Category: Uncategorized

PPI Comment on proposed Dept. of Ed rule: “Improving Income-Driven Repayment for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program”

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

PPI has long supported the expansion and reform of income-driven repayment programs that directly tie debt cancellation to a borrower’s ability to pay. Considering the high cost of a college education today, we believe policymakers ought to target relief to borrowers who are stuck with the debt of pursuing a degree without being able to reap the financial benefits of attaining one.

Accordingly, PPI was encouraged when the administration announced efforts to simplify and expand income-driven repayments. The current proposal should be commended for streamlining the array of repayment options, many of which have complicated terms and lengthy processes that deter enrollment by borrowers who would benefit, while also automatically enrolling eligible borrowers in an IDR plan. Additionally, the rule would offer new benefits for low-income borrowers with high loan balances. PPI supports efforts to make IDR more accessible, help distressed borrowers, and ensure affluent college graduates still pay their fair share for the benefits their degrees confer.

However, we are concerned that the proposed expansion is overly aggressive. Below is an analysis we submitted as part of the public comment period that shows the proposed rule will likely turn income-driven repayment from a safety net for vulnerable populations into a broad-based subsidy that Congress never intended. PPI estimates that a typical college-educated worker enrolled in the reformed program would only pay 2.5% of their income in student loan payments over 20 years, after which point the remaining balance would be forgiven. As a result, they would only end up paying three-fifths of the amount they initially borrowed, and not a dollar of interest.

With such generous terms for the average borrower, the new proposal is likely to become the new normal for most college students. Even families that can afford to save and pay for school with cash are likely to borrow money with such a generous subsidy for the vast majority of students. We are not alone in our findings: the Penn Wharton Budget Model and Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution both estimate that over 70% of college attendees would enroll in the revamped program. Whether it is through higher future taxes or inflation, workers who don’t have the opportunity to benefit from a college education will be stuck footing the bill for those who do.

By providing such a large and broad-based subsidy, the proposed changes would also encourage colleges and universities to avoid making the tough choices needed to contain costs, and would enable them to keep hiking tuition and fees faster than the growth in incomes and other prices. For these reasons, independent estimates have found that the cost increase associated with this proposal is likely to be between three and ten times as much as the $128 billion estimated by the Department of Education. It would also

Our comment urges the Department to delay implementation of this rule until it has conducted a more thorough estimate of the proposal’s cost to taxpayers and the impact it would have on the higher education financing system. It is our hope that the proposal is refined to be more carefully targeted toward those borrowers who leave college with low incomes and high debts. Insofar as higher education suffers from structural problems such as runaway tuition hikes, those are issues for Congress to address. Overly aggressive expansion of income-driven repayment is not a solution for structural financing problems, and as we have demonstrated, is likely to make them worse.

Read the comment on the proposed Department of Education rule.

Bledsoe for The Hill: Maximizing the climate benefits of natural gas exports

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Paul Bledsoe

A major question facing American energy and climate policymakers today is what role abundant U.S. natural gas should play in the global clean energy transition. Some environmental activists oppose all gas use. But a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) finds that expanding U.S. liquefied natural gas exports can lower global greenhouse gas emissions significantly, especially if fugitive emissions of methane are deeply reduced.

The climate benefits of America’s shale gas revolution have been evident domestically for years. More than three-fifths of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions reductions over the period 2005 to 2020 were due to coal-fired power plants being replaced by natural gas plants.

In the last year, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has also become the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, more than doubling deliveries to Europe. This has helped the EU’s economy withstand the cutoff of most Russian gas, with clear geopolitical and economic benefits. Less appreciated are the emissions reductions achieved, since American LNG has limited the growth in the EU’s coal and also reduced use of higher methane-leaking Russian gas.

Read more in The Hill. 

Joint Episode: The Neoliberal Podcast Sits Down with PPI President Will Marshall to Discuss Common-Sense Immigration Reform

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
Will Marshall is the president and founder of PPI, and he joins The Neoliberal Podcast this week to discuss immigration policy.

