynamic state economy is in Delaware, followed by Utah and Idaho.) The index includes components such as the rate of new startup companies; the share of workers at firms less than five years old; housing permits per 1,000 residents; and worker churn. The highest dynamism rankings are for states with the most aggressive rates of building. New York has created 1.2 million jobs over the past 10 years but only 400,000 homes, driving up costs and leading many to leave the state. The dynamism measure also includes the business-growth rate; the labor-force participation rate; how many inventors with patents are residents; and the migration rate, which reflects the desire of people to move to New York. The state suffers in all these measures, and its ratings have fallen like a rock over the past decade. One large reason for this is population. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, from 2010 to 2020 New York's population grew by 4.2 percent, or 823,100 people, mostly in New York City. But in 2020-21, the state lost 2.1 percent of its residents, or 431,100 people. The people leaving are those who are less well-off and can't afford the rising costs. These are the sort of working- and middle-class people who would stay if the economy were creating better-paying jobs. It appears from other data that the millionaires who fled during the pandemic are returning and perhaps could play a role in sparking higher dynamism. But historically, the largest growth comes from the creation of small businesses, and the conditions in New York - the housing crisis, workers leaving and high taxes - do not point to an immediate turnaround. The trend might turn because of outside forces such as the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates, but it will require major shifts in other factors, especially housing and the departure of workers, for New York to return to the top 20 in the economic dynamism index. As goes New York City, so goes New York. We'll have to see if conditions bedeviling the city retreat over the next decade, but we should remain pessimistic about the next few years.

Emily Eisner, Fiscal Policy Institute economist, and Andrew Perry, senior policy analyst at Fiscal Policy Institute, dig into their group's report that found that millionaires are returning to the city, and lower- and middle-income folks are leaving -- and what the data say about housing affordability, taxes and more.  

June 9, 2023 - Tax receipts for New York were below expectations in April, so we turned to the Fiscal Policy Institute's Nathan Gusdorf and Andrew Perry for insights into this financial indicator.

Gene Martin, Executive Director and Phil Sletten, Research Director at the NH Fiscal Policy Institute join us to shed some light on what NHFPI is and its role in the state of NH. We'll also dive into some of the most pressing fiscal policy issues facing NH and learn more about how NHFPI gets its job done.  Learn more about the NH Fiscal Policy Institute

This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with David Dyssegaard Kallick, Deputy Director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Fiscal Policy Institute and Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute, on the impact of immigrants in local and national settings. And what he’s found should come as no surprise: immigrants and refugees are a net benefit to the U.S. Source

This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with David Dyssegaard Kallick, Deputy Director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Fiscal Policy Institute and Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute, on the impact of immigrants in local and national settings. And what he's found should come as no surprise: immigrants and refugees are a net benefit to the U.S. Source

This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with David Dyssegaard Kallick, Deputy Director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Fiscal Policy Institute and Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute, on the impact of immigrants in local and national settings. And what he's found should come as no surprise: immigrants and refugees are a net benefit to the U.S. and always […]

Two million college-educated immigrants in the United States are either unemployed or working in jobs that require no more than a high school diploma, often because of licensing, credential-recognition, and other barriers. While most states have seen their populations of highly skilled immigrants grow since 2010, there have been few strategic efforts to improve the integration prospects of these new residents or address this skill underutilization, also referred to as “brain waste.” The failure to fully leverage this human capital comes with increasing costs, with job vacancies at a two-decade high, an aging society, and a rapidly transforming labor market. During this webcast, MPI's Jeanne Batalova was joined by David Dyssegaard Kallick from the Fiscal Policy Institute, Upwardly Global's Jina Krause-Vilmar, Mohamed Khalif from the Washington Academy for International Medical Graduates, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital's Shaun E. Smith for a discussion on findings from a report examining at U.S. and state levels the underemployment of college graduates by nativity and by race and ethnicity, in the process revealing patterns of economic inequality. The conversation includes immigrant and employer voices who explore the promising strategies that exist to mitigate this brain waste for the benefit of the U.S. economy, local communities, and the workers themselves.

On the latest episode of the Union Strong podcast, we talk to the executive director and chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute about New York State's financial plan and our revenue system which is proving to be unfair and unreliable. Ron Deutsch and Jonas Shaende run down some revenue options, discuss the states spending cap, income inequality and the results of a recent poll on how New Yorkers feel about taxing the wealthy.  

