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

Talk of federal budgets has reached fever pitch in Washington, as politicians, advocates, and the public around the country try to address competing interests of profound importance (and score political points, too). Let’s get our heads on straight—this is important and we need to do it right. The economic recovery, our nation’s fiscal health, and the well-being and economic security of American families all rest in the balance. This post will share several principles we believe should guide the important work of deficit reduction, and then take a look at the House’s proposed Continuing Resolution. Soon, we’ll have another post analyzing the President’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal.

Without careful analysis and a balanced approach, deficit-reduction efforts could have unintended and unwanted consequences. Poorly crafted policies could inadvertently cost our country both jobs and the job supports that help individuals be productive and will help the economy thrive in the future. Austerity will prolong the weak economy; investments will strengthen it. Moreover, ill-conceived measures could weaken the middle class, making it out of reach for those with the greatest need of assistance—children, working families, seniors, people with disabilities, and many others. Finally, cuts to effective programs will prove a Pyrrhic victory; saving a bit of money now will cost us all much more in the end.

Ultimately, there are three ways to reduce the deficit: reduce spending, increase taxes, and grow the economy so the tax base increases. No one of these alone will end the deficit, all three must be balanced, and each is interrelated. Here are the principles that should guide the budget planning ahead:

Evenly Balance Spending Cuts and New Revenues; Austerity Is Not the Answer. Growth in the deficit is not due solely to spending; it’s due to an imbalance between spending and revenues. Trying to reduce the deficit through spending cuts alone would require making drastic cuts in effective and important investments that are key to long-term economic growth. In fact, according to the most recent evidence, the countries that  pursued austerity instead of stimulus had short-lived growth and are now lagging behind the United States. Cutting government spending in a time of recession will exacerbate the ongoing unemployment crisis by causing significant job loss. Thus, spending cuts should not account for more than half of the equation.

Evenly Balance Defense and Non-Defense Discretionary Spending. There cannot be any sacred cow; even military spending will have to be reduced. Requiring equal percentage cuts from defense and non-defense categories was endorsed by the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Avoid Making Low- and Moderate-Income Households Worse Off. As the President said in his State of the Union address, deficit reduction is necessary, “[b]ut let's make sure that we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

Make Wise Investments in the Future to Ensure the Economic Recovery and Economic Security for Americans. Strengthening our overall economic recovery demands that we invest in people. The President touched on this theme in his State of the Union address: “Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact.” To grow the economy, the country’s priority must be job creation. Higher employment and better jobs will rebuild the middle class and reduce the deficit. 

H.R. 1 – The House’s Continuing Resolution for 2011

The stars have aligned so that there are two strands of debate going on right now about the federal budget.

The President just unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget. You can check out the proposal in a visual format with the New York Times’ interactive budget graphic, and find highlights and analysis in a prior blogpost. Soon, we’ll have another post analyzing the President’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal.

The big debate this coming year will actually be about the budget for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. Congress never appropriated funds to government agencies for fiscal year 2011, and the current stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) expires on March 4. The House has passed a CR with $61 billion in cuts as compared to FY 2010 spending, which is approximately $100 billion compared to the administration’s 2011 funding request. These cuts would go into effect almost immediately and apply to this fiscal year, which ends September 30. The Senate will take up that bill next week. Both the House and Senate may consider shorter CRs to avert a government shutdown.

The House CR is unfairly weighted to harm our most vulnerable. It is over 80% domestic discretionary and international cuts, and less than 20% cuts from military, homeland security, and veterans programs. Wisely, the House stripped $450 million that had been slated to build a second, alternate engine for the F-35 airplane.

The House CR makes drastic cuts in a dizzying array of critical programs (you can find a 21-page spreadsheet of cuts here). These cuts are radical, imbalanced, and profoundly unwise:

·         Education: The CR provides $2 billion less than the President requested for Head Start in 2011 (which is $1 billion less than was spent in 2010), reducing enrollment by 218,000 children. The CR also provides $5 billion less for the Department of Education, which will reduce funding for K-12 schools that serve one million low-income children. And, the CR imposes a 17% reduction in the maximum Pell Grant award, which makes college affordable to many Americans.

