Commissioners in Travis County, Texas, says Nancy La Vigne, made "a heroic move" earlier this month, opening the doors to thousands of former prisoners who have hit a brick wall when looking for a job. In this Austin American-Statesman commentary, she explains why their action was good public policy.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain wants to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer travel season. Truckers say they like the idea. In this Marketplace commentary, Len Burman, Director of the Tax Policy Center explains why Senator McCain’s proposal won’t get us where he wants to go. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/17/burman_commentary/

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration in 1994 in five cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. MTO targeted families living in some of the nation’s poorest, highest-crime communities and used housing subsidies to offer them a chance to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. Research on the families conducted in 2002 raised some important questions about the impact of the program. Findings from the follow up Three-City Study of MTO, in 2004 and 2005, answer some of the questions but also highlight the complexity of the MTO experience and the limitations of a relocation-only strategy in being able to bring about fundamental changes in the lives of very low income families.

The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 to help Americans start and build small businesses. Recently, the SBA commissioned the Urban Institute to look at four of the agency's loan and investment programs to assess their past performance and consider how the agency can set benchmarks for future performance management. The studies addressed three key research questions of particular interest to SBA and its constituents: 1) Does SBA assistance help the firms that receive it? 2) To what extent does SBA assistance serve its market? 3) Do SBA programs duplicate or overlap with other public sector programs?

Baby boomers have changed the nature of work, why not the nature of retirement? Options will multiply, retirement expert Richard W. Johnson writes in The San Diego Union-Tribune, if Medicare rules, payroll taxes, and age-discrimination and tax laws become more congenial to work.

Seattle's impressive crime drop suggests that helping former prisoners succeed can yield great gains in public safety. When police work expands to encompass both the surveillance and support of returning prisoners, the possibilities for effective crime control multiply. Police involvement can also leverage resources and intelligence from other agencies, aid in the early apprehension of reoffenders, and fast-track prosecution efforts.

New York Times, January 23, 2008 - Since 2001, official Washington's answer to every policy question has been the same. What should we do with a big surplus? Tax cuts. How do we beat back global terrorism? Tax cuts. Increase energy independence? Rebuild New Orleans? Expand health insurance coverage? Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Now comes another question to which taxes have long been at least part of the answer. How do we stimulate the economy to prevent or shorten a recession?

The recent tragic deaths of four sisters in the District of Columbia raise once again the question of why the United States, despite local outrage and national and state efforts, has not reduced child deaths from abuse and neglect. In 2005, some 1,460 children died from one or the other nationwide, virtually unchanged from 2001.

In principle, a well-timed and carefully designed economic stimulus package can help avert or minimize a recession. In practice, timing a fiscal stimulus is nearly impossible since forecasters usually "predict" economic turning points only long after they have occurred. Len Burman and Jeff Rohaly discuss past experiences and current issues with economic stimulus packages in this Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog entry.

In this "Marketplace" commentary, Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, explains why presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's FairTax proposal is misnamed.