The Shriver Brief : Poverty Law Commentary & Insights : Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law : Affordable Housing, Healthcare Reform

This week, Illinois received national recognition from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the exceptional strides it has made in covering children. As part of this recognition, Illinois was rewarded a $15 million performance bonus. Illinois is one of the top 15 states in the country at cutting government waste and making taxpayer dollars go further to protect the health of Illinois children.

Research shows that the best results for children’s health and for the most efficient use of public funds are accomplished by quickly connecting children to preventive health care and then making sure that care is not interrupted. The Illinois performance bonus is a tribute to the public servants in our state who work every day to make the Illinois All Kids program function in this smart and effective way for Illinois children. In so doing, they make government work better and more efficiently for all Illinoisans.  

All Kids has had bi-partisan support from its beginning in Illinois, including the minimizing of bureaucratic red tape. Until now, leaders on both sides of the aisle have been committed to the effort to help families get the best kind of health care for their children, through coverage, quick connection to preventive care, and continuity of care. This is not only the best way to achieve good health outcomes for the children and to accomplish short- and long-term savings on their health care, but it has now also generated two years of federal performance bonuses (Illinois received $9 million last year). 

We urge Illinois leaders to continue this successful course for All Kids use these well-deserved performance bonus funds to maintain this commitment and sustain this progress in securing Illinois children’s health. This is especially important during challenging economic times as families need the security of knowing that programs like All Kids are there for their children.

Andrea Kovach coauthored this article.

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The 2010 legislative session will pass without Congress reauthorizing cash assistance for poor families with children (called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF); instead, its funding was simply continued at current levels for the next year. Reauthorization will likely occur next year, and Congress has already begun hearings on how to improve TANF. When Congress gets around to reauthorizing TANF, it must mend our frayed safety net. Ultimately, the key to improving TANF will be to measure success not by caseload reductions but by the elimination and alleviation of poverty. 

The federal poverty line in the U.S. for a family of four is just $22,050. In Illinois, 15% of families with children under 18 were poor in 2009. Those who live in extreme poverty have income totaling less than half of the poverty line. It is unconscionable that the safety net in an industrial democracy such as our own still leaves nearly nineteen million people living in extreme poverty in 2009. In Illinois 8.5% of children are growing up in extreme poverty, and many are not being helped by TANF at all. The same picture is playing out around the country.

Since federal welfare reform was enacted in the 1996, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that caseloads have plummeted across the country—declining 87% in just 10 years. Meanwhile, extreme poverty is 18% higher than it was in 2000. The decline in TANF caseloads is due almost entirely to a huge rise in the number of eligible families who are not receiving benefits. Even before the recession, the GAO concluded that increasing the enrollment of eligible families to 1995 levels would lift 800,000 children nationally out of extreme poverty. Welfare has declined, but the real human need for it has not.

A few months ago, the Senate Committee on Finance concluded a “Hearing on Welfare Reform: A New Conversation on Women and Poverty.” The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law submitted testimony to that hearing. Among other suggested reforms, we highlighted the need to fundamentally rededicate TANF to its purpose—to be a robust and flexible safety net to lift people out of poverty. 

Here in Illinois, we have made significant strides to improve TANF through Public Act 96-0866, (described more fully here), which went into effect on July 1, 2010. By making benefits available sooner, and to more poor individuals, our TANF program has become a more robust safety net during the recession. In fact, Illinois has experienced a relatively significant increase in TANF receipt during the recession, rising approximately 40% in two years and 15% in just the months since Public Act 96-0866 went into effect on July 1, 2010. But we are still not talking about many families; only one in nine Illinois families in poverty receives TANF.

TANF reauthorization presents the opportunity to rededicate the program to its most critical goal, the alleviation of poverty, while at the same time furthering the aims of reducing dependency on aid and strengthening families. It is time to reauthorize TANF.

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The White House held an Environmental Justice Forum on December 15, 2010 – the first ever such forum. Participants included Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley, and Attorney General Eric Holder (recipient of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s 2010 Equal Justice Award), as well as over 100 environmental groups. The forum reinforced President Obama’s goal of requiring federal agencies to consider environmental justice impacts in their daily decision-making. 

The forum comes after EPA’s Jackson and CEQ’s Sutley reconvened the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice for the first time in 10 years, and the White House announced its recommitment to the Executive Order on Environmental Justice, which requires federal agencies to collaborate to further the goal of ensuring that minority, low-income, and other underrepresented communities do not bear the brunt of environmental degradation.

