Economic recovery proposals before Congress include tax relief for lower-income working families, including targeted expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). A new Metropolitan Policy Program analysis shows how proposed expansions to the EITC would benefit taxpayers in individual states, metropolitan areas and selected cities around the nation. But there's more! Check out the whole EITC series.

President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal includes $2.8 billion in cuts to programs that impact children—a 3 percent drop from last year's federal budget. First Focus, a bipartisan children's advocacy organization, takes a reader-friendly look at the numbers and what they say about our nation's priorities.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that on a dollar-for-dollar basis, temporary increases in safety net programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance and fiscal relief to states are among the most effective job-creation investments in the proposed Obama recovery package, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the jobs generated by the package in 2009 and 2010, even though the amounts spent in these areas would likely be much smaller than two-fifths of the cost of the package.

The House Appropriations Committee voted on much of the spending portions of the bill. On January 22, 2009, the Ways and Means Committee debated and voted on the tax provisions and unemployment compensation, while the Energy and Commerce Committee worked on several health care provisions. The House Appropriations Committee posted online their bill text and a summary. Next steps are a full house vote and a comparable Senate bill, with the goal of having a bill on President Obama’s desk by Feb. 13, 2009.

The Kaiser Family Fund survey of state Medicaid directors finds that most states are facing the prospect of mid-fiscal year 2009 program cutbacks in this program that serves vulnerable families.

This new toolkit from a project sponsored by Strategies to Eliminate Poverty, a grantmaking initiative of The Seattle focuses on the Northwest-area states—Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington—to help state government implement a comprehensive approach to addressing poverty, a goal made more difficult by the patchwork nature of federal assistance programs. Strategies include implementing modern poverty measures based on living standards and making sure an increase in earnings leads to an increase in economic security.

A recent NACCRRA survey found that parents look for quality when they seek child care, but until now it has been hard to find out if a program has been inspected and licensed. A research study in Florida has found that quality of care, especially for low-income children, improved when licensing and other standards were available online. Check the NACCRRA map to find inspection information for a program in your state.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has issued policy recommendations for reforming juvenile justice, reducing poverty, rebuilding the child welfare system and improving data. On juvenile justice, the Foundation says the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act should be reauthorized with enhanced provisions to reduce racial disparities, strengthen core protections against confining status offenders and mingling juveniles with adult offenders.

In this edition of Mother Jones magazine, Stephanie Mencimer offers an up-close view of a young mother in Georgia who was repeated (and wrongly) told she was in ineligible for TANF benefits in Georgia. Mencimer claims that some states have made an aggressive push to get thousands of eligible mothers off Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, often by duplicitous means, to use the savings elsewhere in the state budget.

It’s hard to remember the anger at the welfare system that led to its transformation in 1996 from a guaranteed cash assistance safety net to a program of work assistance, incentives and requirements. Few complained while the economy was strong but in its first test in a worsening economy, the TANF welfare system seems to be failing families, according to veteran New York Times reporter Jason de Parle. The number of jobless people getting cash assistance from the government remains at its lowest level in 40 years, and 18 states actually cut their welfare rolls last year.