Update: 260 Groups Tell Congress: Keep Government Running and Protect Human Needs
David Elliot,
November 13, 2023
The Coalition on Human Needs is asking local, state, and national groups to sign a letter asking Congress to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the federal government open and running beyond Friday, November 17. If Congress fails to act by midnight next Friday, we will face a government shutdown. The deadline for signing is noon ET Monday, November 13.
How the expanded Child Tax Credit reduced poverty – why we need the Supplemental Poverty Measure
David Elliot,
November 9, 2023
Although children in all 50 states benefited from an expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), new data show that the effect was most felt among rural, low-cost states, some of which experienced drops in child poverty by more than 50 percent when the CTC was temporarily expanded during the pandemic. The data found that during 2021, when the expansion was in effect, child poverty dropped the most in rural, low cost-of-living states such as Alabama (down 52.5%), Maine (down 52.2%), Missouri (down 51.5%) and Wyoming (down 51.7%).
New report: Ten million Americans have lost Medicaid coverage. Many shouldn’t have.
David Elliot,
November 7, 2023
Ten million Americans have lost Medicaid coverage as states are deciding who should continue to receive benefits, and more than 70 percent of those who lost coverage did so because of bureaucratic hurdles such as missing paperwork, not because they were shown to be ineligible. It is likely that two-thirds of those who lost coverage became uninsured either briefly or for a longer period. More than half of those losing benefits are likely to be people of color.
Paid leave: ‘I benefit when my employees do not have to choose between their loved ones and a paycheck’
David Elliot,
October 27, 2023
Ben Verhoeven is a farmer and owner of Peoria Gardens, Inc., a nursery and greenhouse located in the rural Oregon town of Albany that grows flowers for distribution to retail garden centers. He employees 26 people full-time, year-round, as well as an additional 24 seasonal workers. All of Verhoeven’s employees have access to paid family and medical leave – and neither Verhoeven nor the employees have to pay much for the benefit – just 0.4 percent of payroll for Verhoeven and 0.6 percent for the employees.
School lunches should be free
CHN Staff,
October 26, 2023
During the pandemic, the government embarked on a beautiful experiment: expanding public programs to stave off poverty. One critical component was ensuring that public school students had free lunches regardless of family income. During the 2020-2021 school year, 98 percent of all school lunches were free to students. All of a sudden, public schools were allowed to treat the idea of feeding students to be as essential as educating them.