In his remarks, Attorney General Holder said that the Justice Department’s Environmental Justice Initiative will address the link between race, economics, employment, and environmental sustainability by integrating environmental justice goals into its enforcement and strategic planning. He stated that it is “unconscionable” that minority and low-income neighborhoods bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a potent tool for enforcement with the “potential to transform lives and strengthen communities.” He called on all Justice Department attorneys to “start thinking of environmental justice as a civil rights issue” and went on to say that “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—a father of our nation’s environmental justice movement—may have put it best when he declared that, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”

Echoing Holder’s comments, CEQ’s Sutley said that the Forum was the start of a dialogue across agencies to promote a healthy environment for all people, including traditionally underrepresented communities who are overburdened with environmental negatives. She noted that environmentally degraded communities not only fare worse on health issues, but that a poor environment can limit economic opportunities.

The forum also spotlighted several environmental justice initiatives that the Obama Administration has undertaken. For instance, the EPA, Department of Transportation, and Department of Housing and Urban Development have already collaborated in a Partnership for Sustainable Communities grant program to promote walkable, liveable, and healthy communities, by awarding grants to several communities and community groups around the country.  

The EPA’s senior advisor on environmental justice reported on Plan EJ2014, part of EPA’s initiative to expand the conversation on environmental justice. The goals of the Plan are to:

• Protect health in communities over-burdened by pollution.
• Empower communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
• Establish partnerships with local, state, tribal, and federal organizations to achieve healthy and sustainable communities.

The White House emphasized its commitment to addressing climate change issues, with CEQ’s Sutley reiterating the White House’s commitment to ensuring that low-income communities are provided with the tools to cope with global warming, as it will hit them the hardest. For an in-depth look at the meaning of climate change and a green economy for low-income people and communities and key actions legal advocates can take in response, see the Shriver Center’s Clearinghouse Review, September-October 2010 Special Issue Climate Change and a Green Economy: New Advocacy Opportunities.

Responding to questions regarding sustainable communities, Sutley noted that the Department of Agriculture, Department of Health andHuman Services, and First Lady Michelle Obama have cooperated to created “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” a locally grown food initiative. Sutley also noted that President recently signed legislation reauthorizing the nation’s child nutrition programs; the law promotes healthy eating at home and in schools, gardens, and locally grown food sources. And she mentioned the America’s Great Outdoor Initiative, which is spearheaded by the Department of Interior and aims create and preserve green spaces in communities around the country.

A video recording of the White House Forum on Environmental Justice is available on YouTube (Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV). Readers can also see a video of the live chat session held after the forum, “Open for Questions: Environmental Justice.”

Kathleen Donahue McNally coauthored this article.

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The Chicago Tribune’s story about the end of the Put Illinois to Work program (“Quinn to end temporary jobs program next month”) supports the Tribune’s editorial narrative that government programs are wasteful and ill-conceived, but only by putting the program in a false light. The Tribune incorrectly assumes that the goal of Put Illinois to Work was to place the participants in permanent jobs, and then it criticizes the failure to achieve that goal.

Put Illinois to Work has provided temporary jobs to 25,000 Illinois parents and youth who have been unable to obtain employment in an economy where there are five job-seekers for every job. Most of those temporary jobs have been in the private sector.

The premise of the Tribune’s story is that the program has failed in its “ultimate goal of workers getting full-time employment.” The Tribune cites no authority for its assertion that this is the program’s ultimate goal—it just says it was the program’s “idea.”

But permanent employment was never the program’s objective. Rather, the main goal, at which it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, was to create temporary jobs that would provide participants with income and job skills and keep them off welfare. Another main goal was to provide economic stimulus by putting money in the pockets of people who would spend it. In this economy, where there are few permanent jobs to be had, obtaining permanent jobs was a by-product but not a main goal of the program. 

The program in part has filled a need created by limitations in the unemployment insurance program. More than one-third of unemployed workers do not qualify for unemployment benefits when they lose their jobs because they did not work long enough, they worked part-time, or for other technical reasons.

The story also failed to mention that for an investment of $10 million in Put Illinois to Work, Illinois was able to leverage $200 million in federal funding—$1 for every $19 in return. Had Illinois not availed itself of this federal funding, it would have gone to other states.

Federal funding ended September 30 not because “the money ran out” but because of pre-election maneuvering in Congress. This left Governor Quinn with a choice—pull the plug on the program or keep it going for two months in hopes that Congress would extend the program during the lame duck session in November. Governor Quinn decided to extend the program based on strong indications that Congress would extend federal funding. And Congress probably would have done so had Senate Republicans not refused to consider any other legislation until tax cuts for millionaires were extended.

This left Governor Quinn with another choice—end the program on November 30 as scheduled or have the decency to extend it through the holidays. He chose common decency.

