Category Archives: Policy Update

Health Care Update: The Lower Health Care Costs Act

Health Care Update: The Lower Health Care Costs Act

Siena Ruggeri
August 7, 2019

With 2020 looming, both chambers of Congress are on a mission to show voters they’re serious about reforming health care and lowering costs. The Lowering Health Care Costs Act represents the largest effort on health care in the Senate this session. The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Committee has collected a wide variety of health care proposals and assembled them into one sweeping piece of legislation. The legislation is a package of bills containing 54 bipartisan proposals from 36 Democrats and 29 Republicans. The package has a huge scope—it includes provisions regarding surprise billing, drug pricing, extensions of existing health care programs, health equity research, raising the tobacco age, and cybersecurity with medical records. All of these issues relate to our Mend the Gaps health care agenda. The bipartisan nature of these bills means that there is potential for this legislation to make it through the Senate and onto the House. The bill is divided into five sections.

Section I: Ending Surprise Billing

  • Requires that emergency health care charges to a patient are counted toward the patient’s in-network deductible
  • Patients are held harmless from surprise medical bills. Patients are only required to pay the in-network cost-sharing amount for out-of-network care, including emergency services
  • Patients must be given notice of out-of-network care

NETWORK Analysis: The legislation moves in the right direction on surprise billing by ensuring patients are not victimized in a billing debate between providers and insurers. It’s important to note that an individual has to have insurance to access these protections. For the millions of uninsured and underinsured in our country, there’s still not a safety net for these exploitative billing practices.

Section II: Proposals to Lower Drug Costs

  • Helping companies speed drug development through drug database
  • Increases transparency for patent data on biologic products
  • Prevents the abuse of citizen’s petitions to delay the production of low-cost biosimilars
  • Clarifies that drugs like insulin will not be granted market exclusivity past 2020
  • Eliminates the first come first served drug pricing loophole that slows the production of lower-cost drugs
  • Creates an FDA website to educate consumers on biologic products
  • Eliminates the market exclusivity loophole created by patent evergreening
  • Modernizes labeling of generic drugs
  • Eliminate first come first served drug pricing loophole
  • Requires drug manufacturers to submit public justifications of price increases of over 10% in one year

NETWORK Analysis: These proposals are the necessary first step to lowering drug prices. While the legislation implements transparency measures and reforms the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse of the patent system, there still needs to be action taken on unwarranted price spikes. Drug companies are still able to gouge prices as they wish, with no accountability. This also does not address the fact that the government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare Part D patients. Without these checks on the drug industry’s power, drug prices will stay high. We encourage the Senate to take up the PRICED Act, the Doggett bill, and the SPIKE Act to address these root causes.

Section III: Transparency Measures

  • Healthcare providers have to provide summary of services to patients
  • Doctors/insurers must provide price quotes to patients
  • Ban anti-competitive terms in hospital contracts
  • Designation of a nongovernmental, nonprofit transparency organization to lower Americans’ health care costs
  • Requires health plans to have up-to-date directories of their in-network providers
  • Bans pharmacy benefit managers for charging more for drugs than they paid for drugs (spread pricing)
  • Requires a GAO study on profit-sharing relationships between hospitals, contract management groups, and physician and ancillary services, and the Federal oversight of such relationships

NETWORK Analysis: These transparency measures are a good first step to shedding light on the exploitative practices of many actors the health care industry. While these reforms are beneficial for those with strong health insurance plans, more attention needs to be devoted to expanding Medicaid and affordable health coverage to those who need it most. Even if providers are transparent about costs, those costs are often unattainable for low-income people.

Section IV: Public Health

  • Reauthorizes community health centers for five years with flat funding
  • Reauthorizes the Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education Programs and the National Health Service Corps for five years
  • Reauthorizes the Special Diabetes Program for Type 1 Diabetes and the Special Diabetes Program for Indians for five years
  • Provides competitive grants for maternal mortality prevention
  • Provides competitive grants for perinatal quality collaboratives
  • Commissions a study on trainings to reduce and prevent discrimination in health care
  • Establishes a grant program for the training of health care professionals working in prenatal care, labor care, birthing, and postpartum care to reduce and prevent discrimination, including training related to implicit biases
  • Raises minimum age for tobacco products to 21
  • Provides grants to improve technology for medically underserved areas

NETWORK Analysis: We applaud the extension of these crucial human needs programs for a more sustainable timeline of five years. This prevents these programs from facing lapses in funding due to slow congressional action. While the first step is to reauthorize programs like CHCs, these facilities have grown significantly in the past 10 years and are in need of more funding. We encourage the Senate to pass the CHIME Act, which would increase mandatory funding for CHCs over the next five years. These public health programs are crucial to the social safety net and serve communities that would otherwise go without preventative health care services.

