This coming Monday the President will present his budget request to Congress for FY2016. We look forward to reviewing the President’s proposals, and we’ve already heard about important investments he’d make in child care and community college. We’ve heard he will start to reverse damaging cuts to human needs programs….
Archives: Voices
Head Smacker: McConnell and Boehner Address Income Inequality…But Not Really
On Sunday, the CBS news show 60 Minutes aired the first joint interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell since the new Republican majority Congress convened. The interview took place only days after last week’s State of the Union address, and Scott Pelley…
Making Child Care Accessible to Low-Income Families
As we noted in a recent Fact of the Week, the average annual cost of center-based child care for an infant is nearly half of the income of a family of three living at the poverty level. In fact, child care is one of the most significant expenses in a…
Fact of the Week: Americans Not in Congress Overwhelmingly Support $12.50 Minimum Wage
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama called out members of Congress who have failed to raise the minimum wage, saying, “If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to…
Share your Thoughts about the State of the Union
Below are my thoughts about the State of the Union address. Please share your comments on the address or the responses by scrolling down to the bottom of this page. The President is asking whether we will be satisfied with an economy that works only for a few, or works to provide opportunities…
SOTU: Things You Can Do
Next Tuesday, President Obama will give the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address to Congress and the nation, followed by responses from the Republican Party and the Tea Party. We’ll share our thoughts about the addresses that evening on our Voices for Human Needs blog, and we hope you’ll join…
Fact of the Week: One-Third of State Budgets Comes from Federal Funds
States rely heavily on money from the federal government. While taxes make up the majority of state general revenue, federal money makes up roughly 32 percent of that total. In separate reports, the National Priorities Project and the Tax Foundation both used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to come…
Head Smacker: House Jeopardizes Health Insurance for Workers While Claiming to Help Them
The House used the first week of the new Congressional session to pass a bill that puts health coverage and paychecks for Americans workers at risk and raises the federal deficit by $53 billion. That’s a Head Smacker in and of itself. But what makes this move even more of…
One Young Person’s Story of Homelessness
Dae’Jah was 13 when she first became homeless. She clearly remembers the day her mother told her they had to pack up everything they had and leave their house because they were being evicted. Her mom had lost her business and was no longer able to make the mortgage payments….
Fact of the Week: Child Care Cost is Nearly Half of Income for a Family at the Poverty level
With the start of the new year, many of us returned to work or school after some time off over the holidays. While parents are hard at work at jobs or bettering their education to provide for their children, roughly 11 million children younger than age five are in some…
Head Smacker: The Rationale Construction Industry at Work
When the Republican-majority Congress starts up in January, they will want to set the stage for tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy. The Rationale Construction Industry is doing its best to help. Its work was in evidence in an opinion piece by Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation printed…
Asset Poverty in America
Among the many troubling signs that the U.S. economy isn’t really recovering and that inequality is becoming more deeply ingrained is the lack of savings by most Americans and the tremendous disparities in assets between a wealthy few and much of the population. Although the stock market has rebounded spectacularly…