Today on the Eye on NY podcast:  Two guests! Unshackle Upstate executive director Michael Kracker joined me to discuss the State of the State and his organization's 2020 agenda. After Kracker, Fiscal Policy Institute executive director Ron Deutsch answered questions about his group's Vision 2020, which focuses on the state's fiscal and tax policies.  PLUS: A discussion about two New York congressional races and the fundraising numbers reported so far. 

Ed Lazere talks to Always RealTalk Kwame Brown about gentrification, affordable housing and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser 2020 budget that must be approved by the District of Columbia City Council members

Ed Lazere talks to Always RealTalk Kwame Brown about how gentrification is in full effect in Washington DC and the best ways to address making changes in Mayor Bowser's 2020 budget submitted to the DC City Council.

If you want to know DC as more than the nation's capitol, check out Power Station's conversation with Ed Lazere. Ed is a champion of racial and economic equity for DC residents and neighborhoods. As executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, he has mastered the formula for influencing the City's legislative and budget making process. He and his team of nine, use research and data analysis to shape their advocacy around the issues that are most  crucial to low-income DC residents: affordable housing, quality schools, economic development, jobs, training and health care. Ed talks to Power Station about navigating relationships with DC's city council members, working in collaboration with nonprofit partners, and engaging DC residents in speaking out about the issues that affect their daily lives. Ed tells all about Initiative 77, a recent DC ballot measure about tipped wage earners, with an unexpected outcome. It is just one example of why having a voice is the city's policymaking process is essential. Whether the conversation is about the Earned Income Tax Credit or removing time limits for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, DCFPI is a force to be reckoned with.       

Dubbed “the leading national watchdog of state and local economic development subsidies” and “God's witness to corporate welfare,” Greg founded Good Jobs First in 1998 upon winning the Public Interest Pioneer Award. He has been training and consulting for state and local governments, associations of public officials, labor-management committees, unions, community groups, tax and budget watchdogs, environmentalists, and smart growth advocates more than 30 years.Greg backed into subsidy reform accidentally, while creating a national consulting practice against plant closings from Chicago from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s. He is associate producer of the 1984 PBS documentary The Last Pullman Car and consulted for state agencies in Illinois, New York, and Washington State. His 1986 Early Warning Manual Against Plant Closings (upon which he trained all 50 states' Dislocated Worker Units under contract to the U.S. Department of Labor) and his 1989 study “Intervening With Aging Owners to Save Industrial Jobs” (the first study to quantify the risk of job loss due to a lack of succession planning) set precedents that guided many public agencies and non-profits.Numerous plant closings he worked on involved abuse of economic development subsidies; factories that had received past incentives were now being shuttered. Usually, the fine print revealed that such abuses were technically legal; those revelations lead to public outrage and the enactment of clawbacks and other safeguards to prevent future waste. Sometimes there was a basis for legal challenge: in 1987, Greg wrote a study that triggered the City of Duluth's successful lawsuit against Triangle Corporation; the nationally-reported verdict arrested the closure of that city's largest factory, Diamond Tool, based on an Industrial Revenue Bond contract. Between 1990 and 1992, he assisted the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers in Elkhart, Indiana in their multiple-abuse lawsuit against American Home Products that settled for $24 million on the eve of trial.Collecting the reforms prompted by these revelations (clawbacks, disclosure, job quality standards, etc.), Greg wrote No More Candy Store: States and Cities Making Job Subsidies Accountable in 1994. It was lauded by the International Economic Development Council as “very impressive research” and reviewed by the National Conference of State Legislatures a “famous polemic that contends that subsidies for economic development are mere corporate giveaways, and that calls for greater accountability and public restraint.”Founding Good Jobs First in Washington, DC in 1998, partnering with the Fiscal Policy Institute to launch Good Jobs New York in 2000, and welcoming the Corporate Research Project in 2001, Greg has built a full-service resource center for constituency-based organizations and public officials seeking to reform economic development. Since its first report in 1999, Good Jobs First has issued more than 100 studies, setting a long string of influential research precedents about economic development subsidies.Good Jobs First's 50-states-plus-DC “report card” studies, such as “Show Us the Subsidized Jobs,” have made it de facto the arbiter of best state and local practice in transparency (disclosing deal-specific costs and benefits online). It is also the go-to source on best practices for job creation and job quality standards, and for enforcement including “clawbacks,” or recapture safeguards. Led by research director Phil Mattera, Good Jobs First research analysts Leigh McIlvaine, Tommy Cafcas and Kasia Tarczynska monitor subsidy news in all 50 states and provide front-line technical assistance.In response to GJF's 2003 study, A Better Deal for Illinois, that state enacted the nation's best subsidy disclosure system. In 2005, New York City enacted the best local disclosure ordinance in the nation (enhanced in 2010) after repeated agitations by Good Jobs New York's Bettina Damiani with the NYC Industrial Development Agency.Greg's 2005 book The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) was widely reviewed by daily newspapers, specialty tax and development publications, C-Span's Book TV, The New York Review of Books, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Business Week called it a “powerful compendium of corporate tax dodging in the U.S.” and State Tax Notes wrote: “meticulously documented …scrupulously accurate …evocative storytelling…”He has book chapters in Building Health Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers, and Policymakers (American Bar Association, 2009) and Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis (MIT Press, 2009).Greg summarizes the job-creation benefits of smart growth for working families in this article in Urban Habitat's Race, Poverty and the Environment entitled “Public Transit and Urban Density Create More Good Jobs.”

