Menstrual products are as necessary as toilet paper and soap. Yet, one in four women and girls in the U.S. struggle to pay for them. This lack of access to these products amongst school-aged female students directly impacts the quality of their education and well-being. A 2021 study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that 80% of female students have missed all or part of a class or know someone who had to miss class because they did not have access to menstrual hygiene products. Implementing programs that provide no-cost menstrual hygiene products in all public school restrooms will benefit girls’ education, especially for students of color and those with a lower-income background who tend to be more impacted by this issue.
“Period poverty.” or the inability to afford and lack access to menstrual and sanitary products, can also worsen the social stigma around menstruation. Cultural shame attached to menstruation and a shortage of menstrual hygiene resources prevents many women and girls from carrying out their daily routines. Without constant, reliable access to menstrual products at school, students are forced to ask the school nurse or their friends, who might only have a limited supply of products. Some prefer to skip classes entirely because of the discomfort of not having access to these products. All of these disruptions can lead to learning loss and educational barriers for female students.
Beyond impacting education, period poverty can also affect students’ mental and physical health. Roughly 68% of students who experienced monthly period poverty reported moderate to severe depression. Furthermore, researchers found that 50% of students who could ill afford to buy the disposable products, in an effort to stretch their dollars, did not change them out every four to eight hours as recommended by the Food and Drug Administration. This increases the risk of a rare but deadly reaction known as “Toxic Shock Syndrome” and other bacterial infections.
There is momentum across the country to address this issue. Currently, legislation to make menstrual hygiene products available in all public school restrooms has passed in states such as Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, and California. This past May, Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) introduced the federal Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021 (H.R. 3614) that would require public elementary and secondary schools to provide free menstrual products for its students by amending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
Young women across the country deserve to attend school without fear or shame about how menstruation might impact their education and health. Policymakers at the state and federal level should work to ensure that there are free or affordable menstrual products available in all public school bathrooms so that our most vulnerable female students can go about their school day without interruptions or social stigma.
Rather than cutting corners and using gimmicks to cram the entire progressive wish list into a smaller bill, PPI believes the party’s goal should be a more focused and disciplined reconciliation bill that sets clear priorities and accomplishes a few big objectives well. Specifically, this report outlines a bold plan to deliver on three urgent priorities of the Democratic party within the confines of a roughly $2 trillion bill: supporting working families, combating climate change, and expanding access to affordable health care for those in need.
“Despite the drama last week, President Biden and Democrats in Congress can still deliver the historic economic and social investments they promised during the campaign — but they need to spend smarter, not just bigger. Our blueprint is a reality-based approach to crafting the reconciliation bill, which will allow for an enormous advance of progressive government. Now is the time for the party to come together and show America they can govern,” said Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future.
“We urge Democrats to compromise around a set of urgent priorities the American people can understand, develop a consensus plan to fully pay for it, and work in a radically pragmatic spirit to get this big progressive win across the finish line. That’s the best way to help President Biden and their party deliver for the American people,” said Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. Senate in August remains snagged by internal disagreements among Congressional Democrats about the size and cost of the follow-on social investment package party leaders hope to pass with reconciliation rules that are not subject to a Republican filibuster. Democrats will likely need to reach a compromise on the reconciliation package by October 31st so they can pass the infrastructure bill before funding for the nation’s highway program expires.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Launched in 2018, PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Futureworks to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. We tackle issues of public finance in the United States and offer innovative proposals to strengthen the foundation of our economy and build shared prosperity.
The White House and Congressional Democrats are at a pivotal moment in their long-running effort to turn President Biden’s ambitious “Build Back Better” vision into law. The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. Senate in August remains snagged by internal disagreements among Congressional Democrats about the size and cost of the follow-on social investment package party leaders hope to pass with reconciliation rules that are not subject to a Republican filibuster. Democrats will likely need to reach a compromise on the reconciliation package by October 31st so they can pass the infrastructure bill before funding for the nation’s highway program expires.
Though cast as a power struggle between the progressive left and the pragmatic center, what’s happening on Capitol Hill is actually a reconciliation with legislative reality. Democrats can only afford to lose three votes in the House of Representatives and have no margin of error in the Senate, where at least two Members, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., already have made it clear they won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill. Many Democrats in the House have concerns as well. Accordingly, President Biden says negotiators are now aiming for a final package that will likely cost between $1.9 trillion and $2.3 trillion.
Some progressives are trying to make their whole wish list fit within this budget constraint by setting arbitrary dates for programs to expire, as Republicans did to disguise the true cost of their 2001, 2003, and 2017 tax cut bills. For example, rather than spend $225 billion every year in the 10-year window, the package envisioned by the left might spend $450 billion each year for five years before abruptly expiring.
