The Census Bureau just released national poverty, income, and insurance data for 2023. It’s important to understand income and health insurance trends, but it’s especially important now since Congress will take up major tax legislation in 2025.
One thing we know for sure is that when the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was expanded in 2021, child poverty decreased by 46% overall, with Black and Hispanic/Latino child poverty falling by 6.3 percentage points in each community, impacting 716,000 Black children and 1.2 million Hispanic children. The new data shows that in 2023, the CTC lifted 2.4 million people above the federal poverty line―while important, falling far short of the 5.4 million lifted above the federal poverty line in 2021 by expanded monthly Child Tax Credit payments that included all children in low-income families.
Click here to send a direct message to Congress to expand the Child Tax Credit today.
Many people are facing food and housing insecurity, challenges with high child care costs, and dealing with other hardships that make it harder to make ends meet. Expanding the Child Tax Credit fixes a major flaw in current law: over 18 million children and their families are excluded from the full credit because their parents’ income is too low.
You read that right. Families where a parent can’t work due to illness or being laid off, cannot qualify for the Child Tax Credit at all. And many parents who work at low wages cannot get the full CTC. A single parent earning $15,000 a year and who has two children, will receive less than a family with a parent who has a higher paying job. This is a flaw that does nothing but exacerbate inequity and accelerate the racial wealth gap.
Instead of cutting investments in key programs and services, Congress must prioritize funding for human needs and that means passing an expanded Child Tax Credit that reaches the very poorest households.
Click here to send a direct message to Congress to expand the Child Tax Credit today.
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The show us your budget edition. President Budget released his budget proposal last week. Broadly speaking, it is based on four values: lowering costs for families, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, investing in America, and reducing the deficit, all made possible by ensuring that the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations pay more of their fair share.
Biden’s commonsense budget proposal takes strong moves forward to level the grossly unequal economic playing field in this country. It shores up tattered programs for poor, low-income, and middle-income American families, no matter what we look like or where we live. As an expression of values, its proposals to invest in families and workers, protect Social Security and strengthen Medicare reflect the values of most of us.
Every weekday during the semester, I wake up by 8 a.m. to get ready for class at my small, primarily white, liberal arts college in the wealthy Orlando suburb that is Winter Park. Once I step out of my apartment, my first destination is the on-campus café where I pick up my Chai Latte on the way to class. The young woman that works the morning shift on weekdays knows all of us students by name and always remembers my order. Despite all that she does to make my campus a welcoming environment for me, I had never considered what it was like for her as a food service worker at a private university. It wasn’t until I learned of a union organizing effort among cafeteria workers that I realized the need for reform.
A 26-year-old man with severe open wounds on both legs is injecting fentanyl three days a day. A 22-year-old woman injection drug user just found out her boyfriend with whom she shares needles tested positive for HIV and hepatitis C. Two 14-year-old boys in Utah buy online what they think is Adderall; the counterfeit pills are really fentanyl and they die within hours after swallowing the pills. Americans saw 110,315 fatal drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in March 2022 — 294 deaths per day.
The Biden budget makes right and responsible choices: less poverty, more jobs, investments that help workers, families, and children, and more economic security for older Americans. It translates moral clarity about the need for shared prosperity into dollars and cents.
Rare, bipartisan agreement broke out in a Senate subcommittee hearing this week when Democrats, Republicans, and both conservative and progressive economists agreed that the U.S. must avoid defaulting on its debt later this year.
All of us at the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) are deeply saddened at the passing of Karen Hobert Flynn, President of Common Cause. She was a tireless fighter for democracy.
I’m one of the 84 million Americans who get our health care through Medicaid. And I’m one of the 18 million who might lose it starting this spring unless our policymakers take action. I went to college, got a degree, and planned on being self-sufficient. But in my early 20s, I was struck by an autoimmune condition that caused painful, chronic flare ups that affected my ability to stand or walk.
Beginning this week, tens of millions of Americans in 32 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands may have less to eat. That’s because increased SNAP aid approved by Congress in 2020 as part of COVID-19 relief legislation – called “emergency allotments” (EAs) — comes to an end beginning March 1.
The essentiality of SNAP edition. When the Great Recession took root in 2008 and worsened the following year, Congress did not act aggressively enough to protect America’s safety net. One result: as job losses escalated, hunger surged from 11.1 percent to 14.7 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But when the coronavirus pandemic caused an even worse (if shorter) disruption of the economy in the spring of 2020, Congress was more proactive. One of the measures it passed as part of an initial COVID-19 relief package was additional SNAP aid.
Earlier this week, the Biden Administration proposed a rule that would ban many refugees from seeking asylum in the United States. Under this rule, most asylum seekers who cross into the United States between ports of entry or who present themselves at a port of entry without a previously-scheduled appointment will be considered ineligible for asylum, unless they previously sought and were denied protection in a country they traveled through to get to the United States. CHN opposes this proposed rule.
Today Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) reintroduced the People Over Pentagon Act, which would cut $100 billion in defense spending and reallocate the funds to human needs programs. The Coalition on Human Needs immediately endorsed the legislation.