We applaud the inclusion of funding for grants and trainings on issues of health equity. In order to address how our health system reinforces racism and other oppressions, we have to support further research and provide resources to fight unconscious bias in the medical profession. Congress needs to continue taking action for health equity at the federal level.

Section V: Improving Health Information

  • Requires health insurers to make claims data, in-network practitioners, and expected out-of-pocket costs available to patients
  • Incentivizes health care entities to adopt strong cybersecurity practices
  • Gives patients better access to their medical records

NETWORK Analysis: Our health information is highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Steps must be taken to ensure medical records remain private.

Conclusion

This legislation shows that there is momentum in the Senate to address the causes of high health care costs. While we wish there was a more robust effort to address ACA sabotage, access to affordable coverage, and the root causes of high prescription drug prices, this package of legislation offers some hope that Congress will make some progress on addressing health care issues this session. We hope to see this legislation paired with the strong drug pricing reforms detailed in the Senate Finance Committee’s Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act and quickly brought to the Senate floor. After the Senate returns after August recess, we expect to see this legislative package to be voted on in the fall

Strengthen Working Family Tax Credits to Reduce Poverty and Expand Opportunity

Strengthen Working Family Tax Credits to Reduce Poverty and Expand Opportunity

Chuck Marr
July 24, 2019

Many people across the country have stories about how a little-known part of the tax code—the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit—helped support their families and get ahead.

“As a single mother and new graduate, I count on the Child Tax Credit tremendously,” Travis from Tennessee told the national advocacy organization MomsRising.  “I am typically in the category of the ‘working poor,’ meaning I don’t make enough money to live above the poverty line, but I don’t qualify for state aid.  This makes it extremely hard to afford anything other than our base line bills and groceries for the month.  If something goes wrong with my car or an appliance in my house, it causes me panic attacks because I don’t [know] where I’ll get the money from. . . .  [T]he Earned Income Tax Credit also provides my daughter and I with funds that allow me to pay for opportunities for her that would otherwise be unavailable.”

Many low-income working families like Travis’s struggle to get by, as their costs have risen faster than their wages over the last several decades. Policymakers can help by strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC). These two highly successful federal tax credits lift millions of people out of poverty and give working people and children a better shot to get ahead, both now and over the long term.

Improving the EITC and Child Tax Credit — through changes like those in the Working Families Tax Relief Act, recently introduced in the Senate — should be a key part of an agenda to reduce income inequality and boost working people’s wages.

The EITC, enacted under the Ford administration in 1975, has long enjoyed bipartisan support.  President Reagan called the 1986 tax reform bill, which substantially expanded the credit, “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” President Clinton signed another major EITC expansion in 1993, while Presidents Bush and Obama enacted improvements as well.

Working people receive the EITC starting with their first dollar of earned income; the credit grows with their earnings until reaching a maximum level and then phases out at higher income levels. The EITC offsets federal payroll and income taxes and boosts the incomes of people who work hard but earn little. Families across the United States use EITC refunds to pay for necessities, repair homes, maintain vehicles they need to get to work, or get additional education or training to boost their employability and earning power.

Stephanie in Missouri, for example, explains: “I am a single working mom of four. My income is low, but I’m proud to support my family, running my own business from home which allows me to be here for my kids. Without the EITC my income would not be enough to cover our basic necessities, like food, housing and utilities.”

The extra money that people get from the EITC also helps them achieve more financial stability. The EITC lifted about 5.8 million people out of poverty in 2016, including about 3 million children.

The Child Tax Credit, enacted in 1997 and expanded with bipartisan support since 2001, helps working families offset the cost of raising children. It’s worth up to $2,000 per child under age 17 and is partially available to low wage working parents.

The CTC lifted roughly 2.8 million people out of poverty in 2017, including about 1.6 million children, and lessened poverty for another 13.1 million people, including 6.7 million children.

Congress Can Improve the EITC and Child Tax Credit

Despite their success, both the EITC and the Child Tax Credit have shortcomings that policymakers should address in order to target more assistance to those who need it most. The EITC for working people not raising children in the home is extremely small — too small even to fully offset federal taxes for workers at the poverty line. A childless adult earning poverty-level wages of $13,340 as a cashier, for example, owes $1,135 in federal income and payroll taxes and receives an EITC of just $172. As a result, this person is one of the over 5 million low-wage childless working people whom the federal tax code taxes into, or deeper into, poverty.

Beyond a threshold of $2,500 of earnings, the Child Tax Credit amounts to 15 cents on each additional dollar earned. This means the poorest children qualify for a very small credit or none at all, even though they are the children who need it most and for whom it would have the largest impact.