But this approach would be deeply problematic. As Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisc., noted in a recent op-ed, “funding programs for two to three years at a time only creates uncertainty and unnecessary fiscal cliffs.” In the worst-case scenario, a Republican Congress could allow programs to expire, which would upend the Biden legacy while pulling the rug out from people who planned their lives around new benefits.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wa., chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition in the House, further explained why such a package wouldn’t alleviate the fiscal concerns of many pragmatic Democrats: “If you assume that you’re going to do something short term just to make it look like it’s going to fit in a particular budget window, for a particular piece of legislation, but you assume it’s going to be renewed later, then you aren’t really being honest about what your long-term budget goals are.”
Fortunately, Democrats can still deliver historic economic and social investments that the country needs by spending smarter, not just bigger. The goal should be a more focused and disciplined reconciliation bill that sets clear priorities and accomplishes a few big objectives well instead of haphazardly trying to do everything at once. Specifically, PPI believes that lawmakers should focus on delivering three urgent priorities effectively: supporting working families, combating climate change, and expanding access to affordable health care for those in need. As President Biden has promised, the package should also be fully paid-for with credible offsets.
There can be no doubt that a bill along these lines would constitute an enormous advance for progressive government. When combined with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, this package would represent the third pillar of the largest and most progressive public investment since the Great Society over 50 years ago. These landmark legislative accomplishments would constitute a clear and indisputable victory for President Biden’s vision and a win for Democrats of all stripes.
Here’s what a roughly $2 trillion package should include:
Supporting Working Families ($975 billion)
The American Rescue Plan increased the value of the Child Tax Credit and made the full value of the credit available to low-income families for the first time ever. This policy change has helped cut child poverty in half for 2021 and directly empowered parents to support their children without having to rely on siloed and difficult-to-access welfare bureaucracies. PPI has previously proposed a framework for making the full expansion permanent that would cost just over $800 billion. However, Congress could adopt a smaller expansion of the CTC and redirect the funds for other programs that support working families. This approach is sensible because making the CTC fully available to low-income families both does more to reduce poverty and costs less than increasing the CTC’s total value.
In addition to permanently expanding the CTC, Democrats should invest in our children’s education by making preschool, which is shown to dramatically increase a child’s lifetime earnings, universally available to three- and four-year olds. The cost of universal preschool should be reduced by either means-testing it or requiring high-income school districts to help cover the cost of this program.
PPI also believes Washington should stop underinvesting in non-college workers by creating multiple pathways to middle-class jobs, including new investments in apprenticeships and “last mile” job training initiatives. Finally, lawmakers could offer new parents a flat paid parental leave benefit that future Congresses could expand into a full paid family and medical leave program if they are willing to consider a broader menu of offsets to pay for it.
Combating the Climate Crisis ($600 billion)
The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August offered a strong down payment on tackling the climate crisis, including funding for public transit, energy grid modernization, and carbon capture demonstration projects, but far more needs to be done. The follow-up bill should include a package of well-designed tax credits similar to the one produced by the Senate Finance Committee that would encourage the adoption of affordable electric vehicles and other green technologies. It should also fund meaningful climate resilience projects and additional investments in breakthrough technologies such as carbon capture, hydrogen energy, geothermal energy, and advanced nuclear power.
Another top priority is the Clean Energy Payment Program (CEPP) that would provide subsidies for electric utilities that increase the share of clean energy they produce by 4% each year while charging smaller penalties for those that do not. These provisions could be responsible for almost two-thirds of the emissions reductions sought by President Biden. However, the CEPP has run into concerns from Sen. Manchin and it may run afoul of the Byrd rule that governs what policies can be passed through the reconciliation process that allows Democrats to circumvent a Republican filibuster.
Climate change poses a large and growing threat to our economy, so even if the CEPP cannot be included in the package, it must be replaced by another policy to accomplish the same objective. PPI has long advocated for a carbon tax, possibly paired with rebates to mitigate the burden on low- and middle-income families. Some portion of the revenue could also be earmarked for funding additional investments in research and development to promote innovation and technology growth.
Strengthening the Affordable Care Act ($425 billion)
Some progressives in Congress, led by Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), insist that America’s top health care priority should be expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision benefits, which would cost more than $800 billion in the 10-year period after being fully phased-in. But it hardly seems “progressive” to provide more generous coverage for Medicare beneficiaries when millions of Americans have no health coverage at all — especially considering that the majority of seniors already have coverage for these services through Medicare Advantage or supplemental Medigap plans.
Instead, PPI believes Democrats should back Speaker Pelosi’s call for building on the Affordable Care Act by making some share of the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of insurance subsidies for middle-income households permanent and by providing coverage to the more than 2.2 million uninsured people who should be eligible for Medicaid in the 12 states that have yet to expand the program. These provisions to expand coverage should also be paired with policies to address the out-of-control growth of health care costs, such as price caps or a national public option, to both reduce the net cost of these provisions and make health care more affordable for all Americans. Any expansion of Medicare should be fully financed by income-based premiums or dropped altogether so it does not draw critical resources away from the other priorities in this package.
