Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau put out its annual snapshot of income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States—which serves as something of an annual report card on the economic well-being of America’s families.  One of the most significant takeaways was the effectiveness of government relief at keeping people above the federal poverty line last year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 53 million more Americans would have been officially poor in 2020 if not for a critical assembly of pandemic-related economic relief measures, from stimulus payments to boosts in jobless benefits, food assistance, medical coverage, and more. But while it’s always good news to see the enactment of public policies that measurably move the needle on poverty and hardship, a growing number of antipoverty researchers and advocates are raising a fundamental question: What good are these kinds of data if the way the United States defines poverty doesn’t bear any resemblance to the cost of a basic standard of living in the nation today? Likewise, when policymakers and elected officials commit to cutting poverty—or better, ending poverty—what are our leaders accountable to if the nation’s official definition of poverty amounts to just a fraction of what human dignity and economic stability require? So, to pull back the curtain on how the United States measures poverty, the problems with the official poverty measure, and the push to reform U.S. poverty measurement, Rebecca sat down with three colleagues and friends who know a ton about measuring poverty to talk about how we can do better and why it matters so much:  Shawn Fremstad, senior fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, CEPR, and author of a recent report for TCF, “The Defining Down of Economic Deprivation: Why We Need to Reset the Poverty Line”; Shailly Gupta Barnes, policy director for the Poor People’s Campaign and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, which is committed to building a movement to end poverty, led by the poor; and  David Brady, professor, School of Public Policy, University of California-Riverside and a research professor at the WZB Berlin Sociadmvl Science Center—and author of another report in the same TCF series, “American Poverty Should Be Measured Relative to the Prevailing Standards of Our Time.” For more on all this: Dig into Shawn’s report on why the U.S. poverty line is too damn low: “The Defining Down of Economic Deprivation: Why We Need to Reset the Poverty Line.” For more on the case for shifting to a relative poverty measure, check out David’s report: “American Poverty Should Be Measured Relative to the Prevailing Standards of Our Time.” And here’s lots more about the Poor People’s Campaign’s demands and why they’re challenging the OPM.  

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

The Poverty Line Is Too Damn Low

As the debate over President Biden’s sweeping “build back better” agenda continues in Washington, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin hasn’t been shy about laying out his demands, as Democratic leadership in the House and Senate and the White House bend over backwards to garner his and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s votes for reconciliation bill that’s been moving through Congress. High on Senator Manchin’s list: adding so-called work requirements to the newly expanded Child Tax Credit. In a September appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, he derided parents who don’t work outside the home, asking: “Don’t you think, if we’re going to help the children, that people should make some effort?”  Asked what he thought of the West Virginia Senator’s remarks, Child Tax Credit champion and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown responded as aptly as he did succinctly, declaring: “I think raising children is work.” Of course, so-called “work requirements”—the policy of using survival benefits as a tool to compel paid work outside the home—is not a new idea. Indeed they were the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s agenda to dismantle the safety net for the better part of his one-term presidency.  But the notion of so-called work requirements dates back a lot farther than Trump—and even a lot farther back than Ronald Reagan’s racist myth of the welfare queen. Indeed, as a recent report from the Center of the Study of Social Policy documents in painstaking depth, the long and sordid history of work requirements in U.S. income policy has roots that trace back centuries to the slave trade. So given the Senator from West Virginia’s continued interest in keeping work requirements alive, instead of turning the page on this kind of policymaking-by-dog-whistle and ensuring that all families have what they need to thrive—we at Off-Kilter thought it might be helpful to take a deep dive into the racist roots of work requirements. Joining Rebecca for this week’s show: Aisha Nyandoro, chief executive officer of Springboard to Opportunity and architect of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust; Jeremie Greer, cofounder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation; and Elisa Minoff, senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the author of “The Racist Roots of Work Requirements.”  Dig into Elisa Minoff’s full report, “The Racist Roots of Work Requirements” For more on the history and consequences of the 1996 welfare law, check out “TANF Policies Reflect Racist Legacy of Cash Assistance” by Ife Floyd Read “Work Requirements Would Undermine the CTC’s Impacts on Racial and Economic Justice” by the Children’s Defense Fund’s Emma Mehrabi 