The Neoliberal Podcast discusses how we approach immigration from different angles, and try to find how sensible liberals can find common ground to make immigration reform happen.

This episode originally aired on The Neoliberal Podcast, which can be found here.

Learn more about the Progressive Policy Institute here.

Follow PPI on Twitter here.

PPI’s Trade Fact of the Week: U.S. underwear tariffs are unfair to women 💔😡

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

FACT: U.S. underwear tariffs are unfair to women.

THE NUMBERS: Average U.S. tariff rates,* 2022 –

Women’s underwear      15.5%

All underwear                 14.7%

Men’s underwear            11.5%

Steel                                5.7%

All goods                        3.0%


* “Trade-weighted,” combining tariffs collected on all imports, including those under MFN tariff rates, Chinese products subject to “301” tariffs, and FTA/preference products exempted from tariffs.

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Worst Valentine’s Day surprise ever: The U.S. tariff system taxes women’s underwear more heavily than men’s. Facts follow:

1. Steel vs. Underwear: First, tariffs are fundamentally a form of taxation, and tariffs on underwear are high. A Google search this morning finds “about 144,000” uses of the phrase “steel tariffs” and “about three” (3) of the phrase “underwear tariffs.” But despite the domestic and international controversy over steel tariffs, clothing tariffs in general and underwear tariffs specifically are lots higher. In 2021, automakers, building contractors, and other metal buyers ferried 28 million tons of steel in from abroad for $44 billion, and paid the Customs Service $2.5 billion in tariffs. Thus the “average” tariff on steel came to about 5%. Buyers of clothing, meanwhile, bought 5.5 million tons of clothes for $109 billion and paid $16 billion on it, for an average of 14.5%. Underwear makes up about a tenth of clothing imports — 519,000 tons or 3.4 billion articles, at $10.1 billion last year — and brought in $1.54 billion in tariff revenue. The average underwear tariff, therefore, was 14.7%* or about three times the rate on steel.

2. Tariff Rates: Second, the U.S. tariff system taxes women’s underwear at higher rates than men’s. To dip briefly into Customs-and-trade-policy jargon, underwear tariffs are published in Chapter 61 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule** (“Knitted or Crocheted”), headings 6107 and 6108, and in Chapter 62 (“Other than Knitted or Crocheted”) headings 6207, 6208, and 6212. Together these five sections spread out over 17 pages and include 68 separate tariff “lines,” from line “61071100,” for men’s cotton underpants and briefs, to line “62129000,” a catchall for unclassifiable and possibly exotic things. The rates in these 68 lines range from 0.9% to 23.5%, diverging mainly along lines of class and gender. Among the products with clearly comparable female and male items, (a) aristocratic silks are lightly taxed, at 2.1% for women’s panties and 0.9% for male boxers and briefs; (b) the analogous working-class polyesters are heavily taxed, at 14.9% for men and 16.0% for women; and (c) middle-class cottons are, well, in the middle, at 7.6% for women and 7.4% for men. The highest rates fall on women’s products in heading 6212 with no obvious masculine counterpart: brassieres in a range from 4.8% (silk) to 16.9% (cotton or polyester), girdles 20%, and corsets 23.5%.

3. Costs: Third, tariffs on underwear, like consumer goods tariffs generally, are eventually paid by shoppers. Since Americans buy more women’s underwear than men’s, and since it is more heavily taxed, Customs raises more money from the women’s stuff. About three quarters of the $1.54 billion in underwear tariffs last year — $1.23 billion on $7.90 billion in imports, for an average rate of 15.5% — came from women’s underwear. Men’s brought in $306 million on $2.65 billion, for an 11.5% average. Peering a bit more closely, the $1.23 billion in lingerie tariffs came from 3.28 billion separate articles — i.e., about 37 cents per piece. The $306 million on men’s products came from 1.28 billion separate articles, or about 24 cents each. Markups, domestic transport costs, sales taxes, and so forth appear to have roughly tripled the prices of clothing*** from border to cash register last year, with tariffs amplified a bit at each stage. While precise figures would vary with the price of the item, on average the tariff system appears to add about $1.10 to the cost of each women’s underwear item, and 75 cents to men’s.