Unfortunately, when policymakers made major changes to the tax code most recently in 2017, they largely ignored the opportunity to raise living standards for low- and moderate-income people. The 2017 tax law was heavily tilted toward the wealthiest households and profitable corporations instead of working families. And even its highly touted increase in the CTC provided zero or only a token amount (ranging from $1 to $75) to 11 million children in low-income working families because their incomes were too low.

A landmark bill in Congress offers a promising path forward. The Working Families Tax Relief Act, introduced in the Senate by Senators Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, Richard Durbin, and Ron Wyden with more than 40 co-sponsors, would significantly strengthen the EITC and CTC. These expansions would make 46 million households more financially secure and benefit 114 million people — including 49 million children. Families of all races would benefit, including 24 million white families, 9 million Latino families, 8 million Black families, and 2 million Asian American families.

The bill would build on the EITC’s success among families with children, boosting their credit by roughly 25%. And it would substantially improve the credit for low-wage working people without children at home. It would raise their maximum credit (from roughly $530 to $2,100), raise the income limit to qualify for the credit (from about $16,000 for a single individual to about $25,000), and expand the age range of workers eligible for the credit (from 25-64 to 19-67). The above-mentioned cashier would see her EITC rise from $172 to $1,797, lifting her $662 above the poverty line.

The bill would also make big improvements in the Child Tax Credit.  As discussed above, the current credit partly or entirely leaves out many poor families with children because they earn to little. The bill would make the CTC available to all poor families – and not dependent on earnings — and expand the credit for children under age 6. Almost all low- and middle-income families with children would receive a $2,000 Child Tax Credit for each child age 6 or older and $3,000 per child under 6.

The larger tax credit for young children would help respond to the special economic challenges that families with young children can face.  Parents in these families tend to have lower wages because they are often less advanced in their careers, and the high cost of child care for young children can force many parents to choose between paying that expense or getting by on just one income.

To better target the Child Tax Credit to families who need it most, the bill would also begin phasing the credit down for married couples with incomes over $200,000 (compared to $400,000 under current law) and single parents with incomes over $150,000 (compared to $200,000).

Putting its EITC and CTC expansions together, the bill would make a substantial difference for low- and moderate-income working families. A single mother of two earning $20,000 would get a $3,700 increase, for example, while a married couple with two young kids making $45,000 would get a $3,500 increase. The bill would cut child poverty by 28%, lifting 3.1 million children out of poverty and making another 7.7 million children less poor.

The bill would also have lasting benefits for children, helping not only them but our country as a whole.  Studies show that kids in low-income families that receive added income from working-family tax credits like the EITC and Child Tax Credit do better in school and are likelier to attend college. They also are likelier to earn more as adults due to their higher skills and more years of education. And, kids whose families receive working-family tax credits are likelier to avoid the early onset of illnesses associated with child poverty, further boosting their earnings ability.

“Both the EITC and Child Tax Credit have made a huge difference for our family and have been critically important to our financial stability as parents of young children,” Kathleen from Utah explains.

That’s a key message for policymakers as they debate ways to reduce inequality and restructure the 2017 tax law to expand opportunity for low-wage working families. Strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit would advance both of those goals.

Chuck Marr is the Director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). CBPP is a nonpartisan research and policy institute founded in 1981 to analyze federal budget priorities, with a particular focus on how budget choices affect low-income Americans. CBPP pursues both federal and state policies designed to reduce poverty and inequality and to restore fiscal responsibility in equitable and effective ways. Learn more at www.cbpp.org.

Special thanks to MomsRising for sharing the stories from people and families across the country who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

This story was originally published in the July 2019 issue of Connection magazine. Read the full issue.

Orange sign that says "It's in the Constitution: Everyone Counts"

Census Update: Victory! No Citizenship Question

Census Update: Victory! No Citizenship Question

Sister Quincy Howard, OP
July 17, 2019

After months of twists and turns regarding the possibility of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, the Trump administration finally announced the conclusion of this saga last week. The final decision: there will be no question about citizenship included in the census.

This is a victory because including a citizenship question would have prevented a full and accurate count from being completed. The census is constitutionally mandated to count all persons in the United States and census data is used for distributing federal funding, congressional apportionment, and more. So, a full and accurate Census count is vitally important for our nation. The Census Bureau’s own data predicted that, if the question were included, between 5% and 12% of noncitizen households would decline to participate. Additionally, six former census directors and a Census Bureau internal analyst all said a citizenship question would harm the count. Without an accurate count, communities that are undercounted would be under-funded and under-resourced for the next decade.