·         Social Security Administration: The CR would cut $1 billion from the President’s FY 2011 request. These cuts will exacerbate the significant delays disabled Americans suffer when they apply for benefits.

·         Food security: The CR would reduce Meals on Wheels to the elderly, which help keep elderly people living in their own communities, which is both more dignified for our elders and more economical for the government. The CR would also reduce food safety inspections, which would actually require meat and poultry plants to shut down, causing losses of $11 billion.

·         Health: Many amendments to the CR would block funding of the Affordable Care Act and make cuts in critical initiatives, including cuts to community health centers and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood.

·         Housing: The CR would slash the public housing capital fund by $1 billion, which will further the disinvestment in public housing and likely lead to greater demolition in the future, reduce the critical Community Development Block Grant fund by nearly $3 billion, and reduce other housing programs that provide assistance for the elderly and disabled.

·         Jobs and Training: The CR entirely eliminates funding for Title I of the Workforce Investment Act, which provides job training to 8.5 million job seekers around the country, as well as YouthBuild and AmeriCorps, which are critical programs that create opportunities for public service for young Americans.

·         The House CR also reduces funding for science, health research, technology, and innovation. Such unwise cuts will cost the government more in the long run and will hamper our nation’s return to long-term prosperity.

This bill would add to our unemployment crisis. One million jobs will be lost if H.R. 1 goes into effect. The unemployment rate has been at or above 9% for nearly two years, and the Congressional Budget Office expects it to remain that way for the rest of the year. In fact it predicts elevated unemployment through 2016. The House CR would undermine the fragile recovery and the economic security of American families.

We need to make cuts to control the federal deficit, but doing so blindly will cost jobs and destabilize the fragile economic recovery. Austerity is not the answer. We must be fiscally responsible and still fulfill our responsibility to the most vulnerable in our society. By investing in education and training and funding innovation, we will have a stronger economy. A stronger economy will increase tax revenues in the future and help balance the budget, while strengthening the middle class and helping Americans make ends meet and pursue the American Dream.

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In the midst of this year’s tax season, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) ordered Republic Bank to stop providing refund anticipation loans (RALs). Republic Bank funds RALs for Jackson Hewitt, the second largest RAL provider in the U.S., as well as Liberty Tax.

2010 was bad year for RALs and 2011 isn’t looking any better. Last May, JPMorgan Chase voluntarily left the RAL market due to concerns with growing regulation and scrutiny and stigma associated with RALs. In August, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it would stop providing tax preparation sites with debt indicators, the tool used to determine whether consumers would be receiving a refund, which RAL providers use to underwrite the loans. Then in December, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency prohibited H&R Block’s lending partner, HSBC, from providing RALs, knocking H&R Block out of the 2011 RAL tax season.

Jackson Hewitt’s stock jumped when its major competitor, H&R Block was knocked out of the market, however, its stock dropped when the FDIC’s cease-and-desist order against its bank partner was issued.

A report recently released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury confirmed what consumer advocates have known all along: the primary markets for RALs are impoverished communities. RALs are concentrated in the country’s poorest areas, with 46.8 percent of RALs in only 10 percent of the nation’s zip codes. The majority of RAL users can be classified as “working poor,” with median adjusted gross income for RAL users at less than $20,000.

Republic has the right to request an administrative hearing to contest the FDIC’s orders in the next 60 days, and a final notice, if reached, would not be issued until 90 days after the administrative hearing. With the FDIC’s action against Republic Bank, the two remaining RAL lenders, Ohio Valley Bancorp and River City Bancorp, are undoubtedly fearful for their future. They, as well as consumer advocates, working to end these types of abusive loans will be watching to see what Republic does next.

This post was coauthored by Kelly Ward.