4. Comparisons: In international context, the U.S.’ underwear tariff rates as an overall average are pretty typical. But the U.S. system is (a) very unusual in taxing luxuries more lightly than mass-market goods, and (b) possibly unique in taxing women’s underwear more heavily than men’s. Most tariff systems have flat rates applying to all underwear: 5% in Australia, 10% in New Zealand, 18% in Canada, 20% in Colombia, also 20% in Jamaica, 25% (with an anti-poor twist, see below) in India, 30% in Thailand, an eyebrow-raising high 45% in South Africa, and so on. The Japanese and EU tariff systems in fact have a modest pro-female tilt, as they impose lower rates — zero in the Japanese case, 6.5% in the EU — on products in the 6212 heading, such as brassieres and corsets, as against flat rates of 9% and 12% for the rest.

As to the U.S., shifting from the jargon of customs and trade to that of policy analysis and evaluation: Seriously?! Boo! Do better! 😡 😡 😡

Nonetheless, we still wish readers a happy and romantic Valentine’s Day.

* Up from 12.0% in 2017. This increase to some extent reflects the “301” tariffs on Chinese-stitched brassieres, briefs, etc. imposed in 2019, but other factors are at work as well. Both China and zero-tariff Central America have also lost market share, while MFN suppliers in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and India have gained relative to both.

** Some other clothing items show up in Chapters 42 and 48 — respectively leather and rubber products — but underwear of these types have no specific tariff line, so left out of the analysis above.

*** Clothing spending by consumers was about $400 billion last year; import value at the border $110 billion; 98% of clothing is imported.

FURTHER READING:

The U.S. International Trade Commission maintains the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Check Chapter 61, sections 6107 and 6108, and Chapter 62, sections 6207, 6208, and 6212 for underwear.

And the ITC’s Dataweb requires a bit of HTS expertise but appears unique in the world in allowing ordinary citizens to get not only tariff rates but very detailed information on U.S. exports, U.S. imports, and tariff collection, by product and country.

Background:

Is the anti-female tilt of underwear tariffs typical of the American tariff system, or a weird anomaly? Overall, the “class” bias, in which silks and cashmeres are taxed lightly while cottons are taxed heavily and polyester and acrylics most of all, is the norm for U.S. consumer goods tariffs. The “gender” bias, in which women’s underwear attracts higher tariffs than analogous men’s goods, seems less systematic though still the rule. Asked to study these questions in 2018, ITC economists concluded the following:

“… [T]ariffs act as a flat consumption tax. Since a flat consumption tax is a regressive tax on income, tariffs fall disproportionately on the poor. Across genders, we find large differences in tariff burden. Focusing on apparel products, which were responsible for about 75% of the total tariff burden on U.S. households, we find that the majority, 66%, of the tariff burden was from women’s apparel products. In 2015, the tariff burden for U.S. households on women’s apparel was $2.77 billion more than on men’s clothing. … . This gender gap has grown about 11% in real terms between 2006 and 2016. We find that two facts are responsible for this gender gap: women spend more on apparel than men and women’s apparel faces higher tariffs than men’s.”

ITC’s look at gender and class bias in the tariff system.

PPI’s Ed Gresser on U.S. consumer goods tariffs as taxation.

And Miranda Hatch in the BYU Law Review on the tariff system and gender bias.

Around the world:

The European Union tariff system has a 12% tariff on all briefs, panties, and boxers whether cotton, silk, or polyester, and whether designated “men’s and boy’s” or “women’s and girl’s,” and a lower 6.5% on brassieres and corsets.

Japan’s is 9% on comparable things and duty-free on brassieres and corsets.

Australia is at 5% all the way through.

