Economic Opportunity Commentaries
"As a result, thousands of pregnant women are pushed out of jobs that they are perfectly capable of performing -- either put on unpaid leave or simply fired -- when they request an accommodation to help maintain a healthy pregnancy. Many are single mothers or a family's primary breadwinner. They are disproportionately low-income women, often in physically demanding jobs with little flexibility."
"House Republicans have hit upon a noxious scheme to help pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut: a tax increase on millions of poor working families."
"First, some facts: The number of food stamp recipients has indeed risen sharply, but this rise began under President George W. Bush and is largely attributable to the recession. Food stamps are an anti-poverty measure, so it's no surprise that enrollment should rise when large numbers of people are out of work (the number of recipients dropped last month as the economy improved)."
"That check is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a complicated name for tax relief for working families. Congress enacted a federal EITC in 1975, and Illinois enacted a state version in 2000. On Jan. 10 I signed a bill to put more money in the pockets of working families by doubling Illinois' EITC from 5 percent of the federal credit to 10 percent, saving low-income workers an extra $105 million a year."
"One in eight children in Michigan lives in a household grappling with job loss and one in every 20 has had his or her life disrupted by a home foreclosure. This year, as in previous years, creating an economic climate that leads to more jobs remains the top priority for our governor and lawmakers. An emphasis on educating kids and putting their parents back to work is the best weapon for fighting poverty."
Posted January 17, 2012
"But what we actually became is a nation that judges people not by the color of their skin — or at least not as much as in the past — but by the size of their paychecks. And in America, more than in most other wealthy nations, the size of your paycheck is strongly correlated with the size of your father’s paycheck. Goodbye Jim Crow, hello class system"
"By comparison, the appropriation was more than twice this amount in 1979. Combined with current reductions in revenue from both the private and public sectors, the LSC loss exacerbates the problem of delivering services to an ever-increasing population of those unable to a-ord legal assistance, including victims of domestic violence, the homeless, and veterans."
" Preschool for disadvantaged children should not be another casualty of the budget wars."
"The result is that many schools would experience no layoffs, while high-poverty schools would have to shoulder a cycle of turnover and instability that would add to their challenges."
"They have significantly increased the use of a voucher program that works with community agencies to put veterans in permanent supportive housing. The veterans receive help with rent and are assigned case managers who help them get access to health care and other lifesaving benefits."
"No one seriously disputes the fact that students from disadvantaged households perform less well in school, on average, than their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. But rather than confront this fact of life head-on, our policy makers mistakenly continue to reason that, since they cannot change the backgrounds of students, they should focus on things they can control."
"On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed legislation launching a program of training and tax credits for jobless, disadvantaged youth. Government action to promote hiring low-income kids is a fine idea. Unfortunately, the plan leaves out some suburban young people who are badly in need of work."
Posted December 12, 2011
"Actually, Mr. Romney never tells voters the full cost of his plan to balance the budget while cutting taxes: popular programs would be slashed or eliminated, vital state and local services would disappear, misery would be inflicted on the poor and the working class."
"The draft version of the Section 8 Savings Act released earlier this year by the majority staff of the House Financial Services Committee includes several excellent proposals that would cut administrative costs for public housing authorities, allowing them to more efficiently manage the programs that subsidize rents for more than three million of the country's poorest families."
Posted November 28, 2011
"Legal Services of the Hudson Valley has been representing indigent, disabled and low-income working families and their children since 1967, when we began operations in Westchester County."
"Poverty makes all homeowners nervous, but black poverty is terrifying, existing on a whole different scale in the American imagination. When it appears in a neighborhood, middle-class people don't think about tolerating it; they just move somewhere else. "
Posted November 16, 2011
"Low-income students, those eligible for free and reduced-cost lunch, have increased by about 60 percent in both districts. Currently, 26 percent of Red Bank students and 14 percent of Freehold students have limited English proficiency."
"We live in a polarizing society, so perhaps it’s inevitable that our experience of inequality should be polarized, too."
Posted October 24, 2011
Posted October 17, 2011
"There are 14 million people out of work, wages are falling, poverty is rising, and a second recession may be blowing in, but not a single Republican would even allow debate on a sound plan to cut middle-class taxes and increase public-works spending."
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