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On February 14, President Obama announced his budget blueprint for federal fiscal year 2012 (which starts on October 1, 2011) and beyond. According to the White House, the budget proposal:

• Freezes for five years the funding level of domestic discretionary programs (all non-entitlement programs that are appropriated each year, like Food Stamps, aid to education, and many social programs), which will produce a $400 billion deficit reduction and the lowest level of this kind of spending (as a percentage of the economy) since Eisenhower was president.
• Over the next decade, reduces the deficit by over $1 trillion, with two-thirds of the reduction coming from spending cuts.
• Ends the Bush-era tax breaks for high-income earners.
• Promotes electric cars, clean electricity, and reduced energy use in large buildings.
• Preserves maximum Pell grants, but cuts year-round and graduate school aspects of the Pell program.
• Supports 100,000 new science, technology, and math teachers and imports the Race to the Top competitive concept into funding for early childhood education, universities, school districts, and job training.
• Expands surface transportation improvements and broadband installation.
• Makes 200 funding terminations or cuts totaling $33 billion in FY12, including cutting Community Development Block Grants by $300 million and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by $2.5 billion.
• Cuts $78 billion from the Pentagon’s spending plan over the next five years, which results in zero real growth for defense spending.

There are many, many more features to the budget announcement. This is just the Administration’s blueprint. It is subject to dozens of hearings in Congress, many committee votes, and ultimately a number of floor votes on appropriations bills, all of which are aimed at producing a final budget before next October 1. That is a feat that rarely happens in recent years; indeed, Congress never passed a budget for the current year, and the government is operating on continuing resolutions.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, usually a strong supporter of domestic spending priorities, has released a statement emphasizing the importance of the deficit reduction aspects of the President’s plan and supporting most of the austerity measures (other than the LIHEAP cut). But critics on the left are unhappy with the domestic spending cuts that they feel could have been funded by deeper defense cuts or higher taxes on the wealthy.

On the other hand, the reaction from the Republican-controlled House has criticized the Administration’s plan for not cutting enough. The Republicans’ own proposal continues the tax cuts for the wealthy and would impose cuts to vital programs that are several orders of magnitude larger and wider than those in the Obama plan.

The cavernous divide between the Administration’s proposal and the House Republican proposal sets up the budget debate for the coming year. Since the election gave control of the House to the Republicans, it will be impossible to pass a budget without them. That and the magnitude of the deficit are the twin realities facing the Administration. The situation seems ripe for a showdown next fall. In fact, the House Republicans are spoiling for a fight even before that—in the next few weeks they are threatening to withhold passage of an expansion of the national debt limit, as hostage for current year budget cuts. In the past, the debt limit has been sacred ground that even the most doctrinaire legislators have left out of the partisan games. Default on our debts and international pariah status has never before been an option, but now we have a new breed of zealots who do not seem to care about that.

In that context, the President’s plan can be seen as an early gambit in the struggle to win over the majority of the public— that is, to win the center. If a showdown comes, which side will the public perceive to be responsibly tackling the deficit while protecting important priorities, and which side will be perceived as irresponsibly extreme?

The Administration’s suggested cuts to programs that help low-income people are deeply concerning and should be re-thought. But budgets are also about values and the big picture national direction. The big picture struggle in this budget involves starkly different approaches to the deficit, national revenues, and the ongoing role of government spending in the creation of jobs, opportunity, and social justice. It is hard to overstate the importance of this larger struggle as the country heads into a watershed election season in 2012. The President’s budget plan is a move in a game that is much bigger than one year’s budget.

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The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, passed in December, not only benefits low-income, working families and the unemployed but also supports policies that provide relief for working mothers and female-headed households. Tax credits such as the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) help reduce poverty and promote financial stability among low-income, working families. Such families are disproportionately female-headed households. One-third of working mothers are the sole wage-earners in the family—they are the heads of households or their spouses are out of work.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) expanded the CTC and the EITC to include more families with larger tax credit amounts; the tax agreement extends the expansion and includes other supportive policies that benefit women and low-income families. According to a report by the White House, women represent 60 percent of the parents benefiting from the EITC and CTC expansion and will continue to benefit from the recent extension.