Though Snowzilla and the dark days of winter are fading from our memories, it’s technically not spring yet. In fact, the Interagency Council on Homelessness’s [ICH] plan to protect the homeless from hypothermic injury lasts until the end of March. Analyst Kate Coventry of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute is on the show to share her knowledge of the Winter Plan. She’s joined by artist and advocate Reggie Black, who has firsthand experience on both sides of the Winter Plan. Formerly homeless, Reggie is now a member of ICH and is on the diverse team of policy makers and citizens tasked with designing the multi-layered plan.

James Parrott, chief economist and deputy director at the Fiscal Policy Institute, talks about Gov. Cuomo's proposed 2015-2016 budget, calling the Education Tax Credit "an unwise use of the state budget." FPI works to increase understanding of tax system.

James Parrott, of the Fiscal Policy Institute and Charles Brecher, of the Citizens Budget Commission, discuss the complexities and the uncertainties of the New York City budget.

James Parrott, Fiscal Policy Institute, on Gov. Cuomo's 2014-15 budget: his concerns-impact from unspecified cuts; the effect on health care system funding from uncertainty surrounding the Federal Medicaid Waiver; the freeze to state aid to municipalities

Doug Muzzio asks is NY a tale of two cities or two tales of the city? James Parrott, Fiscal Policy Institute, says yes, a tale of 2 cities; Nicole Gelinas, Manhattan Institute, says a tale of 3 cities, and we should worry most about the middle-class.

This is a panel discussion about the current employment and economic climate in New York City as part of the Center for Innovation and Leadership in Government 2009-2010 Lecture Series. Barbara Fife, Director of External Affairs, Baruch College SPA, makes the opening remarks. The panel is moderated by Sarah Bartlett, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Director of the Urban and Business & Economics Reporting Programs. Panelists include: David Jones, President, Community Service Society Robert Lieber, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, New York City James Parrott, Chief Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute Rae Rosen, Assistant Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York The event takes place on November 10, 2009, at the Newman Conference Center, 7th Floor.

This is a panel discussion about the current employment and economic climate in New York City as part of the Center for Innovation and Leadership in Government 2009-2010 Lecture Series. Barbara Fife, Director of External Affairs, Baruch College SPA, makes the opening remarks. The panel is moderated by Sarah Bartlett, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Director of the Urban and Business & Economics Reporting Programs. Panelists include: David Jones, President, Community Service Society Robert Lieber, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, New York City James Parrott, Chief Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute Rae Rosen, Assistant Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York The event takes place on November 10, 2009, at the Newman Conference Center, 7th Floor.

Doug is joined by James Parrott, Deputy Director and Chief Economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute. The Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) is a nonprofit research organization committed to improving the economic and social conditions of all New Yorkers.

Doug is joined by E.J. McMahon, Director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy and Senior Fellow of the Center for Civic Innovation at The Manhattan Institute, and James Parrot, Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute.

We talked with Frank Mauro of the Fiscal Policy Institute about what New York might do with its share of the expected federal stimulus money.