Category: Uncategorized

How to Feed America Better Post-Covid

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When teachers locked up their classrooms last March, few thought that a year later schools would still be shuttered and that millions of children would lack access to essential services, such as meals, and that millions of jobs would be lost, leaving many individuals and families struggling to put food on the table. America’s hunger crisis is now so acute that a recent analysis found that the number of children not getting enough to eat was ten times higher during the pandemic, while nearly 1 in 6 adults – or close to 24 million Americans – reported that their households did not have enough to eat sometimes or often in the past seven days.

The sharp rise of hunger during the pandemic is yet another woeful legacy of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the Covid crisis, including trying to deny access to food relief by placing unnecessary bureaucratic barriers on states and even attempting to kick nearly 700,000 unemployed people off of food assistance in the midst of a once-in-a-century public health crisis. President Biden has thankfully made quick progress to address the hunger crisis through executive action and proposed legislation, but there is more work to be done to make our federal anti-hunger policy more resilient going forward for the next crisis, and to address the structural barriers to food affordability and access.

In his first week in office, President Biden signed an executive order that will help alleviate the hunger crisis by increasing benefits of the Pandemic-EBT program (P-EBT) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as well as calling for the Agriculture Department to modernize the Thrifty Food Plan to better reflect the cost of a market basket of foods upon which SNAP benefits are based. Biden’s American Rescue Plan will also significantly bolster food assistance programs around the country. Collectively, these changes should make food aid more generous and better targeted.

However, many anti-hunger innovations were born of necessity during the pandemic, and these should serve as lessons learned going forward to better prepare for a future crisis. The P-EBT program has been a success at bridging the gap in nutrition for low-income children who used to obtain meals through programs at their schools, but who could no longer do so with schools closed. This program should be studied to see if it can be converted to a Summer EBT option going forward. Furthermore, to stay ahead of a future crisis, researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have suggested that Congress “leverage the P-EBT structure to create a permanent authorization for states to issue replacement benefits (similar to P-EBT, and perhaps renamed “emergency-” or E-EBT) in case of lengthy school or child care closures resulting from a future public health emergency or natural disaster.” This would make it easier for states to act quickly and not rely on Congressional action should schools need to close in the future. Finally, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici has introduced a bill that would more effectively allow schools to distribute free meals to students and other community members in need, and to extend meal service for afterschool meals and snack programs. These measures would make our systems nimbler and more responsive should a future disruption, national or local, occur.

America’s hunger crisis did not start with the pandemic, and policymakers should go further to address three key underlying causes and structural barriers to food access and affordability. First, the White House should focus on stricter antitrust enforcement in the food industry. The U.S. food and agriculture industry is concentrated, with a few large firms dominating many markets, which can drive up consumer prices on basic nutrition staples. Second, Congress should enact the HOPE Act, introduced by Reps. Joe Morelle and Jim McGovern and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) which would create online accounts that enable low-income families to apply once for all social programs they qualify for, rather than forcing them to run a bureaucratic gauntlet that makes it difficult for low-income Americans to get public assistance. Third, Congress should take up legislation, such as the bipartisan Healthy Food Access for All Americans (HFAAA) Act put forth by Sens. Mark R. Warner, Jerry Moran, Bob Casey, Shelley Moore Capito, that incentivizes food providers to set up shop in rural and hard-to-reach communities to improve food access for the estimated 40 million Americans living in “food deserts” that lack a nearby grocery store or food pantry or bank.

Food insecurity is not just a moral issue, it also has economic and social costs. Adults who go hungry are less productive and are more likely to suffer from chronic illness. Hungry children are more likely to get sick and fall behind in school. One in five Black and Hispanic households report they are unable to afford food. Poor nutrition and soaring rates of metabolic disease are a drag on the economy and contribute to rising healthcare costs and early deaths in minority and low-income families that are disproportionately more likely to experience poor nutrition and health as a result of food insecurity. And a boost in food assistance programs has even been found to speed economy recovery during a downturn and serve as an “automatic stabilizer”, an added bonus of fighting hunger during the Covid recession.

It’s time for a new national commitment to wiping out hunger and malnutrition in America. The pandemic and the associated hunger crisis have taught us valuable lessons that we should use so that we can be better prepared to face a future crisis and to curb hunger in America.

*Veronica Goodman is the Director of Social Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. In her role, she develops and analyzes policies designed to help lift more Americans out of poverty and to strengthen the middle class, focusing on social mobility, inequality, labor, and modernizing social services. Veronica earned graduate degrees in economics and public management from Johns Hopkins University, and her undergraduate degree from The George Washington University.

You can find Goodman’s full paper on a comprehensive federal approach to the hunger crisis here.