In this time of scarce resources, when it’s necessary to have an honest debate about the merits of funding government programs vs. cutting spending, let’s have that debate based on the facts. 

A version of this article was published in the Chicago Tribune's Voice of the People on December 21, 2010.

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States can relax a little about the impact health care reform will have on their budgets, particularly the large expansion of Medicaid. States have been made skittish about their state budgets because of structural deficits and recession-driven shortfalls. Thus, even the fact that the Medicaid expansion will be 100% federally funded for the first few years, and ultimately 90% federally funded from 2020 onward, has not been completely comforting. The states are nervous about predictions that some analysts have made that the implementation of national health reform will add difficult levels of new spending to their budgets. This has the potential to dampen states’ willingness and confidence to embark on aggressive implementation efforts. 

But the predictions of dire impact on state budgets are not accurate. At least three studies now estimate that health care reform will have a positive impact on state budgets, reducing spending in an array of areas to more than offset the marginal increase in state funds spent on Medicaid.

First, there is a very recent report issued by the Urban Institute (commissioned by First Focus), “Net Effect of the Affordable Care Act on State Budgets.” The report compares the increased costs states will experience due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults in 2014 with the savings states will realize from the law. The report takes into account savings that will come when states move people currently covered by Medicaid at income levels above 133% of the poverty level into the private insurance exchange, where the subsidies for premiums and co-pays are entirely federally financed. In Illinois, the FamilyCare program currently covers adults up to 185% of the poverty level with a 50% federal match. The Urban Institute’s report also takes into account the savings states will realize when new Medicaid beneficiaries no longer use uncompensated health care (mostly emergency room care) and state-funded mental health services.

The study does not take into account significant scheduled increases in the federal matching rate for Children’s Health Insurance or a variety of other health care cost savings that will be brought about under the reform law, but nevertheless it finds that state savings under the Affordable Care Act will exceed state costs by between $40.6 and $131.9 billion during 2014-19.

The Urban Institute study is consistent with earlier findings by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and the Lewin Group that, on balance, states will realize significant net budgetary gains from the legislation. The contrary analyses, among other flaws, recognize or describe only state costs and not potential state gains.

The CEA report profiled 16 states, finding that each would experience net fiscal gains from the Affordable Care Act, totaling between $3 billion and $4 billion a year for all 16 states combined. The states were Arkansas, California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wyoming.

The Lewin report found that, on balance, the Affordable Care Act will save states $106.8 billion during 2010-19, including $100.6 billion in 2014-19.

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On December 9, 2010, the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty released its plan entitled “Building a Pathway to Dignity & Work." This ambitious plan includes concrete steps, laid out in chronological stages, to cut extreme poverty in Illinois in half in just five years.

Extreme poverty is defined as 50% of the Federal Poverty Line. So, extreme poverty means stark hardship; a family of four living in extreme poverty has income of $11,025 a year or less. In Illinois 6% of our residents live in extreme poverty--that’s more than 750,000 individuals, and there are seven counties where more than one in ten residents lives in extreme poverty.

The Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty was formed by law in Illinois in 2008 to be a standing, permanent commission to work towards eliminating poverty in the state. The Commission is comprised of representatives from the legislature, the governor’s office, the relevant state agencies, and the private sector. The idea of the Commission grew out of the “From Poverty to Opportunity Campaign” of Heartland Alliance, which also provided the staffing for the Commission. Wendy Pollack, Director of the Women’s Law and Policy Project at the Shriver Center, is a member of the Commission and serves on the Making Work Accessible committee.

The goal of eliminating poverty is deeply rooted in Illinois and is central to the international human rights agenda. The preamble to the Illinois Constitution lists the primary purposes of our state government, and one core priority to “eliminate poverty.” The United Nations lists the elimination of extreme poverty as one of its eight Millennium Development Goals.

The Poverty Commission’s recommendations include:

• Increasing the proportion of eligible individuals who utilize federal and state public benefits;
• Making quality child care more affordable;
• Expanding comprehensive scholarships to low-income community college students, which combine financial aid with mentoring and support to help students succeed;
• Establishing a statewide transitional jobs program, which will engage 40,000 individuals each year in time-limited, wage-paying positions coupled with case management to help transition them into the workforce permanently;
• Utilizing at least 10% of state affordable housing resources to address the housing needs of families experiencing extreme poverty, and increasing rental subsidies for seniors and people with disabilities; and
• Creating contextualized English instruction within vocational training in specific high-growth industries.

