Analysis

Trump Considering Cuts that Would Create a “Perfect Storm” for Domestic Violence Survivors

| Anusha Ravi
Susan Contreras sits on her bed in a Phoenix-area shelter for victims of domestic violence on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016. Contreras is part of a unique program at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix that aims to assist abuse survivors who have suffered head trauma. (AP Photo/Beatriz Costa-Lima)

According to The Hill, the Trump transition team has proposed cuts similar to those found in a Heritage Foundation budget blueprint that would eliminate $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next 10 years.

Under the Heritage plan, the cuts would be dramatic. They would reduce funding for the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Justice, and State, and eliminate funding entirely for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The cuts would negatively impact low-income people, people of color, and many other groups in terrifying ways. But there is one specific group that would be caught in a perfect storm of slashed services: survivors of sexual and domestic violence, who rely on many government services that would be on the chopping block.

The proposed cuts would eliminate grants from the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which funds services for survivors like transitional housing, legal assistance, law enforcement training, and support for people who have been sexually abused within the prison system. These grants have been incredibly effective—since the passage of VAWA in 1994, intimate partner violence has decreased by 64%. That success is due, at least in part, to the fact that they work in tandem with other programs, like Community Oriented Policing Services (also slated for elimination under the Heritage Foundation proposal), to make sure police have the staff, technology, and training they need to properly respond to survivors.

These cuts would also eliminate the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which is the single largest funder of civil legal aid. The most important legal actions that survivors take often happen in civil, not criminal, court—civil court is where they file for divorce from abusive partners, seek custody of their children, and apply for protective orders.

According to Lisalyn Jacobs, Vice President of Government Relations at Legal Momentum, “civil litigation can be a battle of who can wear down who first, and the survivor is far more likely to have less resources to stay in court for a long time.” Survivors are disproportionately likely to be low income, and have almost always been subjected to financial abuse that leaves them with limited access to cash. That makes it harder for them to afford a lawyer or endure a lengthy civil legal case—hence the need for civil legal aid.

The direct elimination of federally-funded support services and legal aid would create an extremely hostile climate for survivors, and the Heritage proposal would hurt this group in other ways as well. It would reduce funding for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, which in turn could affect funding for housing discrimination cases. Survivors are particularly vulnerable targets of housing discrimination—landlords often evict survivors or deny them housing specifically because they’ve been abused in the past. The DOJ Civil Rights Division currently extends legal protections to survivors to prevent this, and holds landlords accountable for any instances of biases or discrimination. This cut, then, would immensely weaken protections that survivors rely on in order to achieve safe housing and distance from an abuser.

The overarching conservative argument behind the Heritage proposal is that it’s the responsibility of the states, not the federal government, to protect survivors. But states do not have the finances, leverage, or incentive to provide the same level of service. For example, if victims or their abusers regularly cross state lines—like many people in the DC metro area do simply to commute to work—then state-level policing efforts to enforce protective orders would fall tragically short. Survivors’ mobility often relies on the portability of their protective orders, and only the federal government has the wherewithal to ensure interstate cooperation on these orders.

Each one of these proposed cuts individually would place survivors at increased risk, but combined they would leave survivors without police, housing, and legal protections that they desperately need. That paints a very dark picture for survivors—one that legislators should be mindful of when they draft the federal budget in April.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for clarity so that no readers are under the impression that the Trump Administration has released a formal budget proposal.

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First Person

The Speech from the Women’s March You Needed to Hear

| Angela Sutton
(AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz)

Editor’s Note: The text below is a modified version of a speech that Angela Sutton gave at the Philadelphia Women’s March that took place on January 21, 2017.

I am a black woman, a mother of two beautiful black boys, and I live in Northeast Philadelphia.
I have lived in poverty, in Philadelphia, my whole life.

Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of any large American city. The face of that poverty is most likely a black mother, like me.

For me, being a woman has always meant being strong and never showing weakness.
I have always had to be superwoman, and the women around me have had to be the same.
As a single mother of two boys, I have to play both roles and every day, I do what I have to in order to take care of my boys the best way I know how.

I, too, am a woman.

I am the woman you don’t see when you walk down the street sipping your Starbucks coffee.
I am the woman you don’t see standing in line at the local food pantry.
I am the woman who remains invisible in spaces and at events like the Women’s March.