The Racist Roots of Work Requirements

This week in Washington has featured no shortage of drama, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saddling Democrats with the threat of both a government shutdown and default on the nation’s debts by withholding Republican votes for keeping the government funded or raising the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, despite months of forward momentum in Congress to craft sweeping “build back better” legislation encompassing much of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan—austerity politics (or more precisely Sinemanchin intransigence—to borrow a timely term from The American Prospect’s David Dayen) has threatened to derail the president’s economic agenda. Thankfully, late on Thursday night, House progressives came to the rescue, making good on their promise to withhold their votes for the first part of “build back better”—the bipartisan infrastructure package—until there’s a commitment from the Senate (well, really Senators Manchin and Sinema) on a clear path forward for the second part of the package, the so-called reconciliation bill. That reconciliation bill of course is the piece of legislation that includes the bulk of Democrats’ priorities, from paid family and medical leave to child care to home and community based services, climate, and much, much more. The theory of the case for House progressives? Hold the line to ensure the reconciliation package—the centerpiece of the president’s economic agenda—isn’t hung out to dry. To pull back the curtain on what’s been going on in Washington this week, the politics driving the drama around build back better, government shutdown, potential default, and more—and a deep dive on why it’s so important that Congress pass both parts of the president’s economic agenda—Rebecca sat down with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and Data for Progress. Learn more about the Groundwork Collaborative’s work at GroundworkCollaborative.org Register for “Econ Con,” Groundwork’s annual conference, at EconCon.com 

Lindsay Owens on This Week’s D.C. Drama and Progressives’ Push to #HoldTheLine

For all the talk about what’s in “Build Back Better” recovery legislation that Democrats are trying to move through Congress, one thing that’s not currently in the bill, in what many workers’ advocates say is a glaring omission, is anything to do with Unemployment Insurance—which was badly in need of a refresh long before the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that when workers lose a job, they have the protection they need.  In fact, workers’ advocates and progressive think tanks have been ringing the alarm bells for years about how few jobless workers were protected by our UI system. The pre-pandemic share of jobless workers actually helped by UI in their time of need? Just 1 in 4, a record low. One of the most important lessons from the pandemic is without question the structural failings in America’s Unemployment Insurance system—gaps that were in many cases briefly filled by temporary expansions of jobless protections that have since been allowed to expire, leaving millions of still-jobless workers with less than they need to get by, or worse, nothing at all to keep them and their families afloat. For a look at the state of Unemployment Insurance now that recent expansions have been allowed to run out, what jobless workers are facing right now, and the long-needed UI fixes that workers’ advocates are hoping might still be included in upcoming recovery legislation… for this week’s Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with a panel of UI experts and advocates who have been leading the charge: Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project; Andy Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation; and Stephanie Freed, a freelancer turned UI organizer who founded and serves as the executive director of Extend PUA, which has organized tens of thousands of jobless workers in the fight to extend federal UI expansions during the pandemic. Read Rebecca Dixon’s statement on why UI reforms must be included in “Build Back Better” recovery legislation  Read more from Andy Stettner on the 7.5 million jobless workers who went over a UI benefits cliff on Labor Day Learn more about the story behind ExtendPUA.org—and how Stephanie Freed went from being a freelancer to organizing tens of thousands of jobless workers Jobless benefits protected 4.7 million people from poverty in 2020, according to NELP analysis Here’s a deep dive into how workers’ advocates say UI needs to be fixed (by NELP and allies) And here’s an op-ed Rebecca (Vallas) wrote early in the pandemic about Florida’s broken-by-design UI system 

“It’s Just Been Like This Rolling Cliff:” What’s Next for America’s Crumbling Unemployment Insurance System?

This week, millions of families across the United States are receiving their third monthly child allowance payment as implementation of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act earlier this year continues. Meanwhile, as “Build Back Better” legislation continues to come together in Congress, with key House committees marking up their portions of the legislation this week, the future of America’s first guaranteed minimum income for families with children—a policy estimated to cut child poverty in half in the United States—is at the heart of the ongoing debate. While not the permanent extension community advocates are calling for, the version of the bill currently moving through the House would extend the life of America’s first-ever child allowance by four years to give the expanded CTC time to take root—while making at least one key feature permanent: the credit’s so-called “full refundability” (read: full availability for the lowest-income families). So, for this week’s Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with two dear friends and colleagues who have been leading the way on the fight to extend the child allowance beyond its first year—while also working to ensure the program’s full implementation: Indi Dutta Gupta, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, and Dorian Warren, co-president of Community Change and one of the co-chairs of the Economic Security Project. But first: Rebecca talks with Representative Rosa DeLauro—the Connecticut Congresswoman who’s spent the past nearly two decades in Congress leading the crusade for what she calls a “Social Security for children”—for a look at how we got here and why she set out to expand the CTC all the way back in 2003, long before the CTC became cool. Find out how much your family is eligible for with Community Change’s Child Tax Credit calculator: https://communitychange.org/ctccalculator/. Here’s the link to the CTC easy sign-up tool for non-filers: https://www.whitehouse.gov/child-tax-credit/sign-up/. And for lots more on the expanded CTC, check out the Economic Security Project’s handy resource page: https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/emergencymoney/resources/. 