Conclusion
In addition to the Sanders Medicare expansion, PPI’s reconciliation framework omits some major elements of Biden’s original Build Back Better blueprint, including more public support for child and elder care, community colleges, and more. Their absence here doesn’t necessarily mean these priorities are unworthy of Democrats’ support, but rather reflects the political imperative of fashioning a compromise package that can unite the party’s diverse coalition. It is also critical that lawmakers avoid the temptation to waste limited funds on other parochial priorities, such as cutting taxes for their rich constituents by weakening or repealing the SALT cap, when so many more-worthy priorities are left unfulfilled.
Passing both the infrastructure and social investment bills has become a critical test of Democrats’ ability to govern. We urge Democrats to compromise around a set of urgent priorities the American people can understand, develop a consensus plan to pay for it, and work in a radically pragmatic spirit to get this big progressive win across the finish line. That’s the best way to help President Biden and their party deliver for the American people.
Ben Ritz is the Director of PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future. He previously staffed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Project and served as Legislative Outreach Director for The Concord Coalition. Ben earned his Master’s of Public Policy Analysis and a Graduate Certificate of Public Finance from American University, where he also previously completed his undergraduate education. Follow him on Twitter: @BudgetBen
About the PPI Center for Funding America’s Future:
The PPI Center for Funding America’s Future works to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. We tackle issues of public finance in the United States and offer innovative proposals to strengthen the foundation of our economy and build shared prosperity.
Today’s U.S. Census Bureau Supplemental Poverty Measure release for 2020 underscores that despite COVID-19 and high unemployment, government support kept millions from falling into poverty over the past year. The poverty rate that takes into account government aid fell to 9.1% from the SPM rate of 11.8% in 2019. According to the authors, this is the lowest rate since estimates were initially published for 2009.
The stimulus checks moved an estimated 11.7 million individuals out of poverty and Unemployment Insurance prevented 5.1 million from falling into poverty. Notably, poverty decreased across all ages, races and ethnicities, and educational attainment levels.
As House Democrats start work today on a massive, $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, a new Expedition Strategies poll offers timely insights into how a pivotal group of voters view President Biden’s ambitious “Build Back Better” agenda.
The findings suggest Biden and Congressional Democrats should focus public attention on the broad economic benefits of the reconciliation bill rather than social equity and be flexible about the ultimate size and cost of the spending package.
Commissioned by the Progressive Policy Institute, the poll surveyed voters in 44 battleground House Districts and eight states likely to have competitive Senate races in next year’s midterm elections. “What happens in these critical swing districts and states will determine whether Democrats can enlarge their slender House and Senate majorities or yield control to the Republicans,” said PPI President Will Marshall.
“There’s encouraging news for President Biden and the Democrats here, but also grounds for proceeding cautiously on the reconciliation spending package,” he added. “Battleground voters are worried about piling up debt on young working families.”
This report, the first of a series based on this extensive poll’s findings, can be found here. Here are some key takeaways:
Battleground voters overwhelmingly (73-27) support the president’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. Even more (83-17) approve of his determination to work with Republicans to get it done, and 85% say it’s a “major investment” in strengthening the U.S. economy.
These voters also favor Biden’s proposed “human infrastructure” or social investment package, but by a much narrower margin, 54-46.
In general, these voters respond more favorably to arguments that the package will create jobs and economic opportunity and reward work than to arguments that it’s necessary to reduce economic inequality.”
Battleground district and state voters rank deficits and debt as their second highest economic concern. By 88-12, they say the national debt is a “serious problem.”
These voters favor paying for these initiatives with a mix of tax hikes and public borrowing rather than just adding them to the deficit. By a solid 57-43 margin, they favor increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for new public investments. Two-thirds of voters believe inherited income should be taxed at the same or higher rate than earned income.
Republican supply side nostrums may be losing their potency. A variety of Democratic arguments that offer an activist economic alternative are more appealing to these voters than the traditional Republican mantra of cutting taxes and regulation.
However, Democrats should be wary of claims that these voters will reward “bold” action on spending. When asked if the federal government should make investments but be careful about how much spending and the national debt increases or make bold and significant new investments and address the impact on the debt later, 63% say to be careful while just 20% say be bold and worry about the debt later.
In a warning to Democrats, three-in-four (73%) voters say they are concerned that “Democrats in Congress want to spend too much money without paying for it.” In addition, 74% said they are worried that these bills may lead to inflation.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The pandemic has served as a metaphorical earthquake that has stress tested the United States’ social safety net, especially federal anti-hunger programs.
Some of the most startling and grim images from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic were the miles-long lines outside of food banks as the economic toll of the crisis began to spread across the country. As schools closed down and businesses were shuttered, unemployment rates spiked to levels even higher than those during the Great Recession—and many families who had never struggled to put food on the table found themselves in desperate need of help.
In August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to calculate monthly SNAP benefits, will get a long-overdue update to better reflect the cost of a nutritious diet. Yet, millions of eligible households each year do not apply for benefits and research suggests that administrative burdens and barriers to applying for benefits account for those gaps in participation.