This piece was published on On Food Law, a forum for food law scholars to discuss ideas and to share work, managed by the Food Law Lab at Harvard Law and the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Biden Clears First Big Hurdle

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Barring some 11th hour drama in the House, President Biden is expected to sign his $1.8 trillion American Rescue Plan into law this week. It’s a landmark achievement that gives us reason to hope our government may not be broken after all. 

Although he’s only been in office 46 days, Biden already has done more to lift the nation’s morale and make the economy work for everyone than his predecessor managed in four turbulent years. In case we’ve forgotten, this is what a real president looks like.

Biden’s plan focuses intently on defeating the coronavirus pandemic that has frozen normal life for a full year. It provides ample money to ramp up vaccinations, enable schools to reopen, help people who have lost their jobs and businesses, keep state and local governments running – all of which will speed economic recovery. 

In shaping and steering the package through Congress, Biden has drawn on a deep reservoir of political experience and cordial relationships. He also has been abetted by qualified and competent White House staff (another contrast with the man he replaced). He has radiated calm and showed impressive discipline in ignoring political distractions and media sideshows to deliver swiftly on his core campaign promise. 

The record will show the relief bill passed with almost zero votes from Republicans. But it will also show that Biden got the job done without vilifying his opponents or deepening the country’s paralyzing cultural rifts.    

Plenty of pragmatic progressives – myself included – have misgivings about parts of the bill. Its cash payments are not well-targeted, and $350 billion appears to be more than state and local governments actually need. Those dollars would be better spent on science and technology, high skills for non-college workers, clean energy infrastructure and other essential public investments. Amid $5-6 trillion deficits and cascading public debt, we could face some difficult fiscal adjustments in the years ahead.

On the other hand, the Biden package is deeply progressive. It throws lifelines to vulnerable Americans who have borne the brunt of the virus and the Covid recession:  the old, low-income workers, poor and minority communities with severe health challenges and hungry families. Through an expanded child tax credit, the bill also would create the equivalent of a child allowance that is expected to cut child poverty in half. 

Policy disagreements aside, Biden correctly gauged the magnitude of the nation’s health and economic emergency. After a long, grinding year of loss, suffering and social isolation, his instinct to go big is right. So is his desire to cultivate national “unity” and reach out to reasonable Republicans, who are beset by extremists in their party. 

This is what governing in a Constitutional democracy is supposed to look like. The public seems to approve, even if Biden’s left-wing detractors don’t. The most recent AP poll shows the president’s approval rating hitting 60 percent. 

By clearing his first big hurdle, Biden has dealt himself a strong political hand for the next one: Winning passage of his coming “Build Back Better” plan for building a more just, clean and resilient U.S. economy. 

This piece was also published on Medium.

Natural Gas and America’s Clean Energy Transition

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Biden has set the ambitious, important climate goal of achieving net zero emissions from the nation’s electric power sector by 2035.  Already, natural gas has played a key role in lowering U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in the past 15 years, in part by displacing higher emitting coal. But gas, which still provides more than a third of America’s electricity, must play an even greater part in America’s decarbonization plans going forward.

Right now, gas uniquely supports the expansion of renewable energy by providing an instantly dispatchable source of electricity. Unlike coal and nuclear plants, natural gas power plants turn on and off within minutes, allowing the grid to quickly match supply and demand even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. As a U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory report has noted, this unique flexibility of natural gas generation thereby facilitates the steady expansion of renewables.

Yet as we move toward decarbonization, maintaining an affordable and reliable grid is becoming more exacting, due to increased frequency of extreme weather events and the rapid growth of intermittent and variable wind and solar power. Retaining sufficient natural gas generation to backstop wind and solar power will reduce costs and increase reliability compared to a grid that relies entirely on renewables, or often more expensive electricity storage. Given these realities, demands to ban shale gas development and fracking are not consistent with an economically balanced approach to decarbonizing the electric grid, as President Biden and other administration officials have repeatedly noted.

Read the full piece by click here.

An Open Letter to Congress from the Mosaic Economic Project

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer and Members of the 117th Congress,

As a member of the first Cohort of the Mosaic Economic Project — an effort to advance women experts in the policy debate — and in the spirit of International Women’s Day 2021 “Choose to Challenge” theme, we ask you to choose to deepen your bench of economists, business leaders, and technology experts on Capitol Hill.

The under-representation of women in economics and technology, despite women constituting a larger share of the population and having a commensurately greater economic influence, has many causes, including lack of educational opportunity and unequal opportunity within the workplace and male-dominated professions. We need Congress to be part of the solution.

The lack of diverse experts in senior staff, as resources, and those called to provide informal expertise as well as formal testimony has long been a blind spot among policymakers. You—the most diverse Congress in history—can do better. Otherwise, Congress will continue to advance economic policies lacking the perspective of all Americans.

