The logjam continues.  House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) maintained in a Sunday talk show appearance that he would not bring legislation to the floor that would temporarily fund the government or raise the federal borrowing limit without attaching conditions.  He said, “There are not the votes in the house to pass a clean CR.”  But the Huffington Post and ABC News both have compiled lists of Republican House members who have gone on record in favor of a “clean” Continuing Resolution, or stopgap spending bill.  As of Sunday night, Huffington Post has 22-23 members on its list.  When added to a unified House Democratic caucus, that would be more than enough to pass a spending bill.

If the Speaker is opposed to bringing a spending bill with no strings attached to the floor, it is difficult to go around him.  One means available under House rules is the discharge petition. If members can collect 218 signatures on such a petition (a majority), the bill must be taken up.   Democrats have announced that they plan to file a discharge petition, and expect to get all 200 in their caucus to sign, plus enough Republicans to form a majority.  However, discharge petitions have brought bills to the floor only twice in the past, because members are reluctant to rebel against their leadership in such a public way.  As part of an effort to put pressure on House Republicans who do not want the shutdown to continue, the discharge petition can serve a useful purpose, even if it does not succeed directly.

Speaker Boehner has been attempting to shift the onus for the shutdown onto the President and the Senate Democrats, saying they are refusing to negotiate.  President Obama has responded by saying that he will not negotiate while there is “a gun held to the head of the American people.”  Both the President and Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) have been willing to negotiate on the FY 2014 budget; in fact, the Senate has repeatedly called on the House to name conferees to work out the budget, which has been rejected by the House.

Big fight over short-term spending.  Ironically, the current logjam is not about a long-term deficit reduction plan.  It is not even about setting the funding for the full fiscal year.  At issue now is only a short-term spending bill to keep the government open for a month or two.  The House and Senate are already in agreement that the temporary spending should be at last year’s levels.  The House extends spending through December 15 and has tied spending to de-funding or delay of the Affordable Care Act; the Senate extends spending through November 15 with no strings attached.  The Senate is seeking the earlier deadline in order to leave maximum time to negotiate a full-year spending bill.  The Senate majority continues to press for ending sequestration cuts, with appropriations set at $1.058 trillion.  The House wants another year of sequestration cuts, which would take funding down to $967 billion, but they would protect the Pentagon by making the cuts to domestic programs even deeper.  If Congress does not agree to changes to the Budget Control Act (the deficit reduction law enacted in 2010), another round of sequestration cuts will be triggered this year.  The House will get the $967 billion in spending it wants, but cuts in Pentagon spending it doesn’t want will be enforced.  By extending the temporary spending bill only to mid-November, the Senate hopes to get an agreement on undoing sequestration.

The goal of any negotiations has been shifting among House and Senate Republicans.  Most Tea Party-aligned members are continuing to press proposals to de-fund or delay the health care law, although there are some who have abandoned that position.  Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) is associated with the Tea Party, but has concluded that the quest to de-fund the health care law is unwinnable at this time.  “We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit,” he told Bloomberg News.  Among the conditions that have surfaced as possible demands for raising the debt limit, in addition to delaying the health care law, are approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, de-funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, revenue-neutral tax reform, and cuts to Social Security, Medicare, SNAP/food stamps, and other entitlement programs.  Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) garnered the Washington Post’s Worst Week in Washington award for his expression of his caucus’ moveable goals:  “We’re not going to be disrespected…We have to get something out of this.  And I don’t know what that even is.”

Reducing the scope of the shutdown.  In the meantime, the House has passed unanimously a bill to provide retroactive pay to federal workers who have been furloughed, and the Senate promises to follow suit.  The President will sign it.  Workers will still have to wait for their pay, and are in effect on an enforced paid leave.  President Obama previously signed a law to ensure that troops are paid.  Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegel has ended furloughs for about 350,000 Defense workers.  The House has responded to the unpopularity of the shutdown by separately passing measures to provide temporary funding for national parks, National Institutes of Health, veterans’ services, the National Guard and Reserves, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the WIC nutrition program for young children and pregnant women.  More mini-funding bills are headed to the House floor.  None of these are expected to be taken up by the Senate, which wants all of government to function.  (For a description of the ways in which the government is not functioning now, see CHN’s Federal Shutdown Impacts.)

