Want to Spur Economic Growth? Invest in Low/Moderate Income Communities

Who deserves help in this troubled economy -- the rich or everyone else? That's the question at the center of debate around the proposed extension of George W. Bush's tax breaks for America's wealthiest few.

Over on the National Women's Law Center blog, there's an excellent new entry into this discussion from Regina L. Oldak, Senior Counsel at NWLC, who argues convincingly that tax cuts for the wealthy indicate that America's got its priorities all wrong. Instead, she suggests, Congress should be doing more to strengthen our economy by helping the families who are actually struggling -- most notably, women headed families, for whom unemployment rates now stand at a 25 year high of 13.4 percent.

In an economic climate where twenty-five percent of men and thirty-five percent of women say they have $500 or less in savings (as a major national poll [pdf] from the Ms. Foundation and the Center for Community Change recently found), offering tax cuts to the wealthy really gets it backwards, notes Oldak. Low and middle income communities own the spending habits that will eventually help jump-start this economy; therefore, our economic policies should aim to provide these communities with the influx of cash they need to keep themselves, and our economy, afloat. Oldak writes,

Extending tax cuts for low- and moderate-income people can boost the economy because hard-pressed families spend nearly every additional dollar to make ends meet—which, in turn, creates demand for goods and services and thus encourages businesses to hire more workers. However, the very wealthy save more of the money they get from tax cuts because they already have what they need (and much of what they want). For that reason, the Congressional Budget Office ranks tax cuts for the very wealthy as the least effective option for promoting economic growth.

Instead of revitalizing these Bush era tax cuts for the rich, Oldak suggests, Congress needs to act now to pass "substantial measures that would create jobs and provide emergency assistance to families including the Jobs for America Act, additional funding for child care, restored funding for child support enforcement, and an extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund." Those are measures that would provided much needed, tangible support to families who are increasingly finding themselves on the margins of society, unable to make ends meet -- and help stimulate an economy that arguably cannot recover without them.

Americans, whatever their income level, are eager to find stability and security in this roller coaster ride of an economy. But those who are struggling to put bread on the table clearly deserve greater levels of support from their government in times like these. It's time for Congress to get serious about taking a stronger role in making this economy work by investing in programs that benefit low and moderate income communities. The wealthy, as they always have, will find their way.

Take Action: Join Jobs with Justice to End Unemployment Crisis

Ms. Foundation grantee Jobs with Justice is calling on the government to end the national crisis of joblessness: On Wednesday, September 15, they're holding a Jobs Emergency National Day of Action with events in 30 cities nationwide, demanding that members of Congress (and their corporate backers) explain how they plan to fill the jobs gap and "put America back to work."

With more than 15 million Americans currently unemployed, it's time to declare a "state of emergency" on our national jobs situation, says Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a national network of labor, community, student and faith organizations working to build a broader global movement for economic and social justice. As part of the day of action, JwJ is demanding:

• Full and Fair Employment. Congress must recognize the jobs emergency and pass legislation like the Local Jobs for America Act; extend the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families emergency fund jobs subsidies program; extend unemployment insurance; heed President Obama’s call to renew the countries’ infrastructure and create a national infrastructure bank; and pass other bills that will create jobs, protect public services, and help get our economy going again.
  
• Financial Sector Accountability. Wall Street must pay their fair share for the crisis they created. A tax on financial speculation could raise $200-$500 billion every year.

Join Jobs with Justice and their allies as they stand up for a recovery that puts everyday Americans back to work. Find an action taking place in a city near you, and read Sarita Gupta's recent commentary on the jobless crisis, which ran on Common Dreams.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Rappaport

Child Care Cuts Leave Women Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

As part of their ongoing series “The New Poor”, which seeks to tell the stories of our national struggle to recover from the Great Recession, yesterday’s New York Times featured a revealing piece about the plight of low-income mothers, many of whom are finding that recent cuts to child care subsidies in their states are making it impossible to find affordable, quality child care – and thus pushing them towards welfare as the only viable means of supporting their families.