As authorities on pocketbook issues that affect us all, economists are highly sought-after, with celebrity-like status among reporters, investors and policymakers. Why? With increasingly frequent and severe episodes of economic volatility, that politicians seek guidance from those who specialize in rigorous analysis makes sense. Yet tens of thousands of hours of expert testimony show mostly men have been called upon. Despite our contributions, women still do not have equal opportunities to showcase our expertise.

It will take time to fix the broken educational pipeline, wherein elementary school girls too often don’t receive the same encouragement in math and science as boys do. Congress must dig a little deeper to find women experts in economics, business and technology. They are out there. We are out there. The Mosaic Economic Project will be happy to help you connect.

MOSAIC ECONOMIC PROJECT – COHORT 1:

 

The Tradeoff Between Openness and Trust in Digital Marketplaces

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On Wednesday, the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill that would require Google and Apple to allow Arizona-based app developers to choose their own alternate payment systems — and thus avoid the 15 to 30% commissions the app stores typically charge. This legislation follows on the heels of antitrust lawsuits by Epic Games, the developer of hit game Fortnite, against Google and Apple for monopolizing app stores. Many other states are considering similar bills. Some are also considering more extreme rules requiring the tech giants to allow sideloading, or the ability to download software programs outside of the default app stores. Google’s Android currently allows sideloading while Apple’s iOS does not.

What these proposed laws share in common is a highly prescriptive view of what technology platforms should allow and how their business models should work. The market has been running a decades-long test on consumer preferences for open vs. closed platforms: On desktop, consumers can choose Windows if they want a more open experience and macOS if they want a more closed experience. Similarly, on mobile devices, consumers can choose Android if they want to be able to sideload app stores and iOS if they want a more controlled experience. This diversity of approaches in tech seems to be working out for consumers, developers, and platforms, given the proliferation of these devices in recent years. According to estimates from PPI’s Michael Mandel, as of August 2020 the United States had 2.52 million App Economy jobs.

Apple pursues a highly integrated approach — they build the hardware, they build the operating system, they build the app store, they build the payments system, and they build many of the basic apps users need to get value out of their phones. Google — and many others — pursue a highly modular approach. Google developed Android, an open source operating system, but it doesn’t sell many phones (in 2019, Google sold 7.2 million Pixel phones; there were 1.5 billion smartphones sold worldwide). There are tradeoffs between the modular approach and the integrated approach. The modular approach can often deliver lower costs because vendors can mix and match different commodified components into a final product.

Read the rest of the piece here.

A Clear Vision for Modern Ocular Health Care in Georgia and Michigan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Michigan and Georgia state legislators are considering legislation that would expand access to telehealth services for contact lens and eyeglasses prescription renewals. While a seemingly small change, it would make it easier for consumers to get new glasses and contacts and help push the states toward more innovative health care more broadly. This week I had the opportunity to testify to both state legislatures why I agree with these proposed changes.

Under current law, both Michigan and Georgia treat ocular health differently than other types of health care. Patients can see physicians remotely to renew drug prescriptions but not eyeglass or contact lens prescriptions. The states legislatively limited access to telehealth over safety concerns rather than letting the governing boards of medicine decide where a person could receive ocular health care.

In recent years, renewing contact lens and eye glass prescriptions has become commonplace is many states. After an initial prescription is provided with an in-person exam, certain low-risk contact lens wearers can use home computers and mobile phones to check their vision and take a picture of their eye to renew prescriptions for up to five years. The information is sent to a local ophthalmologist, who reviews the results and issues a prescription renewal if appropriate.

But this type of renewal is banned in Michigan and Georgia. The good news is, the state legislatures are considering HB 4356 and HB 629, innovative bills which would roll back these limits and allow the residents of Michigan and Georgia, respectively, to use telehealth to renew lens prescriptions.

While telehealth will never be a panacea of all of health care, it does have the potential to increase access and reduce costs. But using state law to unnecessarily blocking access to certain telehealth services is just one (of many) reasons why health care costs too much in the United States. Here’s a technology that allows people to avoid unnecessary in-person visits, and yet it’s banned from being used for basic lens prescription renewals. And as we’ve seen from the Covid-19 pandemic, telehealth can BOTH improve access and reduce costs when used appropriately.

During Covid-19, it’s been laid bare how some parts of the health care system maintain barriers to access solely for revenue purposes. To reduce costs and improve access, we need to make it easier to access needed care – whether or not we are in a pandemic.

Michigan and Georgia should vote to approve these bills to make it easier for their constituents to get their eyeglass and contact lens prescriptions. 

This blog was also featured on Medium.