Last week, there were reports that Speaker Boehner had made assurances he would not allow the federal government to default on its debts, even if he had to get to a majority with a sizable number of Democrats.  But such steps back from the brink were not in evidence in his Sunday talk show appearance.

As the likelihood grows of severe damage to the economy and public opinion opposing the shutdown and meltdown intensifies, there will be pressure to agree to clean extensions.  Whether those happen before or after serious damage is inflicted is still unknown.

The post CHN: Government Shutdown Followed by Economic Meltdown? A Way Out Remains Elusive appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

Uninsured individuals can use these websites to shop for and enroll in insurance plans that offer a basic package of benefits on health care exchanges, also known as marketplaces, where insurers compete for business.  Under the ACA all policies sold in the exchanges must cover what physicians and consumer advocates call “essential health benefits.”  They include hospitalization, ambulatory services, emergency services, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse services, prescription drugs, lab tests, wellness and preventive services, pediatric services including dental and vision care, and rehabilitative services.  (See more information on benefits.)

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia opted to set up their own exchanges; 7 states are doing a partnership with the federal government; and the other 34 states are relying on the federal government to set up their exchanges.  Lower and moderate income families and individuals with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of poverty will be able to apply for subsidies to offset the cost of premiums they cannot now afford.  Premiums and out-of-pocket costs will vary depending on the level of insurance coverage: bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

The ACA was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010.  Since then, certain provisions of the ACA have already gone into effect.  Insurance companies are now required to provide their customers with free preventive care and screenings for illnesses, discounts for seniors for prescription drugs, wellness visits with no co-pays, the option for those up to 26 years of age to remain on their parents’ health care policy, an end to denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, and the requirement that they reimburse customers if they spend less than 80 percent of premiums on care.

On January 1, 2014, coverage purchased through the exchanges will take effect.  Insurance companies will then no longer be able to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions or charge higher premiums based on sex or medical history.

The ACA includes an individual mandate that requires most individuals to have insurance so the system no longer bears as heavy a burden for providing coverage for the uninsured.  Annual penalties for failure to be insured are $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, or up to one percent of a family’s income.  Businesses of 50 or more employees will be required to provide health benefits for their employees.  Starting in 2015, if employers do not provide health coverage they will pay a tax penalty.  The 6-month open-enrollment period for the exchanges ends on March 31 for the 2014 calendar year.  Subsequent years will have a 3-month enrollment period from October through December.

Included in the ACA was the requirement that states expand their Medicaid program to cover non-elderly poor people who are 133 percent below the poverty line, or about $31,300 for a family of four.  The federal government is committed to covering 100 percent of the cost of the expansion through 2016, no less than 93 percent of the cost between 2017 and 2019, and 90 percent of the cost thereafter.  Both the individual mandate to buy health insurance and the Medicaid expansion were challenged in court.  On June 28, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate but said that states could not be required to expand their Medicaid programs, thus making it optional.  Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have opted to expand Medicaid.  States can reconsider and opt for expansion at any time.  The states that have declined to expand their Medicaid programs have a disproportionate number of poor blacks, single mothers and low-wage workers who are too poor to qualify for insurance subsidies in the exchanges (their incomes must be at least 100 percent of the poverty line).  The New York Times recently estimated that two-thirds of the poor African Americans and single mothers who now lack health insurance will not get coverage because their states so far have failed to expand their Medicaid programs.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 2014, about 14 million uninsured will be covered by the ACA through the exchanges and Medicaid expansion.  By 2019, that number will have risen to 25 million.  That still leaves millions uninsured.

Members of the Tea Party in Congress have refused to acknowledge that ACA is the law of the land.  Under pressure from them, the House of Representatives has voted over 40 times to repeal the ACA.  As Congress struggles to extend funding for appropriated programs in a Continuing Resolution (see article in this Human Needs Report) the House has attempted to add provisions to defund the entire ACA, to delay implementation of the exchanges for one year, and to repeal its medical device tax.  Democrats and the White House have remained united and strong in opposing these attempts to undermine the ACA.

Republicans argue that a one-year delay will provide more time to iron out the bill’s kinks.  Democrats know that delaying implementation of the exchanges would have devastating consequences, giving strength to attempts to kill the law.  For more information see the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of the impact of delaying the ACA.

