Strengthening state economies and creating jobs – now and into the future – will require sensible, forward-looking state fiscal policies. States need to invest adequately in education, health care, transportation and workforce development. To do that, they need to generate sufficient revenue, and they need to do so in an equitable and transparent manner. This paper is a guide to fiscal policies that can create jobs now and prime states for long-term economic …

The House may soon consider two bills (H.R. 3576 and H.R. 3580) that would limit federal spending to levels similar to those in the House-passed budget resolution, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). These bills are part of a package of ten bills that Chairman Ryan and other committee members recently introduced to alter the federal budget process.[1] These two bills would require large cuts in federal spending that would likely fall disproportionately on …

Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow, and Chad Stone, Chief Economist, discuss what the encouraging January employment report indicates about job creation and economic growth. Chad Stone: “We’re smiling and the markets are smiling and this is actually a good jobs report. It’s one of the few good jobs reports we’ve had in this recovery. We had 240,000 jobs on private and government payrolls combined. 257,000 jobs in the private sector. 23 straight months of private …

Today's jobs report is encouraging, but we should judge it against the overall sluggishness of the economic recovery and a persistently large jobs deficit that remains after 23 straight months of private-sector job creation. Payroll employment is still 5.6 million jobs short of where it was at the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, there are four jobless workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment remains at an historic high level …

New data show that an approach to covering the uninsured that Newt Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation (CHT) largely designed and heavily promoted to Georgia policymakers — and that Georgia adopted in 2008 — has failed to produce the promised results. The Georgia plan features multiple tax breaks to expand the use of Health Savings Accounts tied to high-deductible insurance plans. CHT claimed it would reduce the number of uninsured Georgians dramatically, but …

Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and members of the Committee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify today and applaud you for holding this hearing on the issue that matters most to most Americans right now: opportunity, jobs, and the living standards of the broad middle class. Introduction: Current Conditions and the American Middle Class The current economy continues to expand in real GDP terms, as has been the case since the second half of 2009. Employment growth …

Unpaid wage claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act can support immigrant-worker organizing campaigns. Legal services organizations should prioritize wage-theft litigation with worker centers, as clients see better case results and extend the reach of the litigation to broader change. Advocates must beware of discovery tactics and retaliation aimed at stifling immigrant clients’ participation in employment cases.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Rebecca Smith, Cynthia Mark, & Anita Sinha, Protecting the Labor and Employment Rights of Immigrant Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2004)
• Cynthia Mark & Evonne Yang, The Power-One Campaign: Immigrant Worker Empowerment Through Law and Organizing (July-Aug. 2002)
• Marielena Hincapié, Opportunities for New Alliances to Protect the Rights of Undocumented Immigrant Workers (Jan.-Feb. 2001)
• Rick McHugh, Recognizing Wage and Hour Issues on Behalf of Low-Income Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2001)
• David T. Hutt, Ensuring Fair Wages? Subminimum Wages for Individuals with Disabilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (May-June 2011)
• Naomi Zauderer, Supporting Low-Income Workers: An Organizer’s Perspective (Jan.-Feb. 2001)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended the tax code to improve the community benefit delivered by nonprofit hospitals. The Act protects against aggressive billing and debt collection, encourages transparency in financial assistance policies, and requires public health and community input in assessing and meeting community health needs. Advocates can push for stronger protections on the state and local level by monitoring compliance, educating officials and consumers, and participating in community-health-needs assessments.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Valerie McWilliams & Alan A. Alop, The Dearth of Charity Care: Do Nonprofit Hospitals Deserve Their Tax Exemptions? (July-Aug. 2010)
• Alan A. Alop, Hospital’s Failure to Provide Charity Write-Off to Indigent, Uninsured Patient and Inflating Charges for Her May Constitute “Unfair Practices” Under Illinois Law; Suit Will Proceed (May-June 2007)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• Leonardo Cuello, How the Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dev. 2011)

Teens in foster care face many challenges. If a teen parent in foster care becomes a respondent in a family court case, she faces another challenge: the same child welfare agency responsible for her welfare as a subject child is, in many jurisdictions, the same agency responsible for proving that she is a neglectful or abusive parent. Not only does this raise issues of trust for the teen parent, but also, because the child welfare agency has a parens patriae relationship with the teen parent, the agency has access to her confidential medical and mental health history, which the agency often uses to the parent’s disadvantage. Is this double role right and lawful? If not, what should child welfare agencies be doing about it?

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Jennifer Pokempner, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Alice Bussiere, Fostering Connections to Success: Extending a Social Safety Net for Youths Facing Homelessness and Poverty (July-August 2009)
• Alice Bussiere, Jennifer Pokempner, and Jennifer Troia, Adolescents, the Foster Care System, and the Transition to Adulthood: What Legal Aid Lawyers Need to Know (July-August 2005)
• Casey Trupin and Richard A. Wayman, From Street Lawyering to Systemic Lawyering: Meeting the Basic Needs of Unaccompanied and Homeless Youth Through Systemic Legal Advocacy (July-August 2005)

Clearinghouse Review launches a new feature in this our first issue of 2012: Interview Afield. For forty-five years we have sought to introduce and connect advocates with one another. We hope to further that role by briefly profiling, in each issue, an advocate who has made a difference for low-income clients. Leading off this series is Bob Capistrano, who began his legal services career in 1976 as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) lawyer with San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation. The foundation has since merged with other programs to form Bay Area Legal Aid, where Bob is now director of advocacy and managing attorney. A reliable author of Review articles (see Robert P. Capistrano, Making the Fair Hearing More Fair, 44 Clearinghouse Review 96 (July–Aug. 2010), for his most recent contribution), Bob is on the faculty for Affirmative Litigation Training, which the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s training unit, formerly the Center for Legal Aid Education, will offer in March 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Are.

Read Interview Afield: Bob Capistrano

A major aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health reform law signed in 2010, was to bring health insurance coverage--by broadening Medicaid eligibility to cover people up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level--to some sixteen million U.S. residents who go without it. States are now making choices about how they will implement this expansion, to take effect in 2014. As states decide, advocates should weigh in to make sure that the Act’s promise of quality, affordable health coverage, especially for vulnerable populations, is fulfilled.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Leonardo Cuello, How the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home- and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dec. 2011)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act:  A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• John Bouman & Robert A. Crittenden, Health Care Reform:  Seizing the Moment and Shaping the Message (Nov.-Dec. 2008)

Helping low-income clients with medicaid problems is a complicated endeavor in the best of times. With the economic recession prompting states to cut Medicaid spending by reducing provider payments and covered benefits, advocates for these clients face an even greater challenge. Even in tough economic times, however, states have to follow state and federal law when the cut Medicaid services. The states’ errors often follow similar patterns, and advocates who understand those patterns are better situated to help their clients.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles

• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, Medicaid Managed Care and People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities (Sept.-Oct. 2007)
• Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
• Sarah Somers, Cost-Related Community Integration Barriers in Medicaid: A Review of the EPSDT Program and Home and Community-Based Waivers (March-April 2002)

The Pickle Amendment allows individuals to qualify for Medicaid by subtracting from the countable portion of their social security income any cost-of-living adjustments received since their last Supplemental Security Income. Advocates can use a simple formula for calculation and screening.

Read more and view the chart.

Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, answers questions from his readers. Duration: 6:15