The Australian App Economy, 2021 Update

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Amidst the turbulence of the global Covid-19 pandemic, Australia went through its first recession in almost 30 years. Yet the Australian App Economy has grown compared to 2019, when we last estimated Australia’s App Economy employment.

 

Remember also that the App Economy has a history of being recession resistant. Apple opened the first App Store in July 2008, just as the global economy was plunging into financial crisis. The App Store and the others that followed, including Google Play (originally Android Market) which launched in October 2008, were successful despite historic economic turmoil.

This report updates our 2019 paper, “The Australian App Economy, 2019 Update” and our 2017 paper, “The Rise of the Australian App Economy.” Based on our methodology that combines government occupational figures with comprehensive data on posted job openings, we estimate that Australia has 156,000 App Economy jobs as of January 2021, up from 136,000 in January 2019.

This 15 percent gain in App Economy jobs is partly driven by an increase in the overall number of ICT professionals, as reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, combined with a steady share of IT job openings that require App Economy skills, such as knowledge of iOS or Android.

The steady growth of the App Economy is particularly important for Australia, because mobile apps can be exported globally. Australian-based apps such as Procreate, Canva, Afterpay, Pocket Casts, and TripGo have significant global user bases.

ANALYSIS

For this study, a worker is in the App Economy if he or she is in:

• An IT-related job that uses App Economy skills—the ability to develop, maintain, or support mobile applications. We will call this a “core” App Economy job. Core App Economy jobs include app developers; software engineers whose work requires knowledge of mobile applications; security engineers who help keep mobile apps safe from being hacked; and help desk workers who support use of mobile apps.

• A non-IT job (such as sales, marketing, finance, human resources, or administrative staff) that supports core App Economy jobs in the same enterprise. We will call this an “indirect” App Economy job.

• A job in the local economy that is supported either by the goods and services purchased by the enterprise or by the income flowing to core and indirect App Economy workers. These “spillover” jobs include local professional services such as bank tellers, law offices, and building managers; telecom, electric, and cable installers and maintainers; education, recreation, lodging, and restaurant jobs; and all the other necessary services. We use a conservative estimate of the indirect and spillover effects.

We estimate the number of App Economy jobs by combining quarterly data on ICT professionals from the Australian Bureau of Statistics with comprehensive counts of “App Economy” job openings in Australia from Indeed.com. 1, 2 The methodology is described in the Appendix to the 2017 study. We estimate that Australia has 156,000 App Economy jobs as of January 2021, up from 136,000 in January 2019 and 113,000 in March 2017 (Table 1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many App Economy job postings list a mobile operating system or multiple mobile operating systems with which the job candidate is expected to be familiar. This allows us to assess the distribution of mobile operating systems in the Australian App Economy. We estimate that Australia has 137,000 jobs in the iOS ecosystem, and 123,000 jobs in the Android ecosystem. Compared to 2019, estimated iOS ecosystem jobs are up 14 percent, while estimated Android ecosystem jobs areup 16 percent.

 

How does Australia’s App Economy compare to other industrialized peers? Obviously countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom are much larger than Australia, making direct comparisons difficult.

Instead, we calculate the “app intensity” of different countries, defined as the number of App Economy jobs as a share of total jobs. Table 3 compares Australia’s app intensity with that of the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

As of January 2021, Australia had an app intensity of 1.2 percent, higher than Germany and roughly comparable to the United Kingdom but lagging Canada and the United States. Table 3 also shows that app intensity rose during the pandemic, which is not a surprise because the App Economy grew while the rest of the economy shrank.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Our methodology enables us to estimate the geography of App Economy jobs, since job postings generally identify where the job is located. Table 4 lists App Economy jobs by state and territory and calculates app intensity.

Not surprisingly, New South Wales and Victoria lead in the number of App Economy jobs. Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has the top app intensity, followed by New South Wales. Note that with the Covid pandemic, more work is being done remotely. We have modified the methodology slightly to take account of this factor, but at least up to now, the number of Australian App Economy jobs being advertised as purely remote without a location is not large enough to substantially distort the results.

The same approach enables us to estimate App Economy jobs by urban areas. We use a radius of 50 kilometers as our measure of the urban area, except for a small number of cities that are sufficiently close to larger urban areas that a 50 km radius would pick up a significant number of jobs from the larger area. In those cases, marked by an asterisk, we use 25 kilometers as our measure.

Table 5 ranks the top urban areas by App Economy jobs, rounded to the nearest thousand. Note that urban areas with less than 500 jobs are reported as NA (not available). Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth are at the top of the list.

Finally, for this report we introduce a new analysis. Many core App Economy jobs require familiarity not only with iOS or Android, but with one of the app development languages or frameworks, such as Swift (iOS) or Kotlin (Android).