The medical device industry and others that would benefit from a flood of new customers were asked to make a contribution to offset the cost of expanding coverage to millions of uninsured.  The 2.3 percent medical device industry tax was that sector’s contribution to help pay for the ACA.  This lucrative industry has total sales of over $100 billion a year, concentrated on a small number of large companies.  They have lobbied heavily against the tax and their presence in both Democratic and Republican dominated states has given bi-partisan support to the repeal of the tax.  However, Senate Democrats are united in opposing any changes to the ACA in the context of resolving the continuing resolution.

Like the Medicare and Medicaid adoption in 1965 and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit in 2003, implementation of the ACA will have bumps in the road.  ACA opponents, including some Republican governors and legislators, are attempting to sabotage the law.  In some cases, they have refused to provide accurate information about the law to their constituents and have discouraged their participation in the exchanges.  The drumbeat of misinformation has contributed to public opinion polls indicating both a lack of support for the ACA and inaccurate information about it.  These efforts have been countered by national, state, and local organizations who are working to provide education and encourage enrollment in the exchanges.  Proponents of the ACA believe that, just as most of Medicare’s initial detractors came to support the program, once people experience the benefits of the ACA, support will quickly grow.

The post CHN: The Affordable Care Act – Enrollment Begins appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

H.R. 15 combines two bipartisan measures – the Senate-passed Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744) and the House Homeland Security’s Border Security Results Act of 2013 (H.R. 1417).   It incorporates most of the provisions in S. 744 including the 13-year path to citizenship, but replaces the Hoeven/Corker amendment on border security with H.R. 1471.  The amendment sponsored by Senators Corker (R-TN) and Hoeven (R-ND), the so-called ‘border surge,’ calls for 20,000 more border agents, hundreds of miles of additional fencing, and more surveillance equipment at a cost of $46 billion.  (For more details on the Senate bill see July Human Needs Report.)  H.R. 1417 does not set a price nor mandate a number for security hires or miles of fence. Rather, it instructs the Department of Homeland Security to write a plan that Congress would approve that ensures apprehension of 90 percent of undocumented border crossers using existing methods including cameras, radar and unmanned drones within 5 years.

Thus far the House has taken a piece-meal approach to immigration reform, passing 5 smaller bills in committees.  Advocates favor a comprehensive approach and they understand how difficult it would be to pass a bill if the House waits until next year when elections are on the horizon.  They also understand that both the comprehensive Senate bill (S. 744) and the Democratic House bill (H.R. 15) are far from perfect.  The path to citizenship is long, immigrants would not have access to the Affordable Care Act for at least a decade, and they are denied access to basic government assistance programs including nutrition and student aid.  Advocates will continue to work on a bipartisan basis to pass comprehensive immigration reform and strengthen provisions that make citizenship possible for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country.

The post CHN: House Democrats Introduce Immigration Bill appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

Currently, less than 40 percent of American workers are eligible for an employer-provided temporary disability program. Due to this, as well as the fact that so few American workers are eligible for employer-paid family leave, many people are forced to make an impossible choice: take unpaid leave to care for a sick loved one (or see to their own care) or continue to work to earn the money they need to keep their families afloat. The FAMILY Act would provide working families with a better option, believe advocacy groups like the National Partnership for Women & Families.

On Friday, September 27 Senator Gillibrand stated her support for the bill in a Huffington Post article. She made the case that the FAMILY Act is desperately needed in today’s changing economy, in which forty percent of households with minor children have a woman as the primary breadwinner. (Read more about women’s participation in the American workforce in this fact sheet from the National Women’s Law Center.)

Administered through the Social Security Administration, the FAMILY Act would insure workers for benefits equal to 66 percent of their monthly income (up to a capped monthly amount). Eligibility for the program would be determined by a worker’s eligibility for Social Security disability benefits.

The insurance program is paid for through payroll contributions from both employers and their workers, with an extremely low premium of two cents for every $10 in income. For most workers, this means less than $2.00/week.

Advocates are pushing for passage of the FAMILY Act as an improvement on 1993’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The FMLA requires businesses employing fifty or more workers to provide their employees with the option of taking up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave to care for an infant less than one year of age, adopt a child, care for a sick family member, or tend to a personal illness.

Although the FMLA has protected millions of workers from losing their jobs, it only guarantees unpaid leave and fails to cover 40 percent of the US workforce. The FAMILY Act offers a much more comprehensive way of helping workers by providing millions of families as well as young, part-time and low wage workers with a much-needed safety net in times of great distress.