Despite an increase in overall federal funding for child care subsidies by the Obama Administration (to the tune of an additional $2 billion this year), experts agree that in many states, funding simply isn’t keeping pace with the growing need for affordable child care -- especially as job markets remain difficult to penetrate. Add to that the fact that states are given the discretion to structure the dispersal of the monies they do receive for subsidies as they wish, and you've got a recipe for plenty of bureaucratic red tape and the creation of perpetual holding patterns when it comes to granting aid. Wait-lists thousands for subsidized child care of children deep have become the new normal, according to the Times, and as a result, more and more mothers are finding it impossible to hold down jobs that would keep them off welfare and help keep their families afloat (if barely).

Though this growing problem may be new news to some, it happens to be an issue that Carol Burnett – named a 2010 Woman of Vision at last week’s Gloria Awards gala – knows inside and out. Calling child care the “single most important work support that helps low-income women move toward economic self-sufficiency”, Burnett has been working for two decades to ensure that families in her home state of Mississippi have access quality child care that they can actually afford.

As executive director of the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative (a Ms. Foundation grantee), Carol advocates for state policy reform and works to strengthen the capacity of child care centers across Mississippi. To date her organization has offered assistance to more than 800 providers and continues to work to ensure that one day, “families will get the services children need so that parents can work and so that children’s development will be supported at every age level beginning at birth—without regard to whether the parent can pay.”

It sounds like a utopian ideal -- but it's one that we're fully committed to fighting for. Learn more about Carol's vision for a better future for all of our children -- and take a look at how another grantee, the National Women's Law Center (featured in the Times article) is addressing this important issue.

Rejecting the Myth of the “Mancession”

If the idea that men were being disproportionately impacted by our national economic crisis never sat quite right with you, we now know there’s a reason why: it wasn’t precisely true -- particularly over time.

According to a report to be released by the Joint Economic Committee, women have continued to lose jobs even as men have found new ones. As the Associated Press reported,

"As job losses slowed in the final months of 2009, women continued to lose jobs as men found employment," says the report…based on the committee's analysis of unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Specifically, from October 2009 to March 2010, women lost 22,000 jobs while men gained 260,000, it says. "And April's strong employment growth showed women gained 86,000 jobs last month, far fewer than the 204,000 jobs gained by men."

In other words, as things have begun to get better for men on the economic front, they’ve gotten worse for women. Single mothers have paid a particular price during this recession, with their unemployment rate jumping 5 percentage points in 2 years (from 8% in 2007 to 13% in 2009). Add to that the fact that male job loss has had a lasting, tangible impact on women and families (less overall money in dual-parent families means heavier reliance on women’s income, even as women are paid less than men and make up the majority of minimum-wage and part-time workers; in single-parent families, a father’s lost job can mean the end of child-support payments, again putting increased financial pressure on households led by women) and you’ve got a rock solid case for why the concept of a “mancession” is at best misleading, and at worst a myth.

Of course, economic insecurity -- for women, for people of color, for low-income people, for immigrants -- is nothing new under the sun. It’s a trend as long and as deep as our history as a nation. But as we argued back in February, it’s time to do away with the fantasy that economic security -- not to mention “recovery” -- is available to us all in equal measure. (The data from the JEC certainly makes it clear that no such thing is true.) What we really need is a re-thinking of our entire economic system to address the inequities that continue to put women, people of color and others at a disadvantage. Until we get there, though, tossing out the myth of the mancession is a good place to start.

Applied Resource Center Releases 'Race and Recession' Report

The Applied Resource Center has released a compelling report on the economic crisis and its effects on people of color. "Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules" uncovers root causes of long-term racial inequities that fed into the economic crisis. It proposes solutions to change a system that threatens future generations.

Their short video introduces the issues addressed and the voices of people affected.



Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules
Download the Full Report [pdf]
Download an Executive Summary [pdf]

See also: Women of Color Policy Network Releases Study on Race, Gender, and the Recession: Job Creation and Employment