Table 6 below presents a list of app development languages and frameworks, ranked by the number of mentions on App Economy job postings. Java is first, followed by Swift. Because the methodology is new, we are not yet ready to quantify the list.

EXAMPLES

App Economy workers are found across most industries and geographic areas in Australia. Of course the tech sector is hiring workers with Android and iOS knowledge. As of February 2021, IT consulting firm Cognizant was searching for an iOS engineer in Melbourne. Digital product creator Roam Creative was seeking an intermediate iOS developer in Sydney. Zensys Technologies was looking for a developer with iOS and Android experience in Tamworth, New South Wales. ContentKeeper Technologies, which focuses on web security solutions, was hiring a quality assurance engineer with understanding of iOS and Android in the Australian Capital Territory.

Financial services is one key area where there is a lot of demand for App Economy workers. Banking company Bankwest was searching for a mobile developer with knowledge of Kotlin and Swift in Perth. Commonwealth Bank was looking for a senior software engineer with knowledge of iOS and Android applications in Perth. National Australia Bank was hiring a security consultant with testing experience on iOS and Android in Melbourne. Financial services firm Suncorp Group was searching for a senior developer with experience in Swift, Android or Xamarin in Brisbane.

Fintech firm Zip was seeking an Android engineer in Sydney. Zip, which specializes in point-of-sale credit and digital payment services, has operations across Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom and recently acquired US-based QuadPay.3 CoverMore Insurance Services was looking for an iOS developer in North Sydney.

But Australia’s App Economy continues to spread to other industries too. Online healthcare company HealthEngine was looking for iOS and Android engineers in Perth. HealthEngine bills itself as “Australia’s consumer healthcare platform.” Personal fitness app Today’s Plan was searching for a test engineer with iOS and Android experience in Canberra.

A company called Real Time Data—which “provides software applications which revolutionize the collection, reporting, and management of commercial fishing worldwide”— was searching for a full stack iOS developer in Adelaide.4 The company’s LinkedIn page states boldly that “We believe the future of humanity relies on sustainable oceans.” The Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning was hiring for a software engineer with experience in Xamarin development for Android and iOS in Melbourne.

Global commercial real estate giant CBRE was looking for an Android software engineer in Brisbane. Sports betting platform Sportsbet.com.au was hiring an Android developer in Melbourne. Handmade goods company Tibet House was searching for a software engineer with knowledge of iOS and Android in Heidelberg West, Victoria. Consumer loyalty program flybuys was seeking a senior Android engineer in Melbourne. eBay Inc. was looking for an Android developer in Sydney. Online car selling platform carsales.com.au was hiring an iOS developer in Melbourne.

Accenture was seeking a lead security consultant with iOS and Android experience in Brisbane. Deloitte was looking for a digital technology consultant with experience in iOS and Android in Canberra. MCS Consulting was hiring a mobile software engineer with experience in iOS and Android in Melbourne. Marketing company Metigy was searching for a senior Android developer in North Sydney. New Zealand-based cloud accounting platform Xero was seeking a senior mobile product designer with knowledge of iOS in Melbourne.

Multi-modal public transportation company Keolis Downer was searching for an application support developer with experience in iOS and Android application development in Adelaide. Keolis Downer is the largest light rail operator in Australia and a major bus operator. RMIT University was seeking a senior developer with iOS and Android experience in Melbourne. Macleans Waste Management was looking for a full stack developer with experience in Kotlin development for Android in Penrith, New South Wales.

Truck and equipment tracking firm Teletrac Navman was hiring an Android lead in Melbourne. Honeywell, which recently acquired Adelaide-based Sine, a maker of a visitor and contractor management app, was hiring two Android developers there. Legal assisting app Smokeball-AU was seeking a software tester with iOS and Android experience in Sydney.

Media content creator Nine was hiring a senior software engineer with experience in iOS and Android programming in North Sydney. Social networking app Travello was seeking a full stack Android developer in Fortitude Valley, Queensland.

Examples of Export Apps
Our 2019 report noted that “Apps created in Australia can be easily delivered across the world, without expensive transportation, to generate jobs and income at home.” That’s even more true today. Graphic design platform Canva, cited in the 2019 report, is based in Sydney and now has more than 30 million users worldwide.5 Art app Procreate, also cited in the 2019 report, was developed by Hobart-based Savage Interactive. Procreate is used by artists at Pixar, Mattel, Ubisoft, DC Comics, and Disney.