The CTC assists low- and moderate-income families with children by reducing their federal tax burden. The ARRA’s expanded provisions allowed for a lower-income threshold to qualify for the credit and increased the credit from $500 to $1,000, letting more of a family’s income to be counted toward the credit. These provisions have been extended for two more years. Eight million women and six million families headed by a single mother will benefit from the larger CTC because of the extension. The CTC has been regarded as a powerful tool for fighting poverty among families with children.

The EITC supplements the wages of low-income, working women and families by offsetting federal payroll and income taxes. The tax agreement extends the ARRA expansion of a higher credit amount for families with three or more children and reduces the marriage penalty. The EITC lifts more children out of poverty than any other single program or category of programs. The agreed-upon extension means that about six million women and one million families headed by single mothers will receive an expanded EITC tax credit.

All this will direct substantial resources to women and families headed by single mothers and alleviate their economic hardship. Moreover, the tax agreement contains provisions that benefit all low-income families, students, and the unemployed:

• Workers’ take-home pay will be larger. The tax agreement cuts for two years the rate for the individual payroll taxes used to fund Social Security by 2 percent. This will boost workers’ take-home pay and will keep 900,000 workers out of poverty while stimulating the sluggish economy.
• Federal unemployment benefits are extended through 2011. The extension will prevent seven million jobless workers from losing essential income support. This provision had been estimated to create 600,000 to 900,000 jobs next year alone. The extension ensures that workers have access to financial support while they search for work; it also benefits families with children.
• The American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) is extended. The AOTC provides a partially refundable tax credit of up to $2,500, making college costs and tuition more affordable for students and families. The tax agreement makes permanent the deduction of student loan interest—a tax incentive that provides relief for those paying off student loans. This will have a favorable effect on women’s economic achievement and growth.

These specific provisions in the tax agreement protect working mothers, low-income families, students, and the unemployed in many respects. Increasing take home pay, reducing the tax burden for low-income families, and providing support for jobless workers are all effective antipoverty policies and a sound economic stimulus as well.

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People with disabilities have lower employment levels, report lower levels of savings, and are more likely to experience poverty than those without disabilities. The inextricable connection between disability and poverty requires special attention to developing policies and programs to give people the ability to save, acquire assets, and permanently escape poverty.

An important part of understanding the link between disability and poverty is looking at employment issues. Among working-age people with a disability, just under half reported being employed at some time in 2005. Employment drops as the severity of the disability increases.

Lack of employment and underemployment mean that people with disabilities are more likely to experience income poverty. In “Long-Term Poverty and Disability Among Working-Age Adults,” Peiyun She and Gina A. Livermore report that almost half of adults living below the poverty line have a disability. People with disabilities account for a larger share of those experiencing income poverty than people in any single minority or ethnic group, or all of those groups combined. Of course, people of all racial and ethnic groups experience disability; the point is that disparities between those with disabilities and those without deserve the same kind of attention as other forms of inequality, especially in antipoverty advocacy.

One of the most common and effective asset building programs is Individual Development Accounts (or IDAs). An IDA is a matched savings account that allows low income families to save and build assets. IDAs that are federally funded through the Assets for Independence Program (AFI) can be used to save for a home, education or start a small business. Though funded by the government, AFI IDAs are administered by local nonprofits who partner with financial institutions to actually deliver the program. These IDAs are a powerful tool for people with disabilities because people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can participate in IDA programs without losing their benefits.

It should be noted, however, that AFI IDAs have their limitations. For example, often times IDA programs have an “earned” income requirement from employment. So a person whose only income is from SSI could not save into an IDA since they would not meet the earned income requirement. Another limitation of AFI IDAs is that assistive technology purchases are not considered a “qualified” purpose.