The legislation is expected to be introduced within the next few weeks, delayed temporarily because of the federal government shutdown. Advocates will continue to ramp up support for the bill in the coming weeks.

The post CHN: Family and Medical Leave Insurance Act to be Introduced Soon; Advocates Continue to Build Support for This National Program to Help Working Families appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

The influence of the extremists in the House was clear in the decision of the House leadership to put forward a temporary spending bill with a poison pill permanently defunding the 2010 health care law.  The Continuing Resolution (CR) extends spending on military, domestic and international appropriations at this year’s levels through December 15.  The House estimates the annualized costs of continuing this year’s spending at $986 billion.  This level continues the sequestration cuts begun in 2013.  If spending continues all year at this rate, domestic and international programs subject to appropriation will be cut by 17.8 percent compared to FY 2010.  (For more detail on the proposed CR, see The Approaching Crunch, in the August 7, 2013 edition of The Human Needs Report.)

The Senate and President Obama have both made clear that they will not accept defunding of the health care law.  The Senate will now take up the House bill (H.J. Res. 59) this week, and will move to delete the health care provision.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has threatened to filibuster to prevent the Senate from passing a version that does not defund the Affordable Care Act.  As a matter of Senate procedure, he will have to filibuster the bill that comes from the House, which is awkward because it contains the defunding provision he favors.  If there are 60 votes to move the bill forward, an amendment to strip the bill of the health law provisions will only require a simple majority.  Most observers believe the Senate will have the 60 votes to end a filibuster and will certainly have a majority to get rid of the ACA cuts.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) greatly prefers a CR that would last only till mid-November, at least if it is set at only current year funding.  The Senate Democrats and the President oppose permanent funding for FY 2014 at this year’s very low levels; their alternative is $1.058 trillion in appropriations, an amount that does not include continued sequestration cuts.  If a stopgap spending bill lasts until December 15, it is feared that Congress will not come to grips with making the changes needed and will simply keep extending current levels into the new calendar year.  As the months progress, it will be more and more difficult to undo the FY 2014 sequester reductions.  On the other hand, a November 15 deadline leaves more time to negotiate an end to sequestration.

Once the bill is returned to the House with changes including deletion of the ACA defunding, it will be perilously close to the end of the fiscal year.  With only a few days to spare, the House will have to decide (a) if it will insist on dismantling ACA or (b) agree to a cleaner extension.   Plan (a) will shut down much of the federal government.  The Wall Street Journal was not encouraging about this approach in a recent opinion piece:  “Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.”

A decision to agree to a cleaner extension will require Democratic votes in the House, on the assumption that many disgruntled extremists among the Republicans will vote no.  Getting to a majority may be difficult even without the ACA cuts, because members of the House Progressive Caucus do not want to vote for a spending bill that continues the sequester cuts.  Co-Chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) are “whipping” their 75 members to urge a no vote on a CR that continues the sequester cuts in this year’s spending.

Deadbeat Nation?  Not limiting their Affordable Care Act threats to a federal government shutdown, the House leadership has also announced plans to tie a set of conditions to a one-year extension of the debt limit.  To authorize the federal government to continue borrowing past November 2014, the House Republican plan is said to require a one-year delay in Affordable Care Act implementation.  It would also include cut proposals that have surfaced in previous deficit reduction negotiations, such as requiring higher contributions towards pension plans by federal workers, repeal of parts of the ACA, cuts in SNAP (see SNAP article in this issue), and charging higher-income Medicare recipients more for their coverage.  Reducing the cost of living adjustment for Social Security (using the “chained CPI”) has also been proposed in the past.  These proposals have all been vigorously opposed by organized labor and other advocates as well as by many Democrats.  The House proposal assumes that a year’s debt limit increase would be about $600 – $700 billion.  They would “pay” for that increase by cuts similar to those just described.

The Administration has been willing to consider some of these proposals in the past, but has said it will not agree to more cuts without an agreement to raise revenues.  The House leadership has told the Republican caucus that the debt limit bill will also include instructions to the tax-writing committees to come up with tax reform legislation.  If similar to language previously adopted in the House, the instructions will probably direct the House Ways and Means Committee to lower tax rates for individuals and corporations and be revenue neutral.  That would mean that revenue losses from reducing rates would be offset by closing loopholes or reducing other tax expenditures, but that there would not be a net revenue gain that could be used to replace sequester cuts or to meet other needs.  Such an approach would not sit well with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and many in his caucus.

