Government & Policy
Legislation, executive orders, regulatory changes, and government actions that directly impact personal finances, taxes, benefits, or the economy.
Latest in Government & Policy
Trump has proposed $2,000 tariff-dividend checks for middle- and lower-income Americans, though no bill has passed
A proposed $2,000 tariff dividend remains a political idea, not money that households can count on. President Donald Trump said tariff revenue could fund a...
A bill in Congress would bar Social Security from clawing back overpayments it discovers more than 10 years late
A bipartisan proposal would place a time limit on one of Social Security’s harshest collection powers. When the agency discovers that it paid too much,...
A bipartisan bill would cut the SNAP paperwork that blocks eligible seniors
A bipartisan bill in Congress would strip away much of the paperwork that keeps older Americans from claiming food assistance they already qualify for. The...
$180.42 a month is where VA disability pay starts at a 10% rating
A veteran rated at 10 percent disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs collects $180.42 a month in 2026, the entry point of a benefit...
A new bill would pay certain disabled veterans an extra $833 a month
A bill in the House would add a supplemental payment of $833.33 a month for a narrow group of severely disabled veterans, money layered on...
A bill in Congress would repeal the federal income tax on Social Security benefits, but it hasn’t cleared committee
A proposal moving through the House would erase federal income taxes on Social Security benefits altogether, a shift that could raise the net monthly check...
New Medicaid work rules reach adults up to age 64, while people 65 and older stay exempt
A 2025 federal law has redrawn the line between who must prove they are working to keep Medicaid and who does not, and the boundary...
Adults 55 to 64 must now work 80 hours a month to keep food stamps after exemptions were cut
A provision buried in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act quietly reset who has to work to keep food stamps, and the change reached...
A bill would let about 50,000 combat-injured veterans draw both military retirement and disability pay, roughly $1,200 more a month
Under current law, a group of combat-injured service members who were medically retired before serving 20 years cannot collect their military retirement pay and their...
Wartime veterans and surviving spouses can qualify for an Aid and Attendance pension worth up to about $2,900 a month
The Department of Veterans Affairs runs a benefit that many wartime veterans and their surviving spouses never claim, in part because it is buried inside...
A bipartisan Senate bill would raise VA disability pay for millions of veterans starting December 1
A bipartisan measure moving through the Senate would raise the monthly compensation paid to veterans with service-connected disabilities beginning December 1, 2026, matching the increase...
Small employers can claim up to $600,000 for employee childcare
An eligible small business can claim as much as $600,000 under the expanded employer-provided childcare credit for 2026, four times the old general $150,000 ceiling....
New Jersey schedules its next Stay NJ property-tax payment for August
New Jersey’s August Stay NJ installment is easy to confuse with the larger benefit schedule for the next tax year. The payment arriving now belongs...
Caremark deal could unlock $13 billion in drug savings over 10 years
The largest number in the Caremark settlement is not a reimbursement fund waiting to be divided among patients. It is the Federal Trade Commission’s ten-year...
Nearly 3 million New Yorkers share $2.1 billion in STAR tax relief
New York’s $2.1 billion STAR total is large enough to sound like a uniform rebate, but the program reaches homeowners through two different mechanisms and...
Sanders tells Democrats to block a Social Security commission he says threatens 70 million beneficiaries
Sen. Bernie Sanders has turned a procedural Social Security bill into a test of whether Senate Democrats will permit benefit changes to advance through a...
VA urgent care costs $0 for the first three 2026 visits in priority groups 1 through 5
VA’s 2026 copay schedule gives veterans in priority groups 1 through 5 three urgent-care visits at no charge before a $30 copay begins with the...
$1,699.36 monthly starts 2026 VA DIC payments for a surviving spouse
Dependency and Indemnity Compensation begins with a $1,699.36 monthly base for an eligible surviving spouse under the 2026 VA schedule. That figure is the starting...
$180.42 monthly starts VA disability payments at a 10% rating in 2026
A 10% service-connected disability rating produces the first compensable step on VA’s 2026 table: $180.42 a month. The amount is smaller than higher-rating payments, but...
$163,699 is Veterans Pension’s net-worth limit through November 30
Veterans Pension uses a bright eligibility line that can be easy to misread: $163,699 in net worth through November 30, 2026. The figure is not...