In order to address these shortcomings, the Assets for Independence Reauthorization Act of 2010 (H.R. 6354) was introduced last year. This legislation proposed reauthorizing the Assets for Independence Act to provide for operating new programs and renewing existing programs, and enhancing program flexibility. In addition to raising the authorization limit from $25 million to $75 million, it aimed to expand eligible education costs to include costs of preparatory courses for professional licensing or education examination, and room and board and transportation costs including commuting expenses, necessary to enable attendance. It also proposed reforming the adjusted gross income test by expanding eligibility standards to include 80% of the median area income.

Despite the failure to pass H.R. 6354, advocates are developing various methods to create a better environment for people with disabilities to build assets and achieve self-sufficiency. In November 2009, the Shriver Center hosted its first webinar on bringing together the disability and asset-building communities. Moreover, the Shriver Center published an article by Karen K. Harris and Hannah Weinberger-Divack in Clearinghouse Review, Accessible Assets: Bringing Together the Disability and Asset-Building Communities,  that examines the barriers and reformative measures necessary to improve asset building for people with disabilities.

On February 17, 2011, the Shriver Center and the Abilities Fund will host a free follow-up webinar on recent asset development strategies for people with disabilities. Register here to learn about asset development strategies and innovative new programs for people with disabilities.

This article was coauthored by Ji Won Kim.

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The Great Recession has undermined the economic security of people and communities across America, including the poor. There were 43.6 million Americans living in poverty in 2009, an astounding 17 percent increase in the two years since the Great Recession began in 2007. With poverty at such a rising tide, never has it been more important for our elected representatives to take effective action to fight poverty.

Each year the Shriver Center publishes its Poverty Scorecard, which grades the performance of every Member of Congress on the fifteen or so most important poverty-related votes of the year. Experts in approximately twenty different subject areas help us identify which votes to use. The Scorecard’s purpose is to hold our Senators and Representatives accountable – every single one of them – for their efforts to fight poverty, or their failure to do so.

The major legislation Congress has considered over the past two years reflects an evolving federal response to the Great Recession. In 2009, there were several bills in the housing field, especially relating to foreclosure. In 2010, much of the focus was on extending unemployment insurance benefits and spurring job creation. Examples include: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment, votes to extend the TANF jobs program, multiple unemployment insurance extensions, the Disaster Relief and Summer Jobs Act. Major consumer protection legislation and national health care reform were also produced in 2009 and 2010 in response to the troubled economy. Summaries of important legislation, including the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, appear in the Poverty Scorecard.

As in 2009, several major pieces of legislation that will have a significant impact in fighting poverty were enacted into law in 2010. These include the Affordable Care Act (national health care reform), reauthorization of the federal child nutrition programs, a series of extensions in the weeks of eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits, bills that sought to stimulate job creation, and a package of major fiscal relief to the states.

The final version of each of these bills was the product of significant compromise. Health care reform did not include a public option. Child nutrition reauthorization was at a lower funding level than recommended by the President and the cost was offset by a cut in future SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program, formerly known as food stamps) benefits, as was the cost of major fiscal relief to the states. Unemployment insurance benefit extensions were generally for short periods and did not include extensions of many other anti-poverty programs such as the TANF emergency contingency fund. Job creation initiatives were greatly scaled down from the bills that were introduced. And then there was the greatest compromise of all, a 13-month extension of federal extended unemployment insurance benefits and low-income tax credits in return for extending tax cuts for the wealthy and lowering the tax on large estates.

As a result of the significant compromises that occurred, half of the 16 bills included in the Poverty Scorecard passed both the Senate and House and were signed into law, a higher percentage than in previous years. Of the 8 other bills, 2 failed to obtain the 3/5 vote required to invoke cloture and move to a final vote in the Senate and 6 were considered in the House only. At least some of these bills were not considered in the Senate because of the Senate rule which prevents legislation from moving to a final vote unless there is a super-majority of 60 per cent voting in favor of “cloture”, commonly called the filibuster rule. The Senate should eliminate the profoundly undemocratic filibuster rule and allow legislation to be voted on and approved by a simple majority.