As part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) they passed in March, Democrats increased the maximum child tax credit (CTC) parents can claim in 2021 for each of their children under 18 years old to $3,000, or $3,600 for each child under age six, and made the full value of the credit available to families with no income for the first time ever. The expansion lifted three million children out of poverty in its first month alone, which will improve their educational, health and economic outcomes throughout their lives if the policy is continued.
Democrats have made extending this policy a centerpiece of their $3.5 trillion Build Back Better agenda. But despite its success, Democrats are only proposing to extend the expanded CTC through 2025 at the latest because the annual cost of continuing the current expansion will roughly double after related policies from the GOP’s 2017 tax law expire. Fortunately, they can resolve this problem making those related policies permanent.
The GOP tax law temporarily doubled the maximum CTC to $2,000 and made more high-income parents eligible for the credit as part of a broader effort to consolidate family tax benefits. Previously, parents could claim a CTC worth up to $1,000 for each of their children, and all households could reduce their taxable income by $4,050 for each “personal exemption” they claimed for themselves and their dependents.
Taxpayers could also choose to either deduct the cost of specific expenses from their taxable income or claim a “standard deduction” that was the same for everyone. The GOP tax law temporarily repealed personal exemptions but increased the CTC (which replaced exemptions for children), doubled the standard deduction (which replaced exemptions for taxpayers themselves) and created a $500 non-refundable credit for non-child dependents.
To keep their bill from adding to the deficit after 10 years, which would have prohibited them from passing it via the filibuster-proof “reconciliation” process, Republicans scheduled these, and many of their bill’s other provisions, to expire after 2025. Those expirations are what would make a formal score of the cost of the Democrats’ CTC expansion spike after that year.
The official scorekeepers at the Joint Committee on Taxation and Congressional Budget Office score the fiscal impact of all proposals over a 10-year window relative to their “current law baseline,” or the levels of spending and revenues that would occur if Congress did not pass any new laws. Since the GOP tax law scheduled the CTC to shrink after 2025, the gap between the Democrats’ proposed spending levels and current law would grow. The expiration would add roughly $530 billion to the expansion’s 10-fiscal year cost. Should the Democrats’ expanded CTC be made permanent, families in 2026 would be eligible for both the enlarged CTC and the larger per-child exemption that existed in 2017, meaning the tax benefit per child would be even greater than it is today.
Rather than create an unintended bonus benefit that raises the CTC expansion’s cost, Democrats should simply make the changes to personal exemptions and the standard deduction permanent. Based on figures from the Tax Foundation, PPI estimates that permanently repealing personal exemptions while retaining the increased standard deduction and credit for dependents not eligible for the CTC would reduce the net cost of the Democrats’ CTC expansion by more than $100 billion each year after 2025.
As a result, Democrats may need only about $800 billion in additional offsets over the 10-year window to make the current CTC permanent (and even less if they are willing to consider a slightly smaller expansion). Although this figure could be a slight underestimate, since the Office of Management and Budget projects the CTC expansion would cost roughly 10 percent more than Tax Foundation does, the cost of this package is still likely to be only around half the $1.6 trillion cost of making the expanded CTC permanent on its own.
Making these reforms permanent would not only help pay for the CTC expansion but also give Democrats ownership of one of the few progressive components of the GOP’s tax law. The CTC expansion is more progressive than exemptions for dependents because credits directly reduce a taxpayer’s final liability, while exemptions lower their taxable income, which gives a bigger benefit to those in high tax brackets than those in low brackets. Meanwhile, the increased standard deduction only benefits households that do not itemize their deductions, which are disproportionately low- and middle-income households. Making this progressive benefit consolidation permanent now would prevent Republicans from using the continuation of middle-class tax cuts as a vehicle to enact more tax cuts for the rich in 2025.
Democrats do not want their most consequential anti-poverty policy in a generation to expire less than four years from now. When polls show that a majority of voters support the current CTC expansion but are skeptical of continuing it post-pandemic, lawmakers cannot necessarily count on their successors to keep a temporary extension from expiring. Rather than jeopardizing these important benefits to circumvent budget scoring rules, Democrats should protect their policy achievement and help pay for it by extending other family tax provisions in place today along with it.
Brendan McDermott is a fiscal policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, policymakers approved almost $6 trillion in spending to combat the once-in-a-century public health emergency, support those who lost their incomes, and stimulate the economy. They intend to spend even more money to rebuild the economy in the pandemic’s wake: in addition to the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal that the Senate recently passed, Congress is deliberating a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would invest in the nation’s human infrastructure. As Democrats determine the final size and scope of this package, they should prioritize modernizing the social safety net, which the pandemic severely strained.
Rebuilding these systems will require more than just expanding benefits. Federal lawmakers should require states to administer federal-state benefit programs such as unemployment insurance and food assistance more efficiently. Improving benefit administration would both help struggling people pay their bills and help mitigate any anxiety that taxpayers may feel about expanding effective social programs.