When the Commerce Department first announced it was pursing the addition of a citizenship question over a year ago, advocacy organizations, voting rights advocates, and community-based partners all responded in strong opposition. Multiple suits were brought against the Commerce Department on the basis of both procedural standards as well as “discriminatory animus.” While the final decision from the Supreme Court did not reject the citizenship question itself, it did reject the justification the Trump administration used to argue for its inclusion. Due to the rapid timeline for printing and executing the impending 2020 count, the Trump administration has finally given up on including the citizenship question on the census.

In order to save face after backing down from the citizenship question, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Commerce Department to gather citizenship data from other federal agencies. We will remain alert for more details of this new plan for compiling citizenship data.

In June, we responded to the Supreme Court decision with cautious optimism. Sister Simone said “I’m relieved to see that the Supreme Court, which can be so divided along partisan lines, recognized that this Republican scheme to reduce the count in the 2020 Census was an attempt at crass manipulation of the data by the Trump Administration.” Now, we remain optimistic about the prospects for the 2020 Census. We are re-focusing on accomplishing a fully representative, fair and accurate count of all people living in our nation so that we can accurately distribute federal funding and political representation until our next count takes place in 2030.

Raise the Wage Act Will Positively Impact Workers

Raise the Wage Act Will Positively Impact Workers

Elisa McCartin
July 11, 2019

This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its report on H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act. This legislation would gradually increase the U.S. federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 and would further eliminate the tipped wage of $2.13 by gradually raising it to meet the federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. NETWORK strongly supports this bill as it would substantially reduce income inequality and poverty across the United States. The CBO report highlights the numerous ways this bill will benefit low-income workers, as outlined by the Economic Policy Institute.

Some groups have responded to the CBO report by pulling out selective data chosen to alarm the public about the costs of raising the minimum wage. We believe, however, that the data supports our stance in favor of raising the wage. According to the report, 27 million low-income workers’ wages would increase with a $15 minimum wage. Low-wage workers would see their annual earrings rise by $44 billion by 2025. Moreover, a $15 minimum wage would lift 1.3 million people out of poverty. This bill will have a profound impact on reducing rampant inequality in the U.S. by raising the wages of the lowest-income workers.

The CBO report further demonstrates that the benefits of this bill greatly outweigh potential costs. Even accounting for their prediction of some job losses, the CBO concluded that the average low-wage worker would earn $1,600 more per year. The CBO’s job loss prediction was also based on faulty methodology that focused primarily on subgroups of workers like restaurant employees. Studies that look holistically at the low-wage workforce find that a $15 minimum wage does not reduce employment.

Research conducted by the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that across 138 state-level minimum wage increases, there were no measurable employment losses. For example, between 1979 and 2016, states with the highest minimum wage increases experienced no negative employment effects. Minimum wage increases at the city-level have had no detrimental impact on restaurant employment levels. In 1968, when the U.S. had its highest minimum wage adjusted for inflation, there was no adverse impact on employment. Thus, while the CBO’s central estimate predicted some job losses, its other “likely” estimates projected that there may be no job losses as a result of a $15 minimum wage in 2025.

Even if the CBO’s job loss predictions were fully accurate, a $15 minimum wage would still tremendously benefit low-wage workers. According the CBO, 7% of the lowest-wage workers could face job losses, while 93% would earn 12% more an hour. An additional 10.3 million people would earn above $15 an hour by 2025 with no employment reductions. Furthermore, because jobs will pay higher wages, even workers experiencing “job-losses” would likely have higher annual incomes due to wage increases. The CBO acknowledged that families may be able to cut back working hours or the number of jobs per family with higher wages, contributing to these “job-loss” statistics. Thus, these job-loss numbers are best interpreted as fewer hours worked throughout the year because there will be a reduced need to work extreme hours to make a living wage.

NETWORK and our partners are incredibly proud to support the Raise the Wage Act. For decades, the U.S. workforce has been exploited under a system that fails to guarantee workers a living wage. The Raise the Wage Act is a first step in truly transforming our economy into a moral economy.

Elisa McCartin is a NETWORK volunteer and student at Georgetown University.

Trump Administration Seeks to Re-Define the Poverty Line

Trump Administration Seeks to Re-Define the Poverty Line 

Elisa McCartin
July 10, 2019

The Trump administration is escalating its attacks against working families and using the power of the executive branch to implement their agenda unilaterally. This circumvents the legislative process and is a rejection of the legislative branch’s power.  

How Agency Rule Changes Work 

Our many federal agencies create and implement policies that have profound impacts on our nation. Members of President Trump’s cabinet can direct the agencies to alter their policies and procedures by proposing specific rule changes. The agencies are required to give citizens and organizations a specified time period (usually 30-60 days) to comment on proposed changes before the agency is allowed to make a final rule. The agency must consider every comment before they implement their decision. These comments are often the only means the public has to check the power of these rule changes.  