The Scorecard includes a summary of each vote we scored that describes the measure that was voted on and why it was important in fighting poverty.

With the help of national anti-poverty experts in 20 different fields, the Shriver Center has identified the 16 House votes and 14 Senate votes over the past year that were the most significant in fighting poverty. Each member is assigned a letter grade, A though F, based on their overall voting performance. Members with a perfect voting record earned an A+ and members who voted against reducing poverty every single time got an F-. Members who did not vote on enough bills were not graded. In total, we graded 428 of 435 Representatives and 99 of 100 Senators.

Distribution of Grades for Senators and Representatives

Congressional Delegations with Poor Voting Records

We compared each state’s poverty ranking with the average voting rank of its congressional delegation. As in past years, we often found a negative correlation between a state’s poverty rate and the voting record of its members, i.e., the states with the highest poverty rates often had delegations with the lowest average score in voting to fight poverty.

Congressional Delegations with Good Voting Records

In contrast, Congressional delegations in several states around the country with higher than average poverty rates had good records in voting to fight poverty.

Even states with comparatively low poverty rates have a lot of poor residents. The Congressional delegations in five states with relatively low poverty rates had especially good records in voting to fight poverty.

The Poverty Scorecard is a powerful tool that advocates, media, and citizens can use to evaluate the performance of their elected representatives. The goal of the Poverty Scorecard is to enable citizens to read about how well their legislator stood up and fought for the interest of low income communities. Readers can even use the action page to contact their legislator. Our representatives must be held accountable.

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Published reports indicate that Illinois Governor Quinn’s office may soon announce extraordinary, mid-year (FY11) cuts in human services funding in the order of $400 million. There are published reports that the child care assistance program (CCAP) alone could be slashed by $100 million.

Cuts of this magnitude would cause devastating cuts in services under any circumstances. However, the effect of these cuts would be greatly magnified by the fact that there would be only four months left in FY11 when the cuts take effect. This means that services would have to be cut by three times as much as they would have been cut at the start of the fiscal year to obtain comparable savings. Looking to the future, the service levels after these mid-year cuts would likely be the baseline for future budgets.

Just what effect would the FY11 mid-year cuts under consideration have on program services? As of December 2010, there were approximately 188,000 children in the CCAP. A $100 million cut in the CCAP's budget for the remaining four months of FY11 would be approximately a one-third cut in the CCAP's budget. The number of kids affected, and exactly how they would be affected, would depend on how the cut was implemented. But, the straight math, for estimation purposes, is that at least 63,000 children would have to be cut from the program over the remainder of FY11 to save $100 million.

One strong possibility is that intake would be stopped. This would mean that when a low-income single parent gets a job, she would no longer be eligible for the child care assistance she needs to get her child into quality care and make it possible for her to work. An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 children per month would be unable to access child care assistance if intake is frozen. Illinois has never instituted a waiting list since the CCAP began in 1997.

Cutting child care assistance is bad public policy all the way around. It is about the worst policy decision there is in terms of killing jobs during a recession with unemployment rates hovering around 10 percent. Every dollar of child care assistance both makes it possible for a low-income single parent to work and pays the wages of a child care worker. It also has the third important benefit of enhancing the life prospects of the child receiving care. Let’s hope the Governor and his advisers step back from the precipice and decide not to proceed with the threatened cuts to child care and other vital human services.

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It’s been two years since Congress and President Obama enacted legislation to strengthen the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known here in Illinois as All Kids. And at this birthday party, Illinois’s families no longer have to wish and hold their breath when they blow out the candles. 

The children’s health law has helped Illinois cover more uninsured children through All Kids. As a result, 1.6 million children can get the checkups and preventive care they need to stay healthy and see the doctor when they get sick or injured.