If Congress does not increase federal borrowing authority by approximately mid-October, the government will be unable to pay all its bills.  The House bill to tie the debt ceiling to the ACA and other cuts could be introduced as early as September 25.  Here too, Democratic opposition will be firm.  In his Weekly Address on September 21, President Obama said “The United States of America is not a deadbeat nation.  We are a compassionate nation.  We are the world’s bedrock investment.  And doing anything to threaten that is the height of irresponsibility.  That’s why I will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States.  I will not allow anyone to harm this country’s reputation, or threaten to inflict economic pain on millions of our own people, just to make an ideological point.”

Economists across the political spectrum have raised alarms about even threatening to tamper with the debt ceiling.  Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan said “The debt ceiling is a very dangerous thing to play with.”  Alan Blinder, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said “In short, the consequences of hitting the debt ceiling are too awful to contemplate…A sane Congress wouldn’t even think about it.”  Republicans will have to think hard about how voters will react to this two-pronged threat to the economy.

The post CHN: House Extremists in the Pilot’s Seat: Hurtling Towards Government Shutdown and Debt Crunch appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

According to the 1996 welfare law, adults aged 18 to 50 who are not disabled or caring for minor children are limited to 3 months of SNAP benefits every three years unless they are working 20 hours per week or are in a job training program. With unemployment remaining high, 44 states sought and received waivers on those limits in 2013.  H.R. 3102 would eliminate that waiver authority, leaving states with only limited ability to provide exemptions to individuals.  It would also end benefits for an entire family if a parent is not working at least 20 hours per week, even if her/his child is only one year old, and even if unemployment remains high. And the bill gives states a reward for cutting families off SNAP – the state gets 50 percent of the reduced costs to use for any purpose.

About half of the cuts in H.R. 3102 are the result of two provisions related to how benefits and eligibility are determined.  The first eliminates the state option to provide benefits to low-income families and elderly whose gross incomes or assets are slightly above the federal SNAP limits.  The second significantly restricts the coordination of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) with SNAP, the so-called ‘Heat and Eat’ provision. Currently SNAP-eligible households with a nominal LIHEAP payment are allowed to deduct a standard allowance for shelter and utilities, thereby increasing their SNAP benefit. This is particularly beneficial for seniors and those with disabilities who pay a high proportion of their income for shelter costs. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia utilize ‘Heat and Eat’. This provision will increase the states’ administrative costs associated with determining SNAP benefit levels.  For more details on H.R. 3102, see the September 17 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report.

The deep cuts to SNAP in H.R 3102 come at a time when lower income families have yet to benefit from the economic recovery.  In 2012 there were nearly 6.7 million more poor people than in 2008, the first full year of the Great Recession.  SNAP has proven to be effective at reducing poverty.  Nearly 4 million people rose out of poverty because of SNAP in 2012, of whom 1.67 million were children.  Investments in reducing hunger have also proven to have a positive impact on the economy.  Every $1 spent on nutrition assistance results in $1.70 in economic activity.

H.R. 3102 is a 3-year authorization bill, effectively severing it from the farm bill’s commodity subsides and conservation programs which are authorized for 5 years.  For decades, there has been bipartisan support in the farm bill for making sure that poor people can get the modest but vital SNAP benefits averaging $4 per day.  Separating farm subsidies from nutrition assistance would make it more difficult to garner support for SNAP, as evidenced by the partisan vote on H.R. 3102.

The vote on H.R. 3102 followed passage of a Senate farm bill, a failed attempt by the House to pass a farm bill, and passage in the House of an agriculture-only bill without nutrition provisions.  A summary of these actions follows.

Prior Actions in the House and Senate

The Senate passed its farm bill, the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 3013 (S. 954) on June 10 by a vote of 66-27.  The bill includes a $4.1 billion cut in SNAP achieved by a smaller restriction of the “Heat and Eat” provision (see above).  During floor consideration, the Senate rejected an amendment (40-58) that would have cut SNAP by $31 billion over 10 years.