After a rule change goes into effect, people or organizations can then challenge the agencies in court and the agencies must prove they considered every argument in every submitted comment. Because of this requirement, NETWORK and many of our partners have submitted comments on the harmful proposed rule changes the Trump administration has been rolling out in various federal agencies. We encourage our members to keep track of these sly and underhanded harmful policy proposals and submit comments to prevent or at the very least, stall, the Trump administration from enacting more damaging policies without Congressional approval.  

Proposed Poverty Line Rule Change 

One proposed rule change that NETWORK and many other advocacy organizations submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about would alter the inflation measurement used to determine the U.S. poverty line. The Official Poverty Measure (OPM) in the U.S. is calculated based on three times the estimated cost of a subsistence food budget for an average family, and adjusted for inflation each year. The OMB usually uses the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) as the inflation adjustment mechanism. The OMB’s proposed rule would mandate a switch from using the CPI-U to the chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U) or the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (PCEPI). The inflation index the OMB uses to adjust the poverty line is extremely important because it will alter families’ eligibility for social programs.  

Both proposed alternative inflation indices—the chained CPI and the PCEPI—underestimate inflation. The CBO reports that the chained CPI grows 0.25 percentage points slower than the CPI-U. This is because the chained CPI and PCEPI account for when consumers substitute goods for one another in the marketplace based on price increases. However, low-income families do not have the level of economic flexibility where they can exchange goods for one another, thus making this measurement inaccurate. Moreover, low-income families feel inflation more severely than middle and high-income families. Low-income people spend a larger percentage of their income on housing, and home rents have risen at double the inflation rate. Using indices that underestimate the inflation rate to determine the poverty line is an utterly inaccurate measure of the costs low-income families face. These should not be used to calculate the poverty line in the U.S.  Our principles of Catholic Social Justice teach us to prioritize the needs of those at the economic margins. This proposed rule denies the fundamental realities of people struggling to make ends meet. 

Furthermore, this move would have devastating effects of people who currently qualify for federal programs. The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) calculated that switching to the chained CPI would lower the poverty line by 2.0% and using the PCEPI would reduce the poverty line by 3.4%. This dramatic reduction would prevent millions of individuals and families from receiving benefits and social services, as they would no longer be eligible even though their actual economic status remains unchanged. As a result, the CBPP projects that more than 250,000 senior citizens would no longer qualify for Medicare Part D Low-Income Subsidy, 150,000 seniors would have to pay premiums exceeding $1,500 per year, 300,000 children would lose medical coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), 250,000 adults who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would lose it, and 150,000 consumers would no longer receive cost-sharing assistance in ACA marketplaces.  

The U.S. poverty line is already too low—20% of people living in the U.S. do not meet one or more of nine basic need standards. This change would strip millions of life-saving supports, compounding the already severe impacts of poverty, homelessness, and hunger in our society. As people of faith, we are called to support those in need—not further entrench vulnerable families in poverty. 

NETWORK believes that it is our obligation to prevent the catastrophic effects of this proposed rule. The Trump administration is circumventing the legislative branch where citizens have more influence, amplifying the need to closely follow and comment on agency rule changes spearheaded by Trump Cabinet members. Although the period for submitting comments on this rule has closed, it is our imperative to continue tracking OMB’s decision making, to hold the executive branch accountable to the people, and to advocate for policies that mend the gaps.  

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Elisa McCartin is a NETWORK volunteer and student at Georgetown University. 

After Shelby: The Need to Reinstate Crucial Voting Rights Protections

After Shelby: The Need to Reinstate Crucial Voting Rights Protections

Sister Quincy Howard, OP
Updated: June 27, 2019

We at NETWORK, with many of our partners, are naming this week “Shelby Week” in recognition of the six years that have passed since the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. 

In the aftermath of the June 25, 2013 Shelby decision – which gutted key protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) – states and localities across the country jumped to enact restrictive voting laws, disenfranchising millions of American voters. For six years, civil rights organizations have been fighting back against these discriminatory laws. We need Congress to restore the VRA to its full strength to ensure that all eligible voters have equal access to the ballot and that every vote counts.

The ideal of “one person, one vote” is central to our understanding of democracy in the United States, but the reality in our country falls short. While the legal discrimination that prevented people of color from voting for hundreds of years is no longer in place, today a new combination of restrictive standards and requirements keep voters from exercising their right to vote. Whether implementing voter ID requirements, purging voter rolls, restricting early voting, or closing polling locations, state-level election laws can make it considerably harder, if not impossible for many eligible citizens to vote. Furthermore, these requirements have a disproportionate impact, often by design, on low-income and voters of color who are less likely to have flexible schedules, access to transportation, or a government photo ID.