India has an anti-poor tilt (many items get “25% or Rs25, whichever is higher,” in practice meaning >25% rates for anything costing less than $1.25 per item, so in practice cheap goods important to low-income families will be taxed more heavily than expensive luxuries), but no divergence in men’s and women’s rates.

Canada is 18% all the way through.

And Jamaica 20%.

And some trade-and-gender links:

WTO’s Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender.

… and a nine-expert panel (“Does Trade Liberalization Have Gender’s Back?”) from last December’s.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007).  He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week

Pankovits for RealClear Education: With Separation of Church and State on the Line, Supreme Court Makes an Unexpected Move

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of Reinventing America’s Schools

On the eve of last week’s annual School Choice Week celebration, the Supreme Court gave millions of parents, teachers, and students, including the public charter school community, a surprising gift. Many Americans are likely unaware of pending legal activity in Washington, D.C., that could dramatically alter public education as we’ve known it. The pending litigation is a big deal, and the Supreme Court acted with common sense by seeking outside advice on whether or not to take the case.

The case at issue is Peltier v. Charter Day School. The defendant, Charter Day School (CDS), has appealed an en banc ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit’s ruling legally designated the North Carolina public charter school as a public school, finding that it had acted under the “color of state law” when it implemented a policy prohibiting girls from wearing pants to school.

Read more in RealClear Education.

PPI Previews the 2023 State of the Union

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
An Introduction from PPI’s Government Relations team…

Two years into President Biden’s first term, a narrow Republican majority in the House threatens to thwart the historic progress made by his Administration. Kevin McCarthy and the House Republican Caucus have already threatened to drive the U.S. into default, engaged in partisan investigations, and neglected to lay out a sound legislative agenda. Once again, a divided government endangers real progress.

At PPI, we hope President Biden will see Tuesday’s State of the Union address as an opportunity to chip away at the partisan stalemate that has taken hold of American politics. With Republicans content to do nothing but obstruct and finger-point, President Biden should play the long game and start charting the Democratic Party on a course to build a lasting, durable majority that is capable of withstanding the electoral swing every two years.

In order to achieve this goal, the President ought to focus on ways in which the party can dramatically expand the size of its coalition. In the 2022 election cycle, independent voters broke in large numbers for the Democratic party, making a dramatic difference in key states and races all across the county. President Biden should make a direct appeal to these voters and other working class Americans by offering a clear vision and compelling solutions to issues that polling shows they care about like crime, immigration, inflation, and the economy. The President should consider embracing cultural moderation and directly address the concerns of vital constituencies that far-left progressives have been alienating.

In terms of policy, this means embracing the innovation economy, not trying to break it up, reducing inflation and debt, and adopting an export-oriented trade policy. It means ending the disparity between the huge amounts of money Washington invests in college-bound people and the paltry investments it makes in the skills and career prospects of the non-college majority. It means championing public school choice and accountability rather than the K-12 status quo that’s failing low-income families. It means climate pragmatism that recognizes that we can achieve our greenhouse reduction goals through intelligent use of all energy sources and innovations like carbon capture and storage.

Finally, the President should unequivocally affirm America’s support for Ukraine and reject anti-democratic movements both abroad and at home. Free nations across the globe are dealing with the rise of authoritarianism, and America must show to the world that America will stand strong to defeat it.

Below, our experts at PPI have presented more bold policy suggestions and radically pragmatic solutions for the Administration to consider as they build out the agenda for the final years of the President’s first term.

PPI on the SOTU: The Economy
By Ben Ritz, Director of PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future 

PPI on the SOTU: The Workforce
By Taylor Maag, Director of Workforce Policy, PPI’s New Skills for a New Economy Project

PPI on the SOTU: Trade
By Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director of Trade and Global Markets

PPI on the SOTU: Energy
By Elan Sykes, Energy Policy Analyst

PPI on the SOTU: The Future of Tech and Innovation
By Jordan Shapiro, Data and Economic Analyst; and Malena Dailey, Technology Policy Analyst

PPI on the SOTU: Health
By Erin Delaney, Director of Health Care Policy

PPI on the SOTU: Education
By Tressa Pankovits and Curtis Valentine, Co-Directors of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools

 

PPI on the SOTU: The Economy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Biden’s SOTU Needs a Fiscal Policy Pivot

President Biden’s State of the Union address comes at a turning point for the economy. Although fiscal stimulus was right for the economy in the depths of a pandemic recession, continuing to pursue legislation and executive actions that increase rather than reduce deficits undermines the Federal Reserve’s progress in controlling inflation. After a midterm in which a plurality of voters in exit polls ranked inflation as their number one concern and gave Democrats poor marks for their handling of it, Biden should use his speech to show that he will do the hard work to regain credibility on the issues of responsible fiscal management and inflation control. One way he could do this is by announcing a commission to review the recovery response and how policymakers can better address recessions and inflation in the future, which is an idea first proposed by PPI and endorsed in the New Democrat Coalition’s Inflation Action Plan last year.

The president also needs to lay a clear marker for the upcoming fight over the federal debt limit. He is right not to reward Republican hostage-taking with the full faith and credit of the United States. But with annual interest payments on the national debt set to eclipse defense spending by 2030 and Social Security by 2050, Biden should outline a process for better budget negotiations, such as the Responsible Budgeting Act and the TRUST Act, that he is willing to engage in good faith after Republicans take the threat of default off the table. Getting our fiscal house in order would help control inflation today and boost economic growth over the long term.

Finally, Biden should offer a real plan for making access to higher education affordable for all Americans. With the Supreme Court likely putting his attempt to enact roughly half a trillion dollars of mass student debt cancellation by executive action on ice, it’s not enough to simply blame “partisan lawsuits” for his inability to reduce costs and expand access in a responsible and sustainable way. He should challenge Congress to strike a “grand bargain” on higher education and workforce development that controls costs and expands opportunity for workers across the income distribution. This includes both forcing colleges to get more cost-effective and finding new pathways to good jobs for non-college educated workers.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: The Workforce

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Biden SOTU Must Recommit to American Workers in a New Way

Last year’s State of the Union emphasized the Biden Administration’s commitment to the American worker. In his remarks, the President discussed the need to grow our skilled talent in the U.S. and create new jobs that offer stronger paths to the middle class. As we reflect on the past year, President Biden has kept some of his promises. The economy has continued to grow, with the last jobs report showing unemployment continuing to edge down to 3.4% with over 500,000 jobs created. While this is good news, it does not mean the commitment ends here. This State of the Union, PPI looks to President Bident to recommit to American workers and confront current and future challenges facing our nation, hearing the Administration’s plan to:

1. Prepare people for jobs of the future. Jobs will continue to change and be created through technological advancements. In addition, as America works to implement the recently passed CHIPS & Science Act, we need a workforce that is skilled at executing this policy’s vision and can grow America’s semiconductor industry.

2. Better support non-degree workers. To meet these skill needs, the Administration has continued to advocate for “college for all.” But most Americans don’t earn degrees, and a bachelor’s or advanced degree — which takes extensive time and resources — shouldn’t be the only path to a good, middle-class jobs. If the Administration truly wants to bolster America’s middle class, President Biden should stop discriminating against non-degree workers and commit to skill development strategies that work, are innovative and don’t promote college as the only postsecondary path.

3. Help eligible workers on the sidelines re-engage with the labor market. The last jobs report showed that our nation’s workforce participation rate, which represents the number of people working or actively looking for work, is at 62.4%, which is only one percentage point higher than it was at the start of the pandemic. This means roughly 37.6% of Americans that could be working are detached from the labor market because they believe there are no jobs available to them, or they are facing personal challenges that make it hard to retain employment. The Administration must address this phenomenon and commit not only to skill development efforts but to other supports, including policies around child care, family leave, and other services that can get American’s re-engaged with the labor market and reboot our nation’s workforce participation rate.