On June 20 the House failed to pass its farm bill, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013 (H.R. 1947).  The vote was 195-234 with 24 Democrats voting in favor despite a $20.5 billion cut to SNAP.  Republican opponents believed the SNAP cut was not deep enough. Prior to the bill’s defeat, an amendment sponsored by Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL) passed that would allow pilot programs in states to mandate work requirements for SNAP recipients.  States would be allowed to keep half of the money saved by removing non-compliant families from the rolls.  This is an unprecedented incentive for states who could use the money for unspecified purposes. (A provision similar to the Southerland amendment was included in H.R. 3102.  See above.)  Leading congressional nutrition proponent Rep. Jim McGovern’s (D-MA) amendment to restore the $20.5 billion SNAP cut failed 188-234.

After H.R. 1947 failed in the House, leadership decided to allow a vote on a split farm bill that included only the agriculture provisions of the bill, excluding nutrition programs.  The split version of the bill passed on July 11 by a vote of 216-208 with no Democrats voting in favor.  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) then convened a group of House members who supported extreme changes to SNAP and developed H.R. 3102.

What’s Next

In less than two months, all SNAP recipients will see a reduction in their benefits when the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s temporary boost expires, leaving a family of three with $20-$25 less in benefits per month.

This fall a House-Senate conference committee will work to reconcile the very different bills passed by their chambers.  The Senate cuts SNAP by $4.1 billion and the House by nearly $40 billion.  The agriculture provisions also take different approaches with corn and soybean farmers favoring the Senate bill and rice, peanuts and other growers preferring the approach in the House bill.

The Farm Bill (PL 112-24), passed in 2008, expires on September 30.  Without an extension or reauthorization, the bill’s agriculture programs will revert to provisions set in 1949, while nutrition programs will remain funded.  However, even if there is no agreement on a new farm bill, the various SNAP cuts identified could find their way into broader deficit reduction efforts.

The post CHN: Advocates’ All-Out Effort to Stop Deep Cuts to SNAP Falls Short appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

Direct care work is one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation, and almost two million people will benefit from this policy change.  Aides help America’s elderly and disabled populations by assisting with daily tasks such as dressing or bathing, doing chores and administering medications in their homes.

Currently, home care aides are preempted from receiving the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour) and overtime protection because they are categorized as “companionship” workers – individuals who provide “companionship services for individuals who (because of age or infirmity) are unable to care for themselves” (as explained in this Huffington Post article). The need for revised regulations was underscored in 2007 when the Supreme Court ruled against Evelyn Coke, a New York home care worker who sued to reverse the federal regulations that exempt home care agencies from having to pay overtime.

Advocates and labor leaders praise this long-awaited measure as a way to ensure that home care workers are provided the same legal protections as nurses who perform similar tasks in a hospital setting.

With more minimum wage battles on the horizon, home care advocates and organizations like the Direct Care Alliance are happy to finally be able to claim victory with these regulations.

The post CHN: Minimum Wage and Overtime Protections Extended to Home Care Workers appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

On July 31, The House Budget Committee held a hearing anticipating the 50 year anniversary of the War on Poverty – the beginnings of Head Start, college prep programs, Work Study, and other programs for youth, and community action programs to seek community-wide economic development.  Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare were also enacted in the mid-1960s.  Chairman Ryan (R-WI) framed the hearing in this way:  over the past 50 years, we’ve spent $15 trillion on anti-poverty programs.  But now 15 percent of our people are poor – 46 million people.  So evidently these programs have not worked.

In his opening statement, Chairman Ryan said “This isn’t about cutting spending.  This is about improving people’s lives.”  But some of the Committee members, including Ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), pointed out that Chairman Ryan’s budget (passed by the House) made extreme cuts in most anti-poverty programs.  Medicaid (not even counting the cuts proposed to eliminate the new health care law), was cut by $810 billion over 10 years, and the full Medicaid cut (including de-funding the health care law) would leave 40-50 million more poor-moderate income people uninsured.  SNAP/food stamps was cut by $135 billion over 10 years, resulting in millions of people losing food.  Cuts in domestic appropriations would leave them at their lowest share of the economy since before the War on Poverty’s start in 1964.