The pandemic made clear the importance of functional aid programs. The Urban Institute estimates that government benefits will keep nearly 50 million Americans out of poverty this year alone. After stimulus checks, which also spent considerable amounts of money on people who were not financially distressed, the programs that reduced poverty the most were the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and unemployment insurance (UI). These two programs, which are both administered by the states in partnership with the federal government, lifted 7.9 million and 6.7 million people from poverty, respectively. The largest poverty reduction impacts were in households with children and Black and Hispanic families.
However, SNAP and UI struggled to fulfill their potential during the pandemic. As millions lost their jobs, many state systems failed to respond quickly to the rush in claimants or the benefit changes Congress passed in response to the crisis. As a result, 7 months after unemployment first surged, only 3 states met federal timeliness standards for delivering new unemployment benefits. Despite an increase in SNAP benefits during the pandemic, food insecurity increased dramatically for many households, suggesting that benefits and administrative systems were still inadequate to meet unprecedented need.
Fixing the administrative issues that caused these problems would ensure no beneficiary fails to pay their bills or feed their families as they wait on bureaucracy. It would also show taxpayers that Democrats are spending money wisely. 69% of voters polled in swing districts expressed concerns that spending on infrastructure could hurt the economy, and Republicans are capitalizing on this anxiety to paint these programs as “reckless” spending and to stir panic on inflation ahead of the midterm elections. Democrats overcome this skepticism by demonstrating to voters that they are ensuring that all social programs use their resources as well as possible.
First, states should simplify the application and renewal process for benefits. Working families are forced to jump through lengthy, bureaucratic applications to get benefits from programs such as Medicaid, UI, and SNAP. Creating one application for multiple benefits would reduce barriers on eligible populations. This idea is central to the Health, Opportunity, and Personal Empowerment (HOPE) Act, which would fund state and local pilot programs that would allow low-income people to apply for multiple benefits at once without running a bureaucratic gauntlet. In the shorter term, states should update their income and contact information for Medicaid enrollees using more up-to-date records from SNAP. Congress prohibited Medicaid from dropping beneficiaries while the federal public health emergency declaration is in effect, but updating information on enrollees now could minimize the administrative burden of determining who should remain covered after the emergency declaration expires.
Second, states should upgrade existing IT infrastructure and use modern, flexible administration systems to deliver benefits and interact with beneficiaries. For example, the Biden administration should encourage the U.S. Department of Agriculture to invest in innovative payment systems beyond Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) that will let SNAP recipients use mobile wallets and chip cards to buy food. The current EBT system can be prone to outages, especially in rural communities, which can leave families in “food deserts” without any stores to use their benefits. States should also use money made available by the American Rescue Plan Act to overhaul the outdated, inflexible computer systems they use to administer UI. Those systems were unable to base benefits on each beneficiaries’ lost wage, as Congress initially wanted to do during the pandemic and should do in the future, and still struggled to administer the simpler flat benefit increases that ultimately passed.
Third, states can cut through reams of red tape by eliminating undue restrictions on how beneficiaries can use their benefits. For example, there’s no good reason to deny SNAP recipients the ability to use their benefits for hot and prepared meals. Rather than enforce onerous restrictions, policymakers should incentivize recipients to use the benefits for nutritious foods, using lessons learned from pilot programs such as the USDA’s Health Incentives Pilot in Massachusetts.
Fourth, Congress should reinforce UI and SNAP as “automatic stabilizers” so that they can react faster in future economic downturns. The size and duration of benefits should rise when an economic indicator such as the unemployment rate passes a threshold, signaling economic distress. Automatically expanding benefits during downturns would put money in the hands of those who are most likely to stimulate the economy by spending it.
Progressives should seize the opportunity that the budget agreement presents to show that spending money smartly is good policy and politics. Making these programs work better during future crises and showing voters that they are improving the administration of social benefits would both serve their most at-risk constituents well and strengthen public support for that service.
This week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it will update the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to calculate monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. This update will increase the benefit to better reflect the true cost of a healthy and nutritious diet, helping food insecure families across the country put food on the table. PPI’s Director of Social Policy, Veronica Goodman, released the following statement:
“SNAP is one of our most effective and far reaching anti-hunger programs that helps to feed over 42 million Americans each month. However, for many families, benefits are not enough and run out well before the end of the month. This update by the USDA will better support working families, especially those with children, and we applaud the Biden Administration for this action. No family should face food insecurity in America.”
As Congress makes progress on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, Democrats turn their attention to the sizable $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. The bill includes major pieces of President Biden’s Build Back Better platform and the American Families and Jobs Plans. Some moderate Democrats have voiced concerns about the size and scope of the package—foretelling of difficult negotiations ahead.