Many of these tactics are familiar to communities of color, but ever since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 there had been an effective mechanism in place to apply federal oversight of potential voting rights violations. Specifically, Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) used a formula determined by the VRA in 1965 to identify jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination and subject them to federal preclearance requirements prior to implementing any changes in voter registration or casting of ballots. In 2013, however, the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision stripped the VRA of this preclearance mechanism—deeming the formula outdated—and opened the door for states to pass more restrictive voting standards with impunity.

Since the Shelby ruling, 23 states have freely implemented more restrictive voting laws and conducted elections accordingly. The only recourse left is under Section 2 of the VRA—to challenge these laws after the fact. Meanwhile, the resulting voter disenfranchisement has already taken place and the results of potentially rigged elections stand. Accordingly, unfair elections around the nation have begun to resemble a discriminatory game of wack-a-mole: lawsuits of voter discrimination have quadrupled in the five years since the Shelby decision. Expensive and slow-moving litigation is an untenable approach to reinstating fair elections; and Section 2 offers no remedy for the impacts of disenfranchisement.

In contrast, under the Section 5 process the Justice Department provided quick, inexpensive reviews and decisions on proposed changes to voting requirements or procedures. The vast majority of proposed changes to elections were cleared and there was space to appeal decisions when they were not.  It was a system that worked; the VRA without this preclearance mechanism is not working.

This Wednesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee will be conducting a hearing on “Protecting the Right to Vote: Best and Worst Practices.” Chairman Jamie Raskin (MD-08), who is also a professor of Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, and Legislative Process, will lead the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee in this effort to get to the bottom of voter suppression today.

For six years, Congress has made multiple unsuccessful legislative attempts to update the preclearance formula and restore this crucial provision of the VRA. Part of the process to adopt a preclearance formula that the courts will uphold is gathering and documenting evidence of efforts to disenfranchise voters. Congress is currently building this record to demonstrate ways in which jurisdictions have changed laws to disenfranchise voters, particularly voters of color. Most recently, we can look to states like Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, and Alabama for flagrant examples of manipulated election procedures that effectively suppress the vote of communities of color.

Throughout April and May, the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Elections is holding a series of field hearings on voting rights and election administration. Hearings have taken place in Standing Rock, ND; Halifax, NC; and in Cleveland, OH. Still to come are field hearings in Alabama and Florida to review and hear testimony about the impacts of new voting and registration laws on communities of color. These hearings are the opportunity to examine what voter disenfranchisement in the 21st Century looks like—so we can prevent it from happening.

In late February, Representative Teri Sewell (AL-07) and Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) introduced the 116th Congress’ high-priority legislative fix to restore and extend these key provisions of the VRA. It’s not the first time that a “Shelby-fix” bill has been introduced since 2013, but this year it’s coming on the heels of an historic election in which rampant and flagrant voter suppression was apparent. H.R. 1 (the For the People Act) has also already passed in the House and specifically named this as a crucial component for democracy reform.

The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019 (VRAA), H.R. 4, represents the most robust and inclusive proposal to revise the criteria for determining which States and political jurisdictions should be subject to preclearance requirements. Specifically, the formula proposed in VRAA subjects any jurisdiction with 15 or more voting-rights violations over the past 25 years to 10 years of federal preclearance. The threshold would be lowered to just 10 violations if any of them were committed by the state itself. VRAA is not solely a defensive measure. It’s intended to be punitive, to deter people who take advantage of the fact that there are few real consequences for officials found in violation of the Constitution. The VRAA would add teeth that the Voting Rights Act didn’t have even at full strength. While alternate bills are already emerging with less-expansive formulas, NETWORK strongly supports H.R.4 as the way to quickly address and end voting rights abuses that have become commonplace across our country.

President Trump Calls for Mass Raids This Weekend: What is Your Faithful Response?

President Trump Calls for Mass Raids This Weekend: What is Your Faithful Response?

Laura Peralta-Schulte
June 21, 2019

President Trump began his 2020 campaign this week with the same anti-immigrant platform he ran on in 2016. In his opening speech, he promised to begin a set of raids intended to “remove millions of illegal aliens beginning this weekend.”  Thus begins the likely ramping up increased domestic terror against our immigrant sisters and brothers.  Following the announcement, there have been leaks from ICE, the agency in charge of conducting raids, confirming they may begin actions as early as this weekend. While raids are not new – the Administration has already conducted massive raids in places like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Tennessee – this racketing up is intended to remind President Trump’s supporters that this is still his number one campaign objective.