Inside the Fight to Make America’s New Child Allowance Permanent

Thirty-one years ago, the fabric of America's legal and policy landscape changed dramatically for people with disabilities in the United States when the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, on July 26, 1990. But, as far we've come these past thirty-plus years, we still have incredibly far to go. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, disabled people in the United States—who make up one in four Americans—were roughly twice as likely to live in poverty and two to three times more likely to be unemployed. Now, as federal policymakers work to "build back better," the United States has the opportunity to take another set of historic steps towards achieving the ADA's promise of equal opportunity, community integration, and participation in American life for people with disabilities—a promise that remains as-yet unfulfilled.  For this special relaunch episode of Off-Kilter, Rebecca talks with four of the disabled women leaders who've been making history on the front-lines of the ongoing fight for disability economic justice: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-7); Judy Heumann, whose historic activism jumpstarted the disability rights movement over forty years ago; Rebecca Cokley, a lifelong disability advocate and program officer at the Ford Foundation, where she heads the first U.S. disability rights program at any major foundation in the country; and Mia Ives-Rublee, the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. To take action on home and community-based services and SSI: Text SIGN PXPBNX to 50409 Check out Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution for more on Judy Heumann's activism and the origins of the disability rights movement at cripcamp.com 

The ongoing fight for disability economic justice, over thirty years after the ADA

Off-Kilter Podcast Announces New Launch with The Century Foundation

 This week, Off-Kilter’s bringing you a conversation Rebecca moderated at The Century Foundation earlier this week, on the historic opportunity to make long overdue improvements to Supplemental Security Income as part of #BuildBackBetter—featuring Sen Sherrod Brown, Rep. Raul Grijalva, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, as well as a panel of disability and seniors’ advocates.   Guests: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH); Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY); Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-CA); Nancy Altman, president, Social Security Works; Matthew Cortland, chronically ill, disabled lawyer and senior fellow, Data for Progress; Kristen Dama, managing attorney for SSI, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia; Tracey Gronniger, directing attorney, economic security, Justice in Aging; Mia Ives-Rublee, director, Center for American Progress Disability Justice Initiative; and Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.     Show notes: Event video: https://tcf.org/content/event/strengthening-ssi-must-part-building-back-better/ Polling: bit.ly/SSIpolling  Follow #DemolishDisabledPoverty  More on SSI: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/550027-the-safety-net-program-congress-forgot?rl=1

Why Strengthening SSI Needs to Be Part of "Building Back Better"

Nearly 40 million people in the U.S. live below the official poverty line—which in 2021 is just $26,000 for a family of four. But while poverty is all too often portrayed as a personal failure, it’s actually the result of bad public policy choices. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped in poverty—not because we as a nation lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to. This is the premise of a new book called Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, which looks at many of the policy choices conspiring to keep people poor and offers a roadmap of solutions that would eradicate poverty in the U.S. Rebecca sat down with the authors, Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, for this week's pod. Get the book: https://benbellabooks.com/shop/brokeinamerica/ National Diaper Bank Network: nationaldiaperbanknetwork.org Alliance for Period Supplies: https://www.allianceforperiodsupplies.org/

"Broke in America"--feat. Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

The April jobs data released by the Department of Labor last week spurred an avalanche of hysteria and conservative hand-wringing about supposedly widespread labor shortages, with many on the right pointing to pandemic jobless benefits as the bogeyman. In a particularly troubling move, on Wednesday of this week, 12 Republican governors announced they’d be ending access to pandemic unemployment benefits in their states. To help unpack the state of the labor market as the COVID-19 economic recovery continues—and the role of pandemic unemployment insurance in the recovery—Rebecca sat down with Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, for a reality check on the jobs data and what they really tell us about the kind of policies we need at this point in the ongoing recovery. More from Heidi on all this: https://twitter.com/hshierholz/status/1392272908618145796 https://www.epi.org/blog/restaurant-labor-shortages-show-little-sign-of-going-economywide-policymakers-must-not-rein-in-stimulus-or-unemployment-benefits/

What's Really Going on in the Labor Market -- feat. Heidi Shierholz

As leaders at all levels of government work to “build back better”—and to address the nation’s legacy of racial injustice and persistent racial inequality—removing barriers to employment for workers with records is more urgently needed than ever amid the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and downturn, to ensure not only a full but an equitable recovery that does not leave tens of millions of system-impacted individuals and families behind. As Off-Kilter closes out our #SecondChanceMonth series for the month of April, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca had earlier this week with a group of state leaders who’ve been advancing transformative “clean slate” and fair chance licensing reforms in recent years: Michigan Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II Sharon Dietrich, litigation director at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia Representative Jordan Harris, Minority Whip of the Pennsylvania Assembly Josh Hoe, policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan Whitley Carpenter, criminal justice staff attorney at Forward Justice in North Carolina Jael Myrick, interim director of the Clean Slate practice at the East Bay Community Law Center in California Video: https://www.americanprogress.org/events/2021/04/20/498350/growing-momentum-clean-slate-fair-chance-licensing-states/