But I am here.

You must see me.
You must acknowledge me.
You must include me.

We must continue the fight—and that means all of us.

Because I am the woman who fights every day.
I am the woman who understands inequality.
I am the woman who advocates for the rights of women and children living in poverty.
I am the woman who wants a better life.

The new administration scares me, but I know I have to continue to fight.
Not just for me, but for the others who come after me.
For our children.
For our future.

We can’t accept what we are given.
We must continue the fight—and that means all of us.
Let’s hold each other accountable and unite.

Sonia Sanchez said, “in order to be a true revolutionary, you must understand love.”
I do what I do out of love.
We will win because of love.

But first you need to see me.

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Analysis

Our Financial Aid System Keeps Rich Kids Rich and Poor Kids Poor. Here’s One Way to Fix It.

| William Elliott
(AP Photo/Butch Dill)

In some ways, my story embodies the American success story. I climbed out of poverty, earned a PhD, and am pursuing my life’s work as a member of the academy. But at age 46, security still eludes me. I still lose sleep over just how far my own success will stretch—over whether my three children will have a secure economic future, too.

Growing up poor didn’t just mean that I entered college less academically up to speed than my peers. It also meant that my family had limited financial resources to help pay for college. So, I depended on student loans. I earned a bachelor’s degree—and $40,000 of debt to go with it. I managed to pay it off during my service in the military, so I went to graduate school. In record time, I earned a PhD—and another $100,000 of debt.

I’m one of millions on the debt-dependent path to the American Dream. Our journey stands in stark contrast to those who had financial support. My colleague, for example, received her graduate degree from the same university that I attended—but she had help from family. She graduated without student debt, and started building home equity before she turned 25. She even had enough to spare that she was able to take advantage of employer retirement benefits, too. Her four kids will likely have their college paid for before they finish high school.

My colleague still had to work hard. She studied, saved, and scrimped when she had to. But her path was eased because wealth was passed down at critical stages along the way. For most Americans that just isn’t an option, and it contributes to growing economic inequality in our nation. It also undermines the oft-repeated promise that a college degree is a catalyst of economic mobility and equal opportunity.

Our current debt-based system widens the gap in educational attainment by race and class, reduces graduation rates among students who make it to college, distorts career choices, constrains entrepreneurship, delays people from buying homes and building families, reduces retirement savings and overall net worth, and lengthens the time it takes to reach median wealth in the United States. In short, it asks students to compromise their long-term economic well-being for a chance at a higher education that is supposed to safeguard them from poverty (with mixed results).

It wasn’t always like this. The GI Bill—signed into law after World War II—made higher education possible for millions of veterans. Returning veterans presented a crisis, because they needed a college education to be able to re-enter the workforce and contribute to the economy. The GI Bill was a policy pivot. It prioritized veterans’ long-term needs and reframed higher education as a broadly-shared good, rather than an exclusive purview of the privileged. Within eight years it returned every dollar invested nearly seven-fold.

Now it’s time for another pivot. We need a financial aid system that performs to the standards of our American values—where the effort we put in and the ability we possess determine our economic outcomes.

Now it’s time for another pivot.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton proposed policies that would make college free for many low-income and middle class students. While those policies have been put on hold, another proposal that could move us in the right direction is creating Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) nationwide. Today, there are 42 CSA programs in 29 states that open accounts for children at birth or in kindergarten, endow them with an initial deposit (financed by public or philanthropic sources), and supplement families’ savings through matching grants.

A family’s CSA savings might be modest in total dollars, but they are significant nonetheless. For example, the average out-of-state cost of a four-year degree at a public university is about $34,000. Every student could accrue that sum by age 18 if they had a CSA that received an $8,400 deposit at birth invested in stock/bond portfolios, plus an additional deposit of $5 per month by the family. This would cost an estimated $34 billion annually—less than the $74 billion in government costs for student loan forgiveness projected for 2017.

CSAs are not a silver bullet for disparities in education writ large. Even so, they could help to build an accessible education pipeline that would make it possible for more people to make it through college without crippling debt. That can begin to even out the returns that two students—one poor and one privileged—get from the same credentials.