Another “export” app is Afterpay, headquartered in Melbourne, which provides online post payment services and has more than 11 million global users.6 Pocket Casts, based in Adelaide, South Australia, is a podcast hosting app with global reach.7 And TripGo, developed by SkedGo in Sydney, lets users around the world compare and combine transport modes like train, bus, taxi, subway, metro, cab, tram, car, bike, motorcycle or ride share.8

CONCLUSION

While the Covid-19 pandemic induced Australia’s first recession in nearly three decades, Australia’s App Economy has once again served as an important source of growth. As of January 2021, we estimate that Australia has 156,000 App Economy jobs, an increase of 15 percent relative to our January 2019 estimate of 136,000 jobs. The country’s App Economy is competitive globally, with this growth spread throughout the states and territories in industries like tech, commerce, banking, government, and healthcare. Australia’s App Economy is also exportable, with a number of apps attaining a global following.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Michael Mandel is chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute and senior fellow at Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the University of Pennsylvania. Mandel received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and formerly served as chief economist at BusinessWeek.

Elliott Long is senior economic policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute. Elliott holds a BA in Political Science from Florida Gulf Coast University and MPA from George Washington University.

 

 

Carolina Postcard: What is Roy Cooper’s Special Sauce?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A national reporter recently wrote a flattering article about Governor Roy Cooper, but seemed flummoxed by Cooper’s political success.

In “What Does This Man Know That Other Democrats Don’t?” in The Atlantic, Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote, “The governor is 16–0 in primary and general elections over the past three and a half decades—in good years and bad years for Democrats, in the North Carolina of his youth and in the very different place his state has become.”

Even after interviewing the Governor, he wrote, “Cooper doesn’t know why he keeps winning in North Carolina while other Democrats keep losing.” He added, “the secret to Cooper’s victories may be hard to replicate.”

Actually, there’s no secret here. Dovere touched on most of the explanations. But he underestimated some of them, and he missed a big one.

Cooper’s first key to success, the article noted, is “Make sure voters can see you running a competent and effective government.” Yep. The Governor’s handling of the Covid pandemic played a big part in his reelection last year.

Dovere mentioned “his identity as a white man (which) may have enabled him to hold on to moderate voters.” It’s more than that; Cooper comes across as what he is: a small-town boy from rural North Carolina who has worked his way up.

The article noted, in a master stroke of understatement, that Cooper has “built up his own fundraising apparatus.” In fact, the Governor raised more than $42 million for his reelection last year. His opponent, Dan Forest, raised about $5 million. Cooper outspent Forest 10-1 on TV. In 2016, Cooper outraised an incumbent Governor – a rare feat.

Dovere said Cooper “also established (and largely funded) a political operation (that) gave him centers of political support around the state.” Actually, he’s been building a network since he was a student at UNC. Through 35 years in politics, Cooper has built a stable and experienced team of governmental and political advisers; some have been with him since he ran for Attorney General in 2000.

The article adds, “Then there’s Cooper’s aggressive messaging.” Again, that’s an understatement. In his one debate with Forest last year, Cooper – unlike most incumbents – hit his opponent hard from his opening to close.

After all that, Dovere missed what may be the biggest factor in Cooper’s success: He has won because he has run against the legislature.

Thanks to a fluke off-year election in 2010 and gerrymandering since, Republicans run the legislature. They’ve cut corporate taxes, cut spending on public schools, pushed private schools, stopped Medicaid expansion, cut unemployment relief and cut health, safety and environmental regulations.

But gerrymandering doesn’t work for a statewide race. North Carolina has elected Democratic governors – with precisely the opposite priorities of our legislature – in seven of eight elections since 1992. The only exception was 2012, when incumbent Governor Beverly Perdue pulled out of the race late and left the door open to Republican Pat McCrory.

McCrory faithfully followed the legislature’s lead on most every issue. He signed the controversial “Bathroom Bill” that cost North Carolina millions of dollars in business. He promptly lost reelection to Cooper, even though Donald Trump carried the state, as he did again in 2020.

Cooper is squarely in the tradition of governors since Terry Sanford (1960-64), including Democrats and Republicans like Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin. They focused on better education as the path to a better future. Cooper has added better health care, racial and gender equity, climate-change action and rural Internet to the agenda.

His secret is that North Carolinians evidently share his priorities.

Link to Article.

 

How Senators Can Improve The Covid Relief Package

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the coming days, the Senate will take up the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill that passed the House of Representatives last week on a party-line vote. It’s an essential measure that would fund a robust public health response to end the covid pandemic and provide vital economic assistance to struggling families. But no bill is perfect, and the Senate should seize the opportunity to better target relief funds and thereby position the U.S. economy for the strongest post-pandemic recovery possible.

Read the full piece here.