As lawmakers begin those discussions, however, we should not forget about a group that doesn’t get a seat at the table for policy debates: the United States’ more than 73 million children. The reconciliation package should prioritize investments in kids, not just to equalize our relatively low rates of spending on youth, but because doing so has huge shared benefits and among the highest rates of return for any social investment.
On this week’s Radically Pragmatic Podcast, Veronica Goodman, Director of Social Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), sits down with Representative Veronica Escobar (TX-16), to discuss the Child Tax Credit.
“We learned very early on when we passed the Child Tax Credit, just what a resounding, powerful impact it would make in our effort to combat child poverty,” said Rep. Escobar on the podcast. “Something that should be the utmost priority for every lawmaker is to ensure that children don’t go hungry, that children are not homeless, that children have every opportunity possible to live prosperous, wonderful lives.”
Congresswoman Escobar is a member of the New Democrat Coalition. She is a Vice Chair for the Democratic Women’s Caucus and serves on the prestigious House Judiciary Committee, House Armed Services Committee, House Ethics Committee, and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. In addition, she serves as Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel.
The American Rescue Plan Act, crafted by the Biden Administration and passed by Congressional Democrats, included a historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Qualifying families will see an increased tax credit of $3,000 for each child between the ages of six and 17 years old and $3,600 for each child under the age of six. The increased credit funds — $250 for children between six and 17, and $300 for each child under six — will be provided monthly, giving over 36 million eligible families relief as we recover from the pandemic. The expansion of the Child Tax Credit could lift one-half of all children in America out of poverty.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
As Congress and the White House continue negotiations on the American Families Plan, PPI’s policy experts released a report today outlining new ways that policymakers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (UDSA) should modernize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to make the program more accessible to families in need and more resilient in a future crisis. The report, titled “Reimagining SNAP After the Pandemic,” is authored by Veronica Goodman and Kaitlin Edwards.
“When it comes to nutrition assistance, we can’t return to business-as-usual after this pandemic. The post-pandemic era must mark the beginning of a new national dialogue on how to wipe out hunger and malnutrition in America,” said report authors Veronica Goodman and Kaitlin Edwards. “As the Biden administration and Congress begin to craft the American Families Plan, they should prioritize modernizing SNAP, a critical and often lifesaving program.”
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of American families faced food insecurity. In 2019, over 38 million individuals participated in SNAP, with nearly half – 44% – being working families with children.
Yet, about 16% of eligible individuals – which equates to millions of Americans – do not utilize the program. This rate is even higher among seniors and students. Research suggests a lack of information, barriers to applying for benefits, costs to applying, and stigma around needing food assistance account for most of the gaps in participation.
As the pandemic ravaged communities and shuttered businesses, many families and individuals were forced to wait in miles-long lines outside of food banks and nutrition assistance centers. Unemployment rates shot up to levels even higher than during the Great Recession, and many families who never struggled to put food on the table found themselves in desperate need of help. Throughout the pandemic, nearly 44 million individuals enrolled in SNAP, a more than 20% jump from about 36 million in 2019.
To modernize SNAP and increase its effectiveness as one of the most far-reaching hunger prevention interventions, PPI proposes the following reforms:
Reduce administrative burdens by streamlining the application process by creating a single application for multiple social safety net programs, and reduce barriers for eligible populations.
Ease the restrictions on what SNAP benefits can and cannot be used for, and remove restrictions for hot and prepared meals.
Reinforce SNAP as an “automatic stabilizer” in future economic downturns, triggering enhanced benefits and suspended work requirements when the economy enters a recession.
Fill in the gaps in nutrition by adopting the “child multiplier” proposal that would increase the benefit size for families with children under the age of five.
Reform counterproductive limits on savings and assets that dissuade families from creating even small rainy day funds.
Use information technology to modernize the program and reduce the administrative burden on low-income people, states, and retailers.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The coming months present the Biden administration with an opportunity to rethink the structure and role of SNAP, our country’s largest anti-hunger program, to better address food insecurity in the United States. During the pandemic, policymakers eased rules around eligibility and access to make it easier to prevent widespread hunger resulting from the economic toll of the pandemic. Studying these changes can inform how we modernize SNAP for the post-pandemic future.
Even before the pandemic, hunger was an intractable problem faced by millions of Americans, and there is a wealth of evidence to support reimagining SNAP by building in more resiliency and making it easier to navigate for both consumers and retailers to strengthen our country’s food system. In this paper, we address recent developments related to SNAP and propose reforms to the program to reduce administrative burdens and churn, ease restrictions on what can be purchased with benefits, make SNAP more resilient for a future crisis as an automatic stabilizer, increase monthly allocations for families with young children, eliminate asset limits, and invest in technologies to increase access and improve participant experience, especially in rural communities. As the Biden administration looks ahead to major public investments, the modernization of SNAP should be included in the American Families Plan.
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION:
Last spring, one of the most startling and grim images from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic were the miles-long lines outside of food banks as the economic toll of the pandemic began to spread across the country. As unemployment rates shot up to levels even higher than during the Great Recession, many families who had never struggled to put food on the table found themselves in desperate need of help.