That means parents struggling to keep their families afloat during tough economic times can have peace of mind that a playground injury or flu outbreak won’t drive the family deeper into debt. It means Illinois uses health dollars wisely – keeping kids healthy, rather than spending more on emergency room care for problems we should have prevented. And it means Illinois’s federal tax dollars come back into our economy, to protect local health care jobs.

Help us to celebrate this important anniversary. Thank your representatives in the General Assembly in Springfield for their continued support of All Kids and let them know that maintaining coverage for children should continue to be a top priority this year. Spread the word to parents and others in your community about All Kids, so we can help even more uninsured children to get the care they need to grow and thrive.

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The Social Security Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Minimum Wage Act were all landmark laws that changed our country for the better. They secured essential freedoms for all Americans and improved our quality of life. All were initially struck down by lower court judges unwilling politically or unable intellectually to embrace the fact that our Constitution permits that kind of progress. An activist conservative lower court federal judge in Pensacola, Florida, has now made his contribution to this history.   

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled this week that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) provision requiring most Americans to obtain private health insurance, or else face a modest tax penalty, was unconstitutional. He is the only judge who has adjudicated challenges to the law to be so aggressively activist as to strike down the whole law. Unlike the other judges who have ruled the “individual mandate” to be unconstitutional, Judge Vinson went further and held that the individual mandate was so intertwined with the rest of the law that it could not be “severed” from it, and so he invalidated the whole law.

The Justice Department immediately announced that it plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The score in the cases now stands as follows: 13 challenges have been filed in federal courts since March 23, 2010; ten suits have upheld the law, and three rulings have found all or part of the ACA unconstitutional. So far, judges appointed by Republican presidents have ruled consistently against the ACA, while Democratic judicial appointees have ruled for it. And in the most recent case, all but one of the state officials who filed suit are Republican. 

At the heart of these lawsuits is the individual responsibility provision. This part of the ACA says that most individuals who can afford it will be required to obtain basic health insurance coverage or else pay a fee to help offset the cost of providing medical care to uninsured individuals. If affordable coverage is not available to an individual, he or she will be eligible for an exemption. The individual responsibility provision is an extremely important tool to help ensure that healthy people have health insurance policies, too; otherwise, only the sick or old may choose to have coverage, which would drive up costs for consumers and insurers alike. Every insured family pays an average of $1,000 more a year in premiums to cover the care of those who have no insurance, and the cost of uncompensated care was an estimated $43 billion in 2008.

Like the Virginia judge, Judge Vinson did not issue an injunction against the ACA’s implementation. Indeed, Judge Vinson rejected a constitutional challenge to the part of the ACA that will expand Medicaid in 2014 to individuals with household incomes under 133 percent of the poverty level. The plaintiff state officials had argued that this expansion unlawfully imposes on their sovereignty; however the Judge Vincent held that there is no infringement because a state can choose whether to participate in the Medicaid program.

Nevertheless, Judge Vinson’s ruling invalidating the whole law (as “un-severable” from the individual mandate provision) means that the 26 state officials who are plaintiffs in the case are in an ambiguous position as to whether they will continue implementation activities in their states. They might gamble on the ruling of this fringe judge holding up on appeal. Wisconsin’s governor, a highly partisan Republican, has said he will stop implementing the law. That is unfortunate for the people who live in Wisconsin and in any other state where a governor decides to exalt his or her ideology over the needs of the citizens that are being addressed by the ACA.

Americans—including lots of them who live in Wisconsin—cannot afford to lose the benefits already flowing from provisions of the Affordable Care Act that have nothing to do with the individual mandate, including discounts for seniors struggling with the cost of lifesaving prescriptions, tax credits for small businesses struggling to provide coverage for employees, protections for children who have pre-existing conditions, and coverage for young adults up to age 26.

In the midst of our nation’s jobs crisis, Americans are counting on the Affordable Care Act to put them back in control of their own healthcare, stop insurance company abuses, and lower escalating healthcare costs. Judge Vinson and at least some of the state officials in the case have other priorities.

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