MAGALand in Orlando

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Orlando, a hub of fantasy theme parks, was the perfect setting for last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The event showed that Republicans remain stuck in a looking-glass world of upside-down values.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed more Americans than World War II. But not a word of reproach was directed to the ex-president who presided over the nation’s COVID-19 debacle. Instead, conservatives gave South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem a standing ovation when she jeered at Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Presidents who fail to win reelection usually have the decency to drop from public view and let their successor take the wheel. But in his closing speech to CPAC, Donald Trump pretended that the 2020 campaign never ended. He repeated the “rigged vote” lie that inspired the Jan. 6 assault on Congress and slurred President Biden with a farrago of false claims.

Read the rest of the piece here.

Congressman Ron Kind and PPI President Will Marshall

Posted on by dcadmin

Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin’s 3rd District joins the PPI Podcast this week, offering the perspective of a Democrat in a district twice-won by Donald Trump. Kind discusses the work of the New Dem Coalition in the first few weeks of the Biden administration, the impact of Trump’s trade war on farmers, and the need for Democrats to step up in rural areas.

How Biden Can Get Americans Back to Work Better

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Biden’s upcoming address to Congress is an opportunity to speak directly to the more than 10 million Americans who find themselves out of a job because of the pandemic recession. On the question of how to help these workers, Biden need look no further than the Build Back Better platform he campaigned on. A key element of the BBB platform is a $50 billion investment in workforce development, including apprenticeships.

Americans, especially young adults, need more pathways to careers that don’t require a traditional four-year college degree. While Millennials are the most educated generation in history, as of 2015, only about a third of Americans ages 25 to 34 were college graduates. That number is even lower for older Americans. Most people don’t go to college, and apprenticeships are an underappreciated way for finding jobs for the millions of job seekers who will have to find work after the pandemic, including those whose pre-Covid jobs might never come back. Compared to other high-income countries, the U.S. lags significantly when it comes to apprenticeships and other “active labor market” policies and it’s time for us to make investments to fill this gap.

Recently, the White House announced several ways that the Biden administration is strengthening registered apprenticeships across the country.

President Biden has endorsed Congressman Bobby Scott’s bipartisan National Apprenticeship Act of 2021, which will “create and expand registered apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs.” This legislation had been passed in the House in November 2020, in the last Congress, but the Republican Senate Majority failed to take up the bill for a vote. With Democrats now in the majority, there is renewed hope that the country’s underfunded and outdated apprenticeship system can finally be modernized to meet our 21st-century workforce needs. The reauthorization of the National Apprenticeship Act is estimated to create nearly one million high-quality apprenticeship opportunities and includes provisions that target opportunities for key groups, such as young adults, childcare workers, and veterans. The bill also aims to increase apprenticeships in industries that do not require a four-year degree for well-paid jobs, such as healthcare, IT, and financial services. We’ve supported this bipartisan legislation in the past and we look forward to seeing it make its way through Congress.

Additionally, the White House has reversed a harmful Trump-era policy by rescinding the industry-recognized apprenticeship programs (IRAPs), which threatened to undermine registered apprenticeship programs across the country and weakened employer-protections for trainees.

These are important steps, but the White House and Congress should go even further to modernize the current apprenticeship system. First, they should formalize and incentivize intermediaries (public or private) who create “outsourced” apprenticeships programs that get paid for each placement when they hire candidates who meet certain criteria (such as eligibility for Pell grants), provide them with an apprenticeship that pays minimum wage or better, train them, and place them in permanent positions. Second, they should create relationships with high schools to set up apprenticeships and career and technical education programs that begin in the 11th or 12th grade and pair students with local employers. These have shown promise in other high-income countries that employ a high percentage of their younger workers through apprenticeships. And, lastly, they should create public service apprenticeship opportunities and programs at all levels of government, including in industries such as information technology, accounting, and healthcare.

As President Biden crafts his address to Congress in the coming weeks, we hope that he acknowledges that millions of Americans who are out of a job lack a college degree. For them, other pathways to jobs, such as through investing in apprenticeships, will be a critical step forward in regaining their economic footing.

This piece was also published on Medium.

Treasury Should Delay 2021 Tax Penalties

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Millions of Americans who lost their jobs due to the covid pandemic in 2020 are in for an unpleasant surprise as they head into tax season. Congress offered jobless workers generous support through an unprecedented expansion of Unemployment Insurance last year, but many beneficiaries have not yet paid the taxes they owe on those benefits. They now must contend with thousands of dollars in tax bills that will be due less than two months from now. President Biden and Treasury Secretary Yellen should ease this burden for struggling Americans by waiving all penalties and interest for UI beneficiaries who pay off their outstanding tax liability by the end of September.

Unemployment Insurance benefits are considered taxable income like the lost wages they replace. In normal times, UI beneficiaries are supposed to be given the option to have estimated income taxes withheld like how they would be withheld from a paycheck. But many UI claimants were not given this option for the expanded benefits passed by Congress last year and may face other issues because state UI systems were so overwhelmed by a flood of applications. Others voluntarily chose not to have the taxes withheld, opting instead to maximize up-front payments so they had a greater financial buffer for weathering an uncertain economic storm.