State Leaders Talk #SecondChanceMonth: Fair Chance Licensing and Clean Slate

“The War on Drugs has disproportionately harmed communities of color. People have lost jobs, education, housing, their liberty, their families, and their lives to this War. Now they deserve equity, justice, and repair: ownership of cannabis businesses, full and automatic expungement, and community reinvestment of tax revenue and corporate philanthropy.” This is the vision of a marijuana justice organization called Cage Free Cannabis and its sister organization Cage Free Repair. As Off-Kilter continues #SecondChanceMonth, to mark 4/20, Rebecca sat down with Adam Vine, cofounder of Cage Free Cannabis & Cage Free Repair, and Felicia Carbajal, interim director of programming with National Expungement Week and a member of Cage Free Cannabis’s advisory board. Learn more about Cage Free's work at CageFreeCannabis.com NationalExpungementWeek.org Follow their work: @CageFreeRepair @ExpungementWeek

Cage Free Cannabis Talks #SecondChanceMonth -- feat. co-founder Adam Vine and National Expungement Week's Felicia Carbajal

 Off-Kilter continues our Second Chance Month series with two of the directly impacted leaders driving transformational change on second chance policies and rights restoration in the states, who also happen to be a powerhouse husband-wife team: Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, best known for the visionary Amendment 4 campaign that restored the right to vote for 1.4 million people with felony convictions in Florida—and Sheena Meade, one of the leaders in the Amendment 4 campaign and now the managing director of the Clean Slate Initiative, a bipartisan national movement to expand record-clearing and make it automatic to put second chances within reach for everyone, not just folks who can afford a lawyer.   Learn more about FRRC's work: floridarrc.com Learn more about the Clean Slate Initiative: cleanslateinitiative.org

Desmond Meade and Sheena Meade Talk Second Chance Month

In recognition that a criminal record shouldn’t be a life sentence to poverty, there’s been a whirlwind of momentum in the states in recent years to expand eligibility for criminal record-clearing—with over half the states expanding laws for expungement, sealing, and other tools for enabling people to wipe their records clean so they can have a fair shot at jobs, housing, education and more. There’s just one tiny problem. The expungement systems that states have been building are leaving behind the vast majority of the folks they’re supposed to help. To kick off a series of conversations with leaders in the field of reentry and criminal records reform for April as Second Chance Month, Rebecca talks to two of the leading academics behind a critical new line of research on what’s now being called the “second chance gap”—JJ Prescott, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Paper Prisons Project—whose research on who’s getting left behind by hard to navigate expungement systems has been fueling state momentum to make criminal record-clearing automatic for everyone who’s eligible, instead of just the lucky few who can afford to hire a lawyer.

The Second Chance Gap -- feat. JJ Prescott and Colleen Chien

 Poverty researchers estimate that the income-boosting provisions in the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law last month, will cut child poverty in half, and that overall poverty in the U.S. will fall by one-third over the next year. But should we expect those promised reductions in poverty to transfer from spreadsheets to real life? A lot of the answer to this question hinges on whether federal policymakers take the steps needed to ensure we don’t just make folks ELIGIBLE for historic income security protections like the new child allowance, the EITC expansion for workers not caring for kids in their own homes, and $1,400 relief checks—but whether we make sure low-income individuals and families can actually ACCESS these benefits.    So for this week's pod, Rebecca sat down with two of the advocates working on the access part of the equation: Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, who served from 2001 until 2019 as the IRS’s internal watchdog known as the national taxpayer advocate; and Jen Burdick, a lawyer in the public benefits unit at Community Legal Services.

Eligibility doesn’t equal access — feat. Center for Taxpayer Rights’ Nina Olson and Community Legal Services’ Jen Burdick

Formerly TalkPoverty Radio, Off-Kilter is a podcast about poverty and inequality — and everything they intersect with. Each week, host Rebecca Vallas is joined by experts, advocates, activists, and other smart people to break down the issues of the day — and how we fight back. Heavy topics… but with a hefty dose of laughter and snark. Off-Kilter is powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Find Off-Kilter on the Progressive Voices Network, the We Act Radio network in DC, local radio stations across the U.S., and as a podcast.We want to hear from you! Send ideas, pitches, and feedback to offkilter@americanprogressaction.org.

hubhopper

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

hubhopper