Our best understanding is that individuals and family units with final orders of removal are anticipated to be targeted. Such targeting would likely result in collateral arrests, meaning: persons who are undocumented but do not have a final order of deportation will likely be detained also.

What does this mean for us, as people of faith?

For some of us, this means our families will sit in fear between now and the election waiting for a knock on the door. We will fill out the appropriate legal documents full of personal information so that if the worse happens, we know our kids will be safe in the custody of a family member or a friend. We will review what we learned at Know Your Rights trainings so that if and when the knock comes, we know what to do. We will live in a continued state of fear.

We learn more and more everyday about the impact of toxic stress on the bodies and health of people under duress. It takes a tremendous toll on a person’s physical, mental and emotional health. We are reminded by our partners at the Center for Law and Social Policy about what happens when children witness the arrest of a parent – particularly in their own home. The children are now ‘at greater risk of suffering mental health and behavioral problems with have long-term implications for their overall development and future success.’

What does it mean for those of us who are not directly impacted?  This is the key faithful question of our time. As people grounded in sacred texts that call for welcome and love, how do we respond? Do we look away because it all seems overwhelming? Do we chose to sit in our comfortable homes, go to our pools, enjoy a barbeque with family and friends completely detached from this terror? Or, do we engage in acts of resistance and love?

NETWORK is continuously engaging in discernment to discover how we as an organization can live a more authentic life, one grounded in the work of racial justice. This year, our Lenten reflections aimed to strengthen our commitment to be and work in solidarity with communities of color, so we can live out our call to justice for all people in the public square.

We must shake off the choice of inaction. To fail to speak out against injustice is to be complicit.  We can and we must live into our call to be a people of love and justice.

A child wearing a cap walks with a backpack and a stuffed animal at the US-Mexico border

Congress Holds Hearing on Situation at the Border

Congress Holds Hearing on Situation at the Border

Laura Peralta-Schulte
June 11, 2019

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing to examine the refugee crisis at U.S. – Mexico border. The key witness will be Acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan. During the hearing, McAleenan is expected to call for: increasing border militarization; stripping away the rights of children from Central America to seek asylum; making it more difficult for families to assert a claim to asylum; and dramatically expanding family detention.

This Administration has already taken unpresented steps to dismantle our asylum system, going as far as separating children from their parents with full knowledge of the harm this inflicts on children and families. Tragically, at least six children have died in federal custody in the past year due to lack of access to healthcare. It was recently revealed that 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours in a parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas.  Further, the private prisons this Administration desperately seeks to expand to house immigrant families have come under continued criticism for their dangerous conditions. Just last week the Inspector General Department of Homeland Security found “egregious” health and safety violations at four major ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facilities.

None of this is surprising given immigration was President Trump’s signature issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. His racist attack on immigrants, symbolized by the call to “build the wall”, set the stage for the policies his Administration is currently pursuing.  The scapegoating of immigrants and asylum seekers will only increase as we head into the 2020 campaign.

Sacred scripture instructs people of faith about how we should treat migrants.  We are called to “release those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke.” (Isaiah 58) We must “Bring good news to the poor…release to the captives…sight to the blind…let the oppressed go free.” (Luke 4:16-21) This is not a political issue for the faith community, it is a matter of justice.

Acting Secretary McAleenan, let us be clear:  NETWORK and our interfaith partners reject your false choice between chaos and compassion. It is wrong to use a humanitarian crisis to shred laws protecting vulnerable families seeking asylum. It is wrong to cage children and families in indefinite detention. It is wrong to strip protections for children that keep them safe and healthy.

These actions are cruel and unjust. We will continue to call for justice for our immigrant family.

Mending the Gaps Experienced by the LGBTQ+ Community

Mending the Gaps Experienced by the LGBTQ+ Community

Siena Ruggeri
June 7, 2019

NETWORK is proud to have supported the recent passage of the Equality Act in the House, and we urge the Senate to also pass this important legislation. While the Equality Act would extend critical anti-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ+ community in both the workplace and housing, many of NETWORK’s Mend the Gaps other issues have a direct impact on the LGBTQ+ community. As we work to mend the gaps in our nation, it is important to consider the challenges facing the LGBTQ+ community and ways federal policies can reduce those challenges.

Paid family leave, for example, is a significant issue for LGBTQ+ families. Even in areas and workplaces that do offer paid leave, LGBTQ+ families face an extra hurdle to taking the necessary time they need to be with their families. According to a survey by the Human Rights Campaign, 27% of LGBTQ+ people of color and 16% of LGBTQ+ white people say they are afraid to request time off to care for a loved one because it might disclose their LGBTQ identity. 44% of LGBTQ+ people of color are afraid of losing their job if they took paid leave, compared to 37% of their white counterparts.