Looking to the next year of the Biden presidency, these issues must be a priority to ensure individuals are prepared for careers of the future, economic opportunity is shared and the U.S. remains competitive in the global economy.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: Trade

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The U.S. needs a new driver of growth as COVID-era fiscal stimulus is set to be replaced by deficit-cutting, and the consumer boom of 2021 and early 2022 fading. Exports should fill this need, but over the past six years, the United States has lost market share abroad and exporting companies at home. Between 2016 and 2021, the U.S.’ share of world exports fell:

 

  • From 8.6% to 7.3% in manufacturing
  • From 10.4% to 9.4% in agriculture, and
  • From 15.2% to 12.9% in commercial services

 

Meanwhile, the count of U.S. exporting businesses dropped from 290,600 to 277,500.

We hope President Biden will take the State of the Union opportunity to launch an ambitious program to rebuild America’s export economy in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s retreat. This includes a return to efforts to reduce tariffs and other barriers to U.S. exports, strong support for the Ex-Im Bank’s export financing mission, and export promotion programs. American allies such as Japan, the U.K., and others have expressed hopes for closer trade and investment links to the United States, and officials such as Treasury Secretary Yellen have sketched out the outline of a “friendshoring” program that can achieve it, and there’s no better place to launch this than the SOTU.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Joe Biden has achieved remarkable success for U.S. climate policy halfway through his term, and his first State of the Union after the midterms should reflect the accomplishments that Democrats have made in passing the Inflation Reduction Act and Democrats and Republicans both for their roles in the IIJA, CHIPS and Science Act, and the ratification of the Kigali Amendment. But what PPI’s Energy and Climate team wants to see most is what comes next: What are President Biden’s climate plans for the next two years of a divided Congress, for 2024, and beyond? And how will Biden position U.S. energy policy amidst continued turbulence in global markets as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on?

As hundreds of billions in spending and loans flow out of these new federal programs to firms, households, and state and local governments, President Biden and both parties in Congress should look to finally strike a deal reforming federal and other barriers to the deployment of crucial new clean energy technologies held back by the permitting process, environmental review delays, and inter-jurisdictional conflicts. Biden should also call on Congress to fully fund the energy-related provisions of the CHIPS and Science Act authorizing roughly $54 billion for R&D over the next 5 years through programs at ARPA-E, the NSF, and elsewhere. The 2023 Omnibus bill only included partial funding for these investments in basic science and early-stage energy technologies and only for the coming year; fully funding them for the next 5 years will help the U.S. maintain its position at the cutting edge of the energy transition.

Lastly, Biden’s biggest climate challenge is not domestic but international. As my PPI’s Paul Bledsoe has noted, emissions from China alone are greater than all developed countries combined and still growing. The administration must work with our allies to find more effective means of compelling developing nations to reduce their emissions. Simultaneously, working more closely with allies like the EU, U.K., Japan, and South Korea that lack trade agreements with the U.S. will allow closer cooperation on provisions in the IRA that grant bonuses to countries with existing agreements, like Canada and Mexico. And with Russia’s war against Ukraine ongoing, American LNG exports continue to play a vital role in European and global energy markets by maintaining energy security, offering especially low-methane supplies, and displacing coal-fired generation.

Let’s hope 2023 is a year of continued success for America’s clean energy leadership.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: The Future of Tech and Innovation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Government action in regard to technology should serve to enhance the vibrant tech economy, supporting American innovation while addressing concerns that are top of mind for people who rely on it every day. The tech sector is a leader in job creation, and has held strong in the face of challenges such as the pandemic and periods of rising inflation, during which the sector was able to keep prices low. In his second State of the Union address, President Biden has the opportunity to reflect on the successes of this industry, while also calling for reform in areas where government intervention is needed to keep Americans safe, such as the protection of their data.

In the past year, the administration has pursued two major pieces of technology policy — one, the CHIPS and Sciences Act of 2022, was a resounding success, while the other, which was the partial subject of a recent op-ed from the President, a data privacy law, remains on the docket for 2023. In his speech, President Biden should commend Congress on the landmark passage of the CHIPS Act. The law pledges $52 billion dollars to invigorate and onshore the crucial semiconductor industry, injecting vital funds into chip fabs and the infrastructure, workforce, and research and development. Reshoring chip fabrication and upskilling the workforce is crucial for the future of innovation.