The sharp rise of hunger during the pandemic would have been immeasurably worse had the Trump administration succeeded in forcing states to impose work requirements on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, which would have kicked nearly 700,000 unemployed people out of the program.Fortunately, a federal judge blocked the attempt as “arbitrary and capricious.” The Trump White House also considered new federal requirements to drug test applicants and expand work eligibility — two ways of attempting to push more hungry families off of SNAP.
In contrast, President Joe Biden and Congress have made food assistance a top priority, providing aid to hungry families through stimulus and expanded anti-hunger funding, including through SNAP. These efforts have succeeded in reducing historically elevated levels of hunger in America.Recent data released from the U.S. Census Bureau for the end of April 2021 shows that, after multiple rounds of economic aid to struggling families, the percentage of Americans who reported they faced food insecurity was at its lowest point since the pandemic began — at 8.1%.
However, even prior to the pandemic, hunger was an urgent problem for many working families, and especially households with children. In 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as many as 10.5% of households were food insecure at some point during 2019, and that number was even higher for households (13.6%) with children under age 18.
While critical, more money alone won’t end hunger. The pandemic served as a metaphorical earthquake that stress-tested many of our social safety net programs, revealing stark vulnerabilities. SNAP is an essential program that needs to be made more resilient against future public emergencies.
SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is our country’s single most effective and wide-reaching anti-hunger program. It subsidizes food purchases for nearly half of all Americans at some point during their lives and an estimated one in nine Americans in any given month.In 2019 alone, there were 38 million participants who received SNAP benefits in the U.S, and 44% of SNAP recipients are children. The majority of SNAP recipients are also working families with at least one worker, as the program is structured to reward work with increased benefits.
While Republican politicians call for significant cuts to SNAP benefits and giving states more leeway to make it harder for people to apply, Americans broadly recognize the need for food assistance and support SNAP. A 2020 poll conducted by Hunger Free America, a national nonprofit, found that 58% want to increase funding for SNAP, with 32% of that group saying that the money should be boosted significantly. This included support from 40% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats. Historically, domestic hunger has been considered a bipartisan issue, though it has become more partisan over time.
Yet millions of eligible Americans each year do not enroll in SNAP. In 2017, according to the USDA, the take up rate for SNAP was about 84%. Participation rates vary across states, with 52%, in Wyoming, being the lowest.Research suggests that a lack of information, barriers and costs to applying, and stigma around needing food assistance account for most of the gap in participation. For example, in New York City, approximately a quarter of households or
700,000 eligible people do not receive them.
A related challenge is keeping participants in the program. Administrative burdens and inflexibility in recertifying for SNAP benefits increase churn in the program at high costs.
To make it easier and faster to get meals to hungry families during the pandemic, the government relaxed some of the burdensome rules around applying for and retaining food assistance. As enhanced pandemic benefits expire in the coming months, policymakers should act to ensure that SNAP doesn’t revert to the onerous application requirements, poor customer service, and outdated enrollment systems that plagued it in the past. We propose that the Biden administration include the modernization and expansion of SNAP in the American Families package later this year given the state of food insecurity both before and after the pandemic.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:
To modernize SNAP and increase its effectiveness as one of the most far-reaching hunger prevention interventions, we propose the following reforms:
• Reduce administrative burdens by requiring states to simplify and shorten SNAP applications to reduce barriers for eligible populations. In fact, U.S. policymakers should require states to create a single, straightforward application for multiple social safety net programs to reduce administrative burdens and barriers.
Policymakers should also streamline the burdensome process of applying to be an online retailer for SNAP benefits delivered to recipients’ homes.
• Ease the restrictions on what SNAP benefits can and cannot be used for. For example, recipients should be able to use SNAP benefits for hot and prepared meals. A better approach beyond restrictions would be for policymakers to employ lessons from pilot programs, such as the USDA’s Health Incentives Pilot in Massachusetts, to create incentives for recipients to use the benefits for more nutritious foods.
• Reinforce SNAP as an “automatic stabilizer” in future economic downturns by passing the Food for Families in Crisis Act, proposed by Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., that triggers enhanced benefits and relaxed work requirements when the economy enters a recession, and requires that states to use broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) for SNAP requirements.
• Fill in the gaps in nutrition by adopting the “child multiplier” proposal that would increase the benefit size for families with children under the age of five.
• Reform counterproductive limits on savings and assets that are having the unintended consequence of causing families to avoid rainy day funds and requiring the use of BBCE by all states would help reduce this harm. For example, the Allowing Steady Savings by Eliminating Tests, or ASSET, Act, introduced by U.S. Senators Chris Coons, D-Del., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would remove these harmful limits.
• Use information technology to modernize social service delivery and reduce the administrative burden on low-income people, states, and retailers. For example, Congress should enact the HOPE Act, 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.