While Chairman Ryan’s track record suggests his enthusiasm for cutting spending on anti-poverty programs, his witnesses at the hearing did not for the most part propose cuts.  Witnesses including Jon Baron of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy and Douglas Besharov of the U. of Maryland’s School of Public Policy emphasized that we should be learning from what does and does not work, and re-directing funding towards improving programs.  Mr. Baron cited research that indicated the cognitive gains made by Head Start participants was short-lived, but then added that further research shows that some Head Start programs are more effective than others; he favored applying those lessons.

Professor Besharov also disagreed with the hearing’s main premise – that poverty hadn’t declined as a result of the War on Poverty.  He pointed out that major improvements in anti-poverty programs over the past decades have expanded food stamps, low-income tax credits, Medicaid and other programs that do not count in the official poverty measure.  By his calculation, when taking those expansions into account, poverty has really declined to 7.2 percent.

Opinions differ substantially among anti-poverty advocates as to how to measure poverty and hardship today (and many believe Besharov’s estimate is too low), but there is considerable agreement that the current measure is inadequate.  The Supplemental Poverty Measure has been developed by the U.S. Census Bureau as an experimental tool to take more income and expenditures into account in assessing the extent of poverty.  It shows fewer families with young children would be defined as poor and more seniors would be, after counting the benefits of SNAP and tax credits (helpful to families with children) and the costs of medical care (a hardship for a greater proportion of older people).

The thrust of recent analyses differ with the contention that anti-poverty programs have not worked, while still pointing out that poverty remains a problem in this country that must be addressed.  Sr. Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, was the sole witness selected by Democrats on the Committee.  She described NETWORK’s “Nuns on the Bus” tours of many states, in which she met families with parents working at low wages, unable to make ends meet, other parents grappling with multiple problems including violence, depression, substance abuse and homelessness, and another woman who died of cancer for lack of health insurance.  She cited the value of SNAP and Medicaid expansions in these families’ lives, and made a strong case for raising the minimum wage and other work supports for low-wage workers.

The Coalition on Human Needs’ Executive Director Deborah Weinstein submitted written testimony at the request of Committee member Barbara Lee (D-CA).  She pointed out that even using just the official       poverty measure, poverty declined from 22.2 percent in 1960 to 11.1 percent in 1973.  Many factors contributed to cutting the poverty rate in half during that period, including more seniors benefiting from Social Security in their retirement (from 1965 to 1973, poverty among those 65 or older dropped by 43 percent).  Unemployment was generally low, and there were more manufacturing jobs with better (often union) pay.  Since 1973, erosion in the number of good-paying jobs and widening inequality has resulted in lost ground in wages and increased poverty.  But broadly shared economic growth has always been prompted by government actions – such as the building of the interstate highway system starting in the 1950s, increased funding for medical research and education, and worker protections such as raising the minimum wage.  Further progress in reducing poverty, especially in an era when corporations are not sharing their record-high profits through increased hiring or wages, will require more government investments, paid for in part by asking corporations and wealthy individuals to pay more of their share.

The hearing was an attempt to seize the terms of a national discussion about poverty expected as we head towards the January 2014 50-year anniversary of the War on Poverty.  But if the goal was to demonstrate that anti-poverty programs have not worked and were not worth the expenditure (about 12 percent of all government spending in the last 50 years, according to the Washington Post’s The Fact Checker column), the majority’s witnesses for the most part did not agree.

(For an excellent report on the hearing, see Greg Kaufmann’s This Week in Poverty blog for The Nation:  Chairman Ryan and the Real World.)        

The post War on Poverty Hearing in the House: Chairman Ryan’s Budget Committee Witnesses Don’t Quite Toe His Line appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

On July 1, student loan rates doubled because Congress failed to agree on legislation to avert the scheduled increase.  After a month of proposals and counter-proposals, Congress enacted a solution that would result in undergraduates paying 3.86 percent interest, close to the 3.4 percent students were paying before July 1, and much less than the 6.8 percent loan rates had risen to after the lower rate expired.

In May, the House approved the Smarter Solutions for Students Act (H.R. 1911) which pegged interest rates on student loans to the market and allowed those rates to change over the lifetime of the loan. Because this legislation would have let interest rates rise too much, President Obama announced that he would veto the legislation if it reached his office. On Wednesday July 24, the Senate amended H.R. 1911, tying interest rates to market rates, but with fixed rates for the lifetime of the loan. The Obama Administration supported the Senate’s version. On Wednesday July 31, the Senate’s amended version passed easily in the House by a vote of 392 to 31. With that vote on final passage, the bill was sent to President Obama on August 1.  The President, who has already expressed his support, is expected to sign the bill.