The President should re-state his commitment to passing strong digital privacy protections for all Americans. In his first State of the Union, Biden indicated his commitment to improving children’s privacy and safety online. Now, the president is calling for “serious federal protections for American’s privacy. That means clear limits on how companies can collect, use and share highly personal data.” The strongest candidate to get privacy done is the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, a bi-partisan privacy bill that would set the standard for privacy protections for all Americans.

This is a moment for President Biden to recognize the value in American technological leadership and look forward to the ways in which our policy regime can uplift the sector on a global stage. With the debates on approaches to internet regulation heating up across the globe, the U.S. must balance the benefits of innovation with regulatory guidelines and protections for everyday Americans in a way that the rest of the world may look to as a model. By securing privacy protections for individuals in this new Congress, we have an opportunity to do just that.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: Health

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the country continues to grapple with the consequences of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly half a century, it is critical for President Biden to reassure all Americans who can get pregnant that his administration will continue to work to restore abortion rights. President Biden needs to respond to Republicans doubling down on restricting and outlawing access to abortion as they ramp up their campaigns for the 2024 election by further expanding access to medication abortion drugs, including Mifepristone. The Biden administration should eliminate the pharmacy and prescriber certification requirements to dispense mifepristone, and assert the authority of the FDA to preempt state law for FDA-approved medications to prohibit states from banning access to medication abortion.

Now that the Biden administration has announced that the Public Health Emergency (PHE) declaration will end on May 11, President Biden needs to reassure Americans that the transition will not affect their access to coverage and affordable care. The PHE declaration that was issued by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in March 2020 provides flexibilities for the federal government to modify or waive certain requirements, including for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Those who are vulnerable — children and those with chronic illnesses and disabilities — will need more assistance in navigating the administrative process to regain coverage once the PHE declaration ends. President Biden should call for relaxing eligibility requirements that were exclusionary before the PHE declaration was issued by reducing administrative burdens using administrative data and targeting assistance to those groups to keep eligible individuals and families enrolled.

Additionally, various provisions that were authorized by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act into the COVID-19 PHE declaration are set to expire next year. These provisions permitted pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to administer COVID-19, flu, and all recommended pediatric vaccines without a prescriber order, even in certain states that have laws that limit pharmacies from administering some vaccines to certain populations. If these provisions expire, 25 states where the authority for pharmacist-administered vaccines has not been made permanent will face the consequences of the expiration most acutely as states will return to restricting pharmacists to administer certain vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine. President Biden should call on states to adopt and codify the PREP Act declaration expanding pharmacist ability to vaccinate in state law, which governs pharmacist practice, to ensure Americans continue to have greater access to these life-saving vaccines beyond the end of the PHE.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

PPI on the SOTU: Education

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

We’d like to see President Biden call for reinstating the universal “free and reduced lunch” program that Congress let expire last June. Too many low-income children are hungry at school, and many are incurring debt because they can’t pay for their lunches upfront. The School Nutrition Association estimates that America’s school children have incurred $19 million in debt this year alone. Schoolchildren should not have to choose between empty bellies or empty wallets.

President Biden should also announce he will direct the U.S. Education Department (ED) to monitor the proliferation of school voucher and education savings account (“ESA”) program in the states. Last summer, ED added restrictions to the federal Charter School Program (CSP) on the types of schools that are eligible for federal grants, eliminating all for-profit charter schools. The Biden administration’s effort to restrict the use of the federal money by private education entities should not stop at the public charter schoolhouse door.

One rationale ED offered for the CSP rule change was to encourage more collaboration between traditional district schools and public charter schools. To that end, we would like to see the federal CSP expanded to include autonomous innovation and partnership schools that operate autonomously from a traditional district office, pursuant to a performance contract with the elected school board. They are proving to be a resounding success in states like Texas where they are known as “1882 schools” and in cities such as Denver and Indianapolis, where they are known as innovation schools. Biden should direct ED to establish an innovation category in the CSP to encourage more district-nonprofit partnerships that improve student outcomes.