But now the bill is coming due, and those who have yet to find a job may not have the cash cushion they need to make these unexpected payments in a timely manner. This problem could potentially be resolved by the $1400 per-person stimulus checks these households are likely to receive when President Biden’s American Rescue Plan is passed by Congress, but those payments may not be approved or disbursed before the April 15th tax deadline. Subjecting these struggling households to the penalties and interest costs that come with failing to pay taxes on time would only compound their hardship.

Some lawmakers have proposed to alleviate this burden by exempting some or all UI benefits paid in 2020 from income taxes altogether. The main problem with this approach is that it would cost tens of billions of dollars, making it unlikely to fit within the confines of the Rescue Plan relief bill currently making its way through Congress via the budget reconciliation process. It would also be unfair: subjecting one person’s wages to a higher tax rate than another person’s UI benefits, when both people have the same amount of income, undermines the equity and progressivity of our income tax system.

Two groups illustrate the inequity. A substantial number of UI beneficiaries received more in benefits than they lost in wages last year because administrative limitations forced Congress to expand UI through a flat weekly benefit increase instead of basing benefit boosts on past earnings. If taxes on those benefits were waived, this group would receive a higher income and pay a lower tax rate on that income than their peers who continued working. On the other end of the spectrum, there are UI beneficiaries married to high-income spouses who continued to have healthy earnings throughout the pandemic. Why should these households be paying a lower tax rate than essential workers?

A more practical alternative would be to waive penalties and interest on any tax payments received by September 30th, when it’s likely that enough of the population will have been vaccinated to pave the way for economic recovery. Unlike tax cancellation, which requires an act of Congress, Secretary Yellen can unilaterally extend deadlines for payment using the same authority that her predecessor did when he moved last year’s tax filing deadline from April 15th to July 15th. This move would both give jobless Americans some much-needed breathing room and preserve the equity of our tax system.

Covid Relief Bill Provides Relief for New Moms

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Among the lesser reported elements of the Covid-19 relief bill making its way through Congress this month are several improvements to Medicaid to bolster health insurance coverage for low-income individuals. One specific provision would allow states to extend Medicaid coverage to women for up to a full year after giving birth. Newborns in the U.S. are currently covered for up to twelve months. We’ve supported this critical expansion in the past, citing evidence that the U.S. maternal mortality rate has shamefully risen to be the highest among high-income countries.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for 2018, the maternal mortality rate was 17.4 per 100,000 live births in the United States. The rate of deaths for Black women is over twice that figure.

Under current law, Medicaid is only required to cover new mothers for 60 days postpartum, despite the fact that approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths occur six or more weeks after a woman gives birth and Medicaid covers over 40 percent of all births in our country. States that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) allow eligible women to stay on the program after childbirth. But roughly a dozen states have rejected to expand Medicaid and the one-year expansion for new moms would help women living in these states.

The expansion will help address a widespread societal inequity when it comes to access to health care. Low income and women of color are disproportionately more likely to die from childbirth and pregnancy-related complications. Yet, these deaths are not inevitable. A 2018 report found that over 60 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. A few years ago, California started collecting data on maternal deaths and reviewing the clinical failures that led to fatalities. As a result, the state was able to produce evidence-based checklists and training programs to help clinicians address two lethal conditions: high blood pressure and hemorrhage. Now, its maternal death rate is a quarter of the United States as a whole.

Pregnancy and postpartum are an incredibly vulnerable period in any woman’s life. We should be supporting new mothers, and one way is by giving them the health coverage necessary to navigate postpartum care and complications. We applaud Congress, including Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) who is among those spearheading this effort, for their action to address this key inequity in healthcare access for new mothers and we look forward to seeing it enacted along with Covid relief next month.

This blog was also published on Medium.

WEBINAR: Schools That Excelled During the Pandemic – How and Why They Pivoted Effectively to Remote Learning

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On Wednesday, February 24th our Director David Osborne and Associate Director Tressa Pankovits co-moderated an engaging conversation on public schools that have effectively made the switch to remote learning entitled, “Schools That Excelled During the Pandemic: How and Why They Pivoted Effectively to Remote Learning.”

The dynamic panel of school leaders included Diane Tavenner (Summit Public Schools), Shatoya Ward (Purdue Polytechnic High School), and Priscila Dilley (Leadership Academy Network). With an audience of parents, educators, advocates, and policy makers, the panel discussed the keys to their success, what they have learned, and their advice for other public schools and districts.

As school systems across the country return to in-person instruction, our project highlighted what school leaders learned about how impactful autonomy can be ensuring student success.