This year, with the new legislation in place, undergraduates would pay an interest rate of 3.86 percent, graduate students would pay a rate of 5.41 percent, and PLUS loan users – graduate students and parents of students  – would pay a rate of 6.41 percent. All of these rates are lower than the existing fixed rates of 6.8 percent for Stafford loans and 7.9 percent for PLUS loans.  The enacted bill will adjust the rate in future years based on changes in the 10 year Treasury note, but limits undergraduate loan rates to 8.25 percent, graduate loan rates to 9.5 percent, and PLUS loan rates to 10.5 percent.

A group of senators opposed the bill because of its market-based approach to student loans, which will lead to higher rates than students were paying before July.  Senators Warren (D-MA) and Reed (D-RI) sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to keep the flat rate of 3.4 percent for another year, leaving time for further negotiations on how to keep rates low.  After this amendment failed, 16 Democrats and one independent voted against final passage. Originally, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was in favor of this freeze, but eventually came to support the bipartisan compromise.

The Democratic opposition argues that the bill does not offer a permanent solution to fix the student loan crisis. The plan fails to address the existing $1 trillion student loan debt, the ever increasing tuition fees, and government’s profits from these loans. (The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate bill would generate $715 million in federal revenue over 10 years, less than the original House version.)  Further, while the compromise may lower interest rates on student loans below 6.8 percent in the next two to three years, in the long run the new system may increase rates.

The bipartisan group of Senators that passed the compromise pleaded for the support of the Democratic opposition, claiming that any action is better than inaction and the discussion on student loans would continue, especially because the Higher Education Act is scheduled for reauthorization next year.

The post Student Loan Bill Enacted appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.

The House was unable to pass a farm bill with a nutrition title because the $20 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/food stamps) approved by the House Agriculture Committee was not deep enough for some of the most right-wing members.  That proposal would have eliminated SNAP for 2 million very low-income people.  Instead, the House passed a very partisan farm bill with the nutrition provisions left out.  (For details, see the July 22 Human Needs Report.)  Now, the House leadership is reported to have crafted a new stand-alone bill including massive SNAP cuts – doubling the cuts to $40 billion, with 4 million more people losing SNAP and millions more seeing their benefits reduced.  The new bill may make it to the House floor in September.

The bill would retain all the harsh SNAP cuts in the original bill plus those that passed on the House floor before the nutrition title was axed from the farm bill.  One successful amendment would provide an incentive for states to drop unemployed people from SNAP even if they are actively looking for work but cannot find a job.  After cutting off the jobless person, the state would receive federal dollars.  The new bill according to reports would make millions more unemployed people without children eligible for SNAP for only three months out of every three years.  For the rest of the time, they cannot receive benefits unless they are working at least half-time.  Under current law, those harsh limits can be waived if the locality has a high unemployment rate.  The new legislation would end this waiver provision, now utilized in at least 45 states.  No matter how high the local unemployment rate is, 18-50 year olds not raising children would be denied SNAP benefits for 33 out of 36 months.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4 million people could be affected, among them at least 1.6 million women.  The average income of these childless people is 22 percent of the federal poverty line (that is, only a little over $2,500 a year in income).

The farm subsidy provisions that passed the House increased benefits for certain farmers, including a $9 billion increase in crop insurance subsidies over 10 years.  Farm subsidies overwhelmingly are received by large corporate farms.  Three-quarters of the $23 billion in farm subsidies went to the largest 15-20 percent of farms.  One beneficiary of farm subsidies is Representative Stephen Fincher (R-TN), who attracted attention by defending the original SNAP cuts in the farm bill in a Memphis speech, saying:  “The role of citizens, of Christians, of humanity is to take care of each other, but not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country.”  In 2012 alone, Rep. Fincher received $70,000 in farm subsidies; between 1999 and 2012, he accumulated $3.48 million in subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group.  It is not known whether Rep. Fincher would support the doubling of SNAP cuts, targeted to the poorest of the poor.

(For more details about the proposed new SNAP cuts, see the Statement by Robert Greenstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

The post Willing to Deny Food to 4 Million More Poor People: Rumors of House Plans to Double SNAP Cuts appeared first on Coalition on Human Needs.