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Explainer

Trump Kicked Off His Presidency By Literally Cutting Jobs

| Rebecca Vallas & Jeremy Slevin
(AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File)

On Monday, as one of his first acts as President, Donald Trump announced an immediate hiring freeze across the federal government. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the goal behind the freeze is “to respect the American taxpayer” adding, “some people are working two, three jobs just to get by. And to see money get wasted in Washington on a job that is duplicative is insulting to the hard work that they do to pay their taxes.”

Sounds pretty good, huh?  Except that a hiring freeze is a recipe not just for wasting taxpayer dollars but also for eliminating well-paying jobs.

Here are four ways Trump’s hiring freeze will cause pain in communities across the U.S.—and leave taxpayers holding the bag.

1.    It will kill jobs

Trump campaigned on a promise to save and bring back jobs.  But his hiring freeze is a recipe for large-scale job loss. In fact, experts believe that the freeze could affect at a minimum some 800,000 workers, or more than one-fifth of the entire federal workforce.

Certain groups will be particularly hard hit, including African-Americans and people with disabilities, both of whom are employed in the public sector at disproportionately higher rates. Veteran employment will especially suffer—they get a hiring preference for federal jobs, and make up more than 40 percent of newly hired federal workers.

2.    It will likely cost, not save, money

While Donald Trump may claim that a hiring freeze will save taxpayers money, all evidence suggests the opposite. Hiring freezes make government agencies more dependent on private contractors, who are paid nearly double what federal workers are for the same amount of work. As political scientist John Dilulio points out, the growth of federal contractors (as a substitute for federal employees) is one of the main drivers of waste.

What’s more, hiring freezes can cripple the parts of government that bring money in. When the IRS was forced to cut its workforce between 2010 and 2014, it cost the country $2 billion in revenue. Even Trump’s own nominee to lead the Treasury Department, Steve Mnuchin, conceded in his confirmation hearing that the IRS needs more staffing, telling the Senate, “[If] we add people, we add money.”

3.    It could undermine public safety and health

A hiring freeze could put the nation at greater risk of cyberattacks. That’s because updating government computer systems and increasing security requires personnel—and many of the agencies that protect us against cyberattacks are already understaffed. In an era of ever-increasing cyberattacks (which Donald Trump has openly encouraged in the past), some agencies are already sounding alarms. Without the necessary staff, the work will most likely need to be outsourced. (In the past, lawmakers of both parties raised eyebrows about outsourcing cybersecurity to expensive contractors.)

Food and drug safety could also be jeopardized. For years, the Food and Drug Administration has suffered from staff shortages. In November of last year alone, the FDA was short 700 positions. Inadequate staffing at this critical agency puts Americans at risk of foodborne illness and can slow the time it takes for life-saving treatments to get to market.

4.    It will keep veterans and disabled workers from accessing Social Security and medical care

Two agencies that will be especially hard hit are the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Both agencies are significantly short-staffed, which leads to long waits for care and months- (or even years-)long delays for people to access benefits. Thousands of people die waiting for Social Security disability benefits each year due to unconscionable backlogs that the agency is unable to address without additional staff.

In addition, if Trump and his GOP colleagues in Congress move forward with repealing the Affordable Care Act, many of the 3 million veterans who currently get their care through employers or on the health care exchanges could be forced to turn to the VA to get the care they need, which would further worsen delays. As Peter Kauffmann of VoteVets noted, it would be the “ultimate insult to our men and women who serve to deny them the additional doctors, nurses, therapists, and administrators that are sorely needed at the VA” and if the order “leads to preventable deaths, that will be on Donald Trump’s hands.”

***

Trump has repeatedly proclaimed himself the head of a “workers’ party,” bemoaning in his inauguration speech that there has been “little to celebrate for struggling families across the land” and promising to ring in an era of shared prosperity.

Yet, for the millions of Americans who will lose jobs, suffer delays in accessing needed benefits or medical care, or have their families’ health and safety put at risk by the President’s hiring freeze, there will be even less to celebrate now.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that women will be particularly hard hit by the freeze.

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Analysis

3 People from Tom Price’s District Who Stand to Lose Everything if Obamacare Is Repealed

| Jeremy Slevin
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Editor’s Note: Early on Friday, February 10, Representative Tom Price was confirmed as the secretary of health and human services.  