Technology could also improve customer experience and the recertification process to reduce churn in SNAP, and these approaches should be tailored based on the particular barriers and vulnerabilities of certain groups, such as the elderly, rural communities, and college students. The Biden administration should also encourage the U.S. Department of Agriculture to invest in innovative payment systems beyond Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) that will allow SNAP recipients to use mobile wallets and chip cards to purchase food at stores.
Thanks to an expansion of the Child Tax Credit enacted by President Biden and Democrats in Congress, millions of families with kids will begin receiving monthly payments on July 15th that are estimated to cut child poverty by half. This landmark program from the Biden administration will deliver automatic monthly payments of up to $300 for each child under six and $250 for each child under 18 to more than 36 million working families. However, because the credit is delivered through the Internal Revenue Service and based on 2020 and 2021 tax filings, millions of eligible households could be left out of receiving payments.
To address this issue, the IRS has begun sending letters to potentially eligible households to make them aware of the coming payments and has launched a non-filer sign-up tool for those families that don’t traditionally file taxes but have eligible children to send their information directly to the IRS. This subset of households usually have very little income and stand to benefit the most from the credit so getting them signed up is critical to the CTC’s purpose of reducing poverty.
Earlier this week, the IRS also announced partnerships with a national network of local non-profits and community organizations to help eligible taxpayers get registered and encouraged families without bank accounts to set up accounts online to receive the monthly payments faster via direct deposit.
There are remaining challenges to ensure that all eligible children reap the benefits of the CTC. For example, children in households with a student loan borrower in default on federal student loans could be penalized if this critical benefit is seized come next tax season. As the pandemic moratoriums are lifted as the economy bounces back, we hope that Congress takes action to ensure that the CTC and Earned Income Tax Credit, two well-targeted anti-poverty measures, are exempted from garnishment.
As CTC Awareness Week comes to a close, we hope that this is just the beginning of a concerted, targeted effort to spread the word and reach every eligible household to make them aware about this credit and get them signed up. Because the CTC was only passed for 2021, PPI also encourages lawmakers to pass a permanent and fiscally responsible expansion of the CTC that makes the credit fully refundable for low-income families and continues monthly payments beyond 2021.
On this week’s Radically Pragmatic Podcast, Crystal Swann, Senior Policy Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and Mosaic Economic Project lead, and Francella Ochillo, a Mosaic Economic Project Cohort Member, attorney and digital rights advocate, sit down with Representative Sharice Davids, D-Ks., to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on women business owners, entrepreneurs and workers.
“It’s been disheartening – although I don’t know that I would call it super surprising – to see that the pandemic and the impacts of a public health crisis, that has turned into also an economic crisis, has disproportionately impacted women…financially, in the workforce when it comes to child care, access to health care…Every single aspect of life has been disrupted by the pandemic.
“Particularly Black women and other women of color have been disproportionately negatively impacted. It’s something that – at least in the Democratic Caucus in Congress – we started talking about almost immediately. Because like I said, it’s disheartening and heartbreaking but it’s also not as surprising. And that’s because a lot of us know the negative impacts and disproportionate impacts that women experience anyway,” said Rep. Davids on the podcast.
Congresswoman Davids serves as a Vice Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and also serves on the Small Business, Joint Economic, and the Steering and Policy Committees. Additionally, she is the New Democrat Coalition’s Member Services Vice Chair. She is currently serving in her second term of Congress.
In addition to the economic impact of the pandemic on communities of color and women, Rep. Davids and the hosts discuss the ongoing negotiations over the upcoming infrastructure legislative packages — the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. They also dive into Rep. Davids’ background as a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.
This podcast was in partnership with PPI’s Mosaic Economic Project. The Mosaic Economic Project is a network of diverse and highly credentialed women in fields of economics and technology. Mosaic programming focuses on upskilling, connecting, and advocating for cohort participants’ meaningful engagement in public policy debates, with a particular focus on engaging Congress and the media.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Today, PPI President Will Marshall released the following statement on the federal recognition of Juneteenth:
Happy Juneteenth!
With uncharacteristic dispatch this week, Congress passed and President Biden signed a new a bill establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday. It happened so quickly that PPI wasn’t quite prepared to observe it properly, but we will henceforth be closed for business on Juneteenth to commemorate this important date in U.S. history.
On June 19, 1865, Union Army Maj. General Gordon Granger proclaimed the liberation of 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Texas. This reminds us that slavery was the evil which sparked the Civil War. It also reminds us that hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers died to preserve the Union and make real the promise of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
We were gratified and somewhat surprised to see the Juneteenth holiday approved overwhelmingly in Congress, a rare sign of political concord in these fraught times. But we can’t help noting a perverse irony: While most Congressional Republicans supported the bill, their counterparts in Texas and many other red states are working hard to make it harder for black citizens to vote.
This is an obscenity, and we hope the decent people of those states and their representatives in Congress will rally to stop and repeal these unAmerican anti-voting laws.”
About PPI:
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
