EPI in the news

• Elon Musk wants to privatize Amtrak. It would make train travel worse

  In 2003, urban planning expert Elliott Sclar wrote a report for the Economic Policy Institute in response to that faction, called Amtrak Privatization: The Route to Failure. “The passenger rail service is blamed for failing to show a profit,” he wrote. But this insistence that Amtrak should be profitable “is an effort to impose a highly selective business model on what is really a public service.” 

  Fast Company | March 7, 2025
• Faith Leaders Mark Ash Wednesday with Calls to Reverse Trump and Musk’s Attacks on the Poor
  Faith leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., yesterday to mark the Christian holy day of Ash Wednesday and to condemn the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s attacks on the poor. They shared the findings of a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute and Repairers of the Breach, detailing how Trump and the Republican Party are taking more services and money away from working people, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest. This is Rev. Dr. William Barber.
  Democracy Now! | March 7, 2025
• Thousands Sign Christian Petition Rebuking GOP’s Potential Medicaid Cuts

  Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNBC: “It is very hard to imagine coming up with enough savings from what’s in their jurisdiction without a hefty cut to Medicaid, just given its size.”

  Newsweek | March 7, 2025
• Pilot program helps reduce NJ teacher shortage

  One area that still has a shortage is bus drivers. A November report from the Economic Policy Institute found that despite having been alleviated slightly in the last year, the bus driver shortage remains severe.

  NJ Spotlight | March 7, 2025
• America’s Human Rights Crisis: Prison Slavery

   January 2025 report from the Economic Policy Institute points out that in the South “incarceration rates are the highest, prison wages are lowest, and forced labor arrangements bear the most striking resemblances to past forms of convict leasing and debt peonage.” The report shows that states in the American South “incarcerate people at the highest rates in the world.”

  Counterpunch | March 7, 2025
• Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost walks out of Trump’s speech to Congress in protest

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 150,000 federal government employees who stand to be affected by workforce reduction efforts live in Florida, including roughly 17,000 in the Orlando metro area alone.

  Orlando Weekly | March 7, 2025
• The Southern Women Handling 1-800-MEDICARE Calls Still Want a Union

  Some observers took a more critical view of the turn of events. “The Maximus story is a cautionary tale of what happens when taxpayer dollars are spent on a firm hell-bent on violating workers’ rights,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “Maximus has enjoyed a $6 billion contract with few, if any, strings attached to it — [the Biden] administration could have walked from this contract. Some things are just worth the fight,” she said.

  Capital & Main | March 7, 2025

More EPI in the news