Much of the conversation around the Affordable Care Act—and its potential repeal—has focused on numbers and figures: bending the cost curve, lowering the insurance rate, or slowing health care inflation. But lost in this conversation are the millions of people who owe their medication, treatment, preventive care, and in many cases their lives to the Affordable Care Act.

Representative Tom Price, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and oversee the ACA repeal, has proposed a replacement for the law that would leave young people, Americans with pre-existing conditions, women, and people with disabilities at the mercy of the health insurance industry. This would quite literally put the lives of his own constituents at risk.

Below are the stories of three people from Tom Price’s district in Georgia who owe their health coverage to the Affordable Care Act.

1. Vicki Hopper

Vicki Hopper had been uninsured for nearly two years before she purchased health insurance on ACA exchanges in Georgia. Two days later she went to have a mammogram and was told to come back for a more extensive evaluation. Two days after that, she found out she had breast cancer. Since then, she has had 10 surgeries, including biopsies, a double mastectomy, and reconstructive surgery.

In Vicki’s case, the Affordable Care Act may have quite literally saved her life. Mammograms, let alone cancer treatment and surgeries, are incredibly expensive and would have likely been impossible without health insurance coverage. Even if Vicki had found out she had breast cancer, insurance companies would have been able to charge her exorbitant rates or outright deny her coverage because cancer qualifies as a pre-existing condition. But under the ACA, routine health benefits like cancer screening, treatment, and follow-up care are required.

As Vicki told us, “If it wasn’t for Obamacare, I would be homeless.”

2. The Kush Family

Patricia Kush knows exactly how devastating an ACA repeal would be, because she remembers what life was like before Congress passed the legislation. In 2004, Patricia’s husband was diagnosed with diabetes. He was working over 40 hours a week, but his employer didn’t offer health insurance. He tried to get individual coverage through the insurance market, but insurance companies refused to cover his diabetes-related expenses. Because he couldn’t afford an expensive insurance plan and the out-of-pocket costs for diabetes medications, he went without health insurance.

In 2007, Patricia’s husband was hospitalized for serious complications from his illness. He survived, but his time in the hospital cost the couple almost $30,000. “We were lucky, Patricia says, “He didn’t die. The hospital forgave a chunk of the costs, and because of good credit, we were able to get a 10-year loan to pay off the rest of the medical bills. But not everyone is as lucky as we were.”

These days, Patricia’s husband is on her health insurance, but their future is far from secure. “If something happened to me, or I lost my job, and Obamacare had been repealed, he would be in real trouble,” Patricia says. Because he has a pre-existing condition, insurance companies would not be required to cover him if Obamacare were repealed outright. “Even though we don’t currently use the health care exchanges, I feel as if it is very important to tell our story from when my husband wasn’t able to get insurance,” she told us. “It would be devastating for so many families if Obamacare is repealed.”

3. Josh Carter

When his son was born in 2014, Josh was working in a stressful and difficult job. According to his wife Sarah, the anxiety and long hours were placing a major strain on the whole family, but they needed the job to be able to support themselves. By the time their son turned one, Josh’s health and the family’s quality of life were suffering. Josh was eventually able to find a contract job to provide for his family, with one major catch—it didn’t include health benefits. But because Obamacare provides people with access to insurance marketplaces, he was able to find health coverage for him, his wife, and his baby through the exchanges and take a new job.

As important as coverage was for Josh, it was even more important for his son. Since the ACA was passed, nearly 2 million kids have gained health insurance that includes essential screenings and immunizations. Josh’s son benefited from blood pressure screening, vision screening, lead screening, and oral health risk assessments.

“My husband would never have been able to take this opportunity if it wasn’t for the ACA and the ability to buy affordable health insurance outside of his employer,” his wife Sarah says. His contract job turned into a permanent job that he loves—an opportunity he would not have had without access to safe, affordable health care.

If Tom Price listened to his constituents, he would hear thousands of stories like these. Vicki, Patricia, Josh and their families all benefited from coverage under the Affordable Care Act. In Vicki’s case, it probably saved her life. Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement that covers the people who currently depend on it would simply cost lives.

If Tom Price is going to continue his plot to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he owes people like Vicki, Josh, and Patricia a plan that ensures they can continue to get the coverage they need.

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