Finally, we call on President Biden to direct ED to expand the Center of Educational Excellence for Black Teachers Program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (CEEBT) program, and to lobby Congress to increase its funding. CEEBT is designed to support HBCUs with demonstrable records of graduating skilled, well-prepared, Black teachers. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and American University in 2018 found that having even just one Black teacher in elementary school makes Black children more likely to graduate high school and makes them more likely to enroll in college. With 15 states enacting educational gag orders, many of them centered on race, it’s important for the federal government to dedicate resources to increasing America’s Black teacher corps.

This post is part of a series from PPI’s policy experts ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Read more here. 

RAS Reports: How Peltier et al. v. Charter Day School could affect student gender discrimination

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On this episode of RAS Reports, the Co-Directors of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project, Curtis Valentine and Tressa Pankovits, sit down to discuss Tressa’s recent op-ed in The Hill concerning Peltier et al. v. Charter Day School, the North Carolina court case about charter schools and school uniforms. This case involves a public charter school in North Carolina that does not allow girls to wear pants or shorts, only skirts and jumper-type dresses.

When asked, the school refused to change their policy and said that boys and girls should be required to dress differently to emphasize chivalry and the dress code is part of a code of conduct where women are “regarded as fragile vessels that men are supposed to take care of”. Parents decried the policy as gender discrimination and sued under the equal protection clause, Title IX and the charter school’s own contractual agreement with the state of North Carolina Board of Education. Tressa argues that this case could act as a “gateway drug” to allowing other publicly funded education to discriminate on the basis of race or gender or disability.

Read Tressa’s opinion piece here.
Follow Tressa on Twitter here.
Follow Curtis on Twitter here.
Learn more about the Reinventing America’s Schools Project here.
Learn more about the Progressive Policy Institute here.

Ritz for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation: Opportunities For Bipartisan Fiscal Policy In 2023

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Ben Ritz, Director of PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future

Bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers joined together to pass more major legislation in the 117th Congress than any other Congress in recent memory, including the biggest investment in American infrastructure in over half a century, proving that bipartisanship in Washington isn’t dead yet. Unfortunately, the net impact of all executive actions and legislation approved over the last two years increased budget deficits by $4.8 trillion over the 10-year window. Although some stimulus was needed coming out of the Covid pandemic recession, this level of spending helped push inflation to its highest level in over 40 years and put our fiscal policy on an even more unsustainable trajectory than it already was.

The Federal Reserve is primarily responsible for restoring price stability, but sound fiscal policy can make it easier for the Fed to bring inflation down without pushing the economy into a recession. Even more important than what fiscal policy does today is the path it sets us on for the future: the Congressional Budget Office projects annual interest payments on the national debt are currently on track to exceed total spending on national defense by 2030 and surpass Social Security as the largest item in the federal budget by 2050. The problem will only get worse if additional deficit spending forces the Fed to raise interest rates even higher.

Read more on the Peter G. Peterson Foundation website.

Marshall for The Hill: Ukraine Dispels the Myth of American Decline

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Will Marshall, President of PPI

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vicious mauling of Ukraine is shattering quite a few grand illusions about the post-post-Cold War world.

For starters, Russia’s failure to defeat its much smaller and poorer neighbor has demolished its image as a military juggernaut. Instead of confirming its status as a great power and pillar of a new, multipolar world order, Putin’s war has exposed Russia as a declining power — at best a junior partner in the new league of autocracies directed from Beijing.

Plagued by old equipment, bad logistics and poor leadership, Russian troops have been outfought by determined Ukrainian defenders. In just under a year, the war has cost Russia “significantly” more than 100,000 casualties, says General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s more in one year than Russia suffered in a decade of war in Afghanistan.

Read more in The Hill.