While this report is the culmination of years of effort, it is also the first step. Now we have to see to it that the proposals identified in the report are put into place. There’s a lot of work to do, and succeeding in this ambitious agenda will take the cooperation of committed individuals around the state. To follow the campaign and the efforts of the Commission, check out Heartland’s blog. To endorse the Commission’s report and get involved, fill out an online endorsement.

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The number of people living in poverty in 2009 was the largest in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available. There were 43.6 million people in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million in 2008, and the nation's official poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008. And the number of people experiencing asset poverty is likely much higher.

The federal government uses tax policy as one tool to encourage American families to build assets, such as savings and business ownership, that help families survive financial crises and strengthen the national economy. The U.S.’s current asset-building strategy focuses heavily on tax incentives. In 2009, close to $400 billion were spent on promoting asset growth, with the vast majority being through tax expenditures. Only $37 billion were spent on direct budget outlays, meaning that less than one percent of overall federal expenditures went to directly subsidize asset-building activities. Unfortunately, this tax-based approach to asset building disproportionately benefits individuals who already own significant assets.

A recent study of asset-building expenditures for 2009, Upside Down by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), reveals that America’s current asset-building strategy does little to help low-income families build assets. According to the CFED study, families that make less than $19,000 a year received only 0.04 percent of the benefits from asset-building tax expenditures in 2009, averaging out to about $5 per taxpayer. In contrast, those with incomes higher than $160,000 received an average of $5,109 per taxpayer. In order to reduce the number of Americans in poverty, federal and state asset-building tax policies need to target those most in need, not those who already have.

Take for example policies aimed at promoting homeownership. The federal government directly spends less than 1percent of the money used to encourage homeownership on financial support for housing subsidies and assistance, but spends 99 percent on tax expenditures that overwhelmingly benefit individuals with higher incomes. In 2009, 80 percent of the value of mortgage and property tax deductions went to individuals earning more than $80,000 a year. In fact, the government actually ends up discouraging low-income families from owning homes by making rental assistance more available than mortgage assistance.

The current debate over tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers is another reflection of tax expenditures that are upside down. As Congress seeks to reach compromise over these tax policies, we as Americans need to call attention to the fact that a continuation of current policies will further increase the ever-widening wealth gap in the United States. At some point a more equitable distribution of tax expenditures is needed to ensure that low- and middle-income families are not left in poverty while the more affluent continue to accumulate more and more benefits. 

This article was coauthored by Kelly Ward.

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It has become fashionable to attack President Obama for a perceived lack of leadership and resolve. These attacks have come from all directions. Undoubtedly the tax cut compromise brokered by the President will give new fodder to his implacable critics on the Right and the Left. The bottom line, however, is that President Obama succeeded in negotiating the best possible deal out there for the unemployed and those in working poverty, while adhering to his principles and deferring until the next presidential election cycle the debate between cutting taxes for the rich and reducing the deficit. 

First, here is the financial situation that the President faced:

1. The program extending unemployment insurance benefits beyond 26 weeks for up to 99 weeks had expired on November 1. Two million people were going to lose their unemployment benefits by Christmas if no agreement was reached.
2. The progressive tax cuts enacted under the President – expanding the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, growing the college tuition tax credit, and the middle class make work pay tax cut – would have expired on January 1, and the average American’s taxes would have gone up $3,000.

Of course, the Right was faced with expiration of the tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% of Americans and reinstitution of the Estate Tax. Who was in a better position to hold out?

Second, here is the political situation that the President faced:

1. A new, very conservative Republican majority takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January.
2. Senate Republicans recently announced that they would block consideration of all other matters in the Senate until the tax cut extension issue was resolved.
3. Influential liberal Democrats had recently introduced legislation that would have extended unemployment insurance benefits for three months only.

The deal reached by the President:

1. Extends all Bush tax cuts, including the tax cut for the wealthiest 2%, for two years.
2. Preserves all of the progressive tax cuts enacted under President Obama (with a temporary reduction in the payroll deduction replacing the make work pay credit).
3. Makes slight concessions on the estate tax.
4. Continues eligibility for extended unemployment insurance benefits, which expired on November 1, for another 13 months, with no requirement that the cost be offset with cuts to other domestic programs.

In short, the deal reached by the President ensures that 2 million unemployed Americans will not lose their unemployment insurance benefits during the holiday season, that millions more will not lose their benefits next year, and that all of the progressive tax cuts for the working poor enacted during the Obama Administration will continue. It ends, on the most favorable terms available, a stalemate that is hurting low-income Americans every day it continues. The President got a lot more than other progressives were willing to settle for, while bringing the pain to an end.

The two-year extension of the tax cuts means that the issue of driving up the deficit by continuing tax cuts for the rich will be debated during the next presidential cycle. President Obama made it clear in his statement announcing the tax compromise that he strenuously opposes continuation of tax cuts for the rich. The President reached a political compromise, but there was no compromise on principle.