Paid family leave is already challenging to access for countless families. LGBTQ+ workers have to disclose their gender identity or sexual orientation in order to access paid leave, putting them in a highly vulnerable spot. In our efforts to expand access to paid leave, we must intentionally include all types of families. This is why legislation like the FAMILY Act (H.R.1185) is so important to advance — this policy has a broad definition of family, allowing for all types of families, biological and chosen, to take equal advantage of paid leave.

LGBTQ+ people may also face barriers to healthcare because of discrimination against their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Just last week, the Trump administration proposed rolling back an Obama-era HHS rule called the Health Care Rights Law, which ensures healthcare providers cannot discriminate on the basis of sex. The rollback of this rule will strip away the protections established by the ACA, which were critical for LGBTQ+ healthcare access.

According to a 2015 report by the Center for American Progress, 23.5% of transgender respondents and 10.3% of LGBT people of color avoided doctors’ offices in the past year due to fear of discrimination. Ensuring affordable, accessible healthcare is an LGBTQ+ issue, and we must consider the unique challenges the community faces as we advocate for greater access to quality, affordable health care.

LGBTQ+ issues also intersect with immigration. Those who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual are three times more likely to be incarcerated. As a result, LGBTQ+ migrants are uniquely vulnerable to overpolicing, discrimination, and violence. There has also been an increase in violence towards undocumented LGBTQ+ people. According to the Center for American Progress, 6% of survivors of hate violence were LGBTQ in in 2014, compared to 17% in 2015. While immigrants already face discrimination, those who also identify as LGBTQ+ face even more danger.

The threat of deportation is also a life or death issue for countless LGBTQ+ migrants. 76 countries allow the criminalization of sexual orientation and gender identity. This means many of our nation’s refugees seeking asylum are fleeing their home countries based on the threat of violence due to their LGBTQ+ identities. By denying asylum claims and deporting undocumented LGBTQ+ immigrants, our nation is putting their lives at risk. The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants puts already vulnerable LGBTQ+ immigrants in dangerous, often life-threatening situations.

The experiences of the LGBTQ+ community intersect with each of NETWORK’s Mend the Gaps issues. This Pride Month, we continue to work toward federal policies that bring justice and equality for the LGBTQ+ community in the United States.

New HUD Rule Aims to Harm Immigrant Families

New HUD Rule Aims to Harm Immigrant Families

Bridget Falzon
May 20, 2019

On May 10, 2019, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a proposed rule titled “Housing and Community Development Act of 1980: Verification of Eligible Status.” The rule would significantly change HUD regulations by further restricting eligibility for federal housing assistance based on immigration status. If finalized, the proposed rule will effectively evict 25,000 immigrant families from their homes, affecting over 55,000 children (citizens or legal residents) who are fully eligible for housing assistance under federal law.1

NETWORK is deeply concerned about the impact of this proposed rule on families. Housing security supports the dignity and well-being of every person; all people deserve access to housing regardless of their socioeconomic standing or immigration status. It is wrong to forced families to choose between staying together and risking homelessness or splitting their family up.

The proposed rule prohibits “mixed-status” families from living in federally subsidized units subject to immigration status restrictions under Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 (“Section 214”). Mixed-status families are households comprised of members who have eligible and ineligible immigration statuses defined by Section 214. Currently, families with at least one U.S. citizen or eligible immigrant are permitted to live in a subsidized housing unit. Mixed-status families receive housing assistance on a prorated basis—where the amount of the housing subsidy for the household is decreased to account for family members with ineligible immigration status.

Under current HUD regulations, only family members that are applying for housing assistance need to have their immigration status verified. Family members who would not qualify for assistance based on their immigration status can elect not to contend eligibility for the housing assistance, allowing the family to receive assistance on a prorated basis. The proposed rule would eliminate an individual’s ability to elect not to contend their eligibility for the subsidy, and would require all household members under the age of 62 to submit verification of their immigration status through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

Under the proposed rule, U.S. Citizens and Nationals, who currently must only provide a signed declaration of U.S. citizenship or U.S. nationality, would also need to submit documentation of their citizenship status. Furthermore, noncitizens who are 62 years old and older, who currently are only required to provide a signed declaration of eligible immigration status and a proof of age document, would also be required submit immigration documentation, although the documentation would not be verified through SAVE. If these individuals are not able to produce the documentation in the required timeframes, they risk losing their housing assistance.

NETWORK Lobby is gearing up to fight this proposal and will soon be inviting NETWORK members to submit comments about this rule to HUD by July 9.  We can work to stop the Trump administration’s attack on immigrant families if we raise our voices in opposition to this cruel proposed rule.

Submit a comment opposing this rule here.