It’s time to move on.

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Mercedes Cruz, a Spanish-speaking mother of three in New York City, depends on public assistance benefits for survival. But ever since Ms. Cruz opened her public assistance case in 2007, her public assistance office has failed to provide her with a Spanish interpreter at her appointments. Her repeated requests for a Spanish-speaking caseworker have also been denied. Additionally, the office has frequently mailed Ms. Cruz important documents in English. Because Ms. Cruz could not understand the documents, she missed multiple deadlines – nearly resulting in the closure of her public assistance case. 

Ms. Cruz is now a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit brought by Legal Services NYC seeking proper enforcement of The Equal Access to Human Services Act of 2003 (Local Law 73). Local Law 73 is a New York City law requiring the city’s Human Resources Administration centers, which administer public assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid benefits in New York City, to provide limited-English-proficient (LEP) clients with translation and interpretation services. On paper, New York City’s LEP residents should be receiving adequate translation and interpretation services whenever they encounter city agencies. Not only are LEP New Yorkers protected by Local Law 73, but in July 2008 Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Executive Order 120, which requires all city agencies providing direct public services to ensure that LEP clients receive appropriate translation and interpretation services. Executive Order 120 also requires city agencies to develop and implement language access policies. 

Despite all of these legal protections, advocates continue to find that New York City’s LEP residents are being denied language assistance when they seek access to housing, health care, and public benefits. Accordingly, in August 2009 Legal Services NYC filed its lawsuit in state court on behalf of Ms. Cruz, and five other individual plaintiffs. In December 2009 Legal Services NYC added six more plaintiffs to its case, including MinKwon Center for Community Action, a Flushing-based group advocating on behalf of Korean Americans. Legal Services NYC now anticipates that depositions will begin in January 2011.

Ms. Cruz’s story is very familiar to attorneys and advocates who work with low-income LEP clients. Low-income LEP clients face challenges at every turn, even though Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination on the basis of individuals’ national origin – which includes the languages they speak. Accordingly, Title VI requires programs that receive federal assistance to provide LEP individuals with appropriate language access services. These services can include interpretation at meetings and court appearances as well as the translation of relevant documents. 

Any entity that receives federal funding, either directly or indirectly, is subject to Title VI, including the prohibition on discrimination on the basis of national origin. As a recent New York Times article discussed, police departments are subject to Title VI if they receive federal grant money. Two other groups of programs subject to the requirements of Title VI are state and county court systems and legal aid offices that receive federal funding. In December 2004 the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) published a helpful guidance document outlining LSC programs’ obligations toward their LEP clients. The May-June 2010 issue of Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Law and Policy contains three articles examining language access issues that are essential reading for legal aid attorneys or any practitioner representing LEP clients. In “Language Access in State Courts,” Laura K. Abel explains why Title VI obligates state and county courts to provide competent language access services to litigants, as well as how state and county court personnel can meet the requirements of Title VI. Abel also provides practical guidelines for court interpreter programs and suggestions for how advocates can improve state and county courts for their LEP clients.

Also in the May-June 2010 issue, Michael Mulé’s “Language Access 101” is a valuable resource for any legal aid attorney struggling with how to effectively and ethically represent LEP clients. Mulé outlines the responsibilities that legal aid attorneys have towards their LEP clients and provides pragmatic approaches for how they can assess the size and needs of their LEP populations. Lastly, in “How Effective Is Machine Translation of Legal Information?” Mulé and Claudia Johnson scrutinize one frequently-discussed solution to the problems faced by LEP clients: machine-translation. Their nuanced discussion of these services’ strengths and limitations suggests that for LEP clients such as Mercedes Cruz, progress towards full compliance with Title VI depends on the cultivation and pooling of language resources rather than a dependence on machine translation.

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On November 30, the day that the Put Illinois to Work (PITW) program was scheduled to end, Governor Quinn announced that he has extended the program through January 15. PITW provides $10/hour private and public sector jobs to approximately 25,000 low-income, unemployed Illinois workers. “I am extending this program today to keep thousands of people in Illinois at work through the holiday season,” said Gov. Quinn. 

Until September 30, PITW was largely paid for by the federal government with a funding stream created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Congress, however, failed to extend that funding beyond September 30. Just before PITW was originally scheduled to end on September 30, Governor Quinn extended the program through November 30. Extending PITW for another six weeks until January 15 will cost Illinois approximately $50 million in state general funds. PITW is a partnership between the Illinois Department of Human Services and Heartland Human Care Services.

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