News
Democrats just united on a $15-an-hour minimum wage
by Noah Kulwin
05.25.17 Bruised after a crushing defeat in November, Democrats are uniting under a cause they believe could pay off in 2018: the $15 federal minimum wage. On Thursday, Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024, reflecting local laws that have raised the minimum wage in 19 states earlier this year. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since taking effect in July 2009, an eight-year stagnation that evinces the broader trend of stalled wage… Continue Reading
Sanders, Democrats introduce $15 minimum wage bill
by Jordain Carney
05.25.17 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is teaming up with top congressional Democrats to try to raise the federal minimum wage to $15, a move that has divided Democrats for years. Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) - the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee - and 28 other Democratic senators introduced the Senate legislation on Thursday. The bill would increase the federal minimum wage, currently at $7.25, to $15 by 2024, a… Continue Reading
Congressional Democrats rally around Sanders' minimum wage proposal
by Drew Angerer
05.25.17 Top Democrats joined Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, on Thursday to introduce the party's latest economic proposal: raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 and indexing it over time. "I think under any definition that is a starvation wage," Sanders said. "We have got to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And what we are here today to say is that living wage is $15 an hour." Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Others included co-sponsor… Continue Reading
Ben Carson Says Poverty Is Largely ‘a State of Mind’
by Eric Levitz
05.24.17 Ben Carson announced Wednesday that poverty is a state of mind. "I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind," the Housing secretary said during an interview with Armstrong Williams on SiriusXM. "You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street and I guarantee in a little while they'll be right back up there." This is incredible news for the 16 million American households that suffer from food insecurity, or the hundreds o… Continue Reading
Trump’s budget would cut off food for poor people if they have too many kids
by Caitlin Dewey
05.24.17 The Trump administration is seeking to dramatically cut food aid to large American families as part of its wide-ranging budget proposal to shrink the social safety net, Agriculture Department officials said Tuesday. The measure is a small part of the administration's radical plan to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, by $193 billion over 10 years. The plan would slash the number of people who rely on the SNAP program, which covers 44 million p… Continue Reading
Trump’s Education Budget Takes Aim at the Working Class
by Alia Wong
05.22.17 Many of the spending goals outlined in Donald Trump's proposed education budget reflect his campaign rhetoric. The president, who has long called for reducing the federal government's role in schools and universities, wants to cut the Education Department's funding by $9 billion, or 13 percent of the budget approved by Congress last month. The few areas that would see a boost pertain to school choice, an idea that Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly touted as a top priority… Continue Reading
Trump’s Budget Cuts Deeply Into Medicaid and Anti-Poverty Efforts
by Julie Hirschfeld Davis
05.22.17 WASHINGTON - President Trump plans to unveil on Tuesday a $4.1 trillion budget for 2018 that would cut deeply into programs for the poor, from health care and food stamps to student loans and disability payments, laying out an austere vision for reordering the nation's priorities. The document, grandly titled "A New Foundation for American Greatness," encapsulates much of the "America first" message that powered Mr. Trump's campaign. It calls for an increase in military spending of 10 percent a… Continue Reading
Lessons From The Nation's Oldest Voucher Program
by Claudio Sanchez
05.19.17 Milwaukee has the nation's longest-running publicly funded voucher program. For 27 years it has targeted African-American kids from low-income families, children who otherwise could not afford the tuition at a private or religious school. The vouchers are issued by what's known as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Some people see them as a beacon of hope in a public school district where student achievement lags far behind the state average and where only 20 percent of students are profic… Continue Reading
How Kids Would Fare Under the American Health Care Act
by Vann Newkirk II
05.18.17 Since the American Health Care Act's passage in the House, the future of U.S. health policy now rests in the hands of the Senate. What happens next is unclear: The Senate's version of the legislation could move to the left or right, or the chamber could draft an entirely new bill as a starting place. Still, the broad strokes of Republican health-care reform-a repeal of insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, massive cuts to long-term Medicaid spending, federal grants for state high-ris… Continue Reading
Republicans serve up dishonest claims to defend their health-care bill
by Editorial Board
05.08.17 SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine) was asked Sunday whether the health-care bill the House of Representatives passed last week would, as its GOP boosters insist, improve coverage and preserve patient protections. "I think that's unlikely," she responded. "Unlikely" was a kind way of putting it. Ms. Collins's comments came on the same morning that Trump administration officials and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) made several indefensible claims about the bill they championed, despite widespread co… Continue Reading
The Trump administration is making Obamacare more expensive
by Sarah Kliff
05.08.17 Some health insurance plans selling on the Obamacare marketplaces are planning steep 2018 rate increases, in part to account for the uncertainty over how the Trump administration will administer the law. The administration has been aggressively ambiguous about key policy issues, like whether it will enforce the health care law's individual mandate or pay out insurance subsidies aimed at the lowest-income Obamacare enrollees. In response, insurance executives tell Vox they will charge steeper r… Continue Reading
Kasich: Republicans' plan for high-risk pools 'ridiculous'
by Brandon Carter
05.07.17 Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) mocked House Republicans' recently passed healthcare bill, saying its plan to establish high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions is "ridiculous." "The business of these [high]-risk pools, they are not funded; $8 billion dollars is not enough to fund," Kasich said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning, laughing. "It's ridiculous." Kasich said states wouldn't have an incentive to move to a high-risk pool system and would instead stay in the healthc… Continue Reading
5000 Role Models of Excellence had a ‘national signing day’ for college scholarships
by Alex Harris
05.06.17 More than five dozen students gathered in a Miami hotel Friday evening to sign scholarships committing to universities of their choice. The 62 young men were all members of 5000 Role Models of Excellence, a mentorship foundation started in 1993 by Florida Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson. All the "Wilson Scholars" wore the signature uniform of the program - black suits, white shirts and a red tie covered in black handprints - as they signed for their colleges and received free laptops. In a … Continue Reading
D.C. Vouchers Show Negative Impact on Student Achievement, Study Finds
by Lesli A. Maxwell
04.27.17 A new evaluation of the nation's only federally funded private school voucher program finds that students' math achievement was negatively impacted by participating in what is known as the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program. The vouchers also appeared to have no impact on parents' overall satisfaction with their childrens' schools. But the same study-done by the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education-found positive impacts on parents' perception of school safety for … Continue Reading
Democrats Condemn Climate Change Skeptics for Targeting Teachers
by Katie Worth
04.12.17 Three top Democrats have urged a libertarian think tank to stop mailing climate change skeptical classroom materials to teachers across America. The ranking Democrats on the House committees overseeing education, natural resources and science condemned the group's mass-mailing campaign and counseled teachers to throw away the materials when they arrive. But the Heartland Institute said it has no intention of desisting: It has continued to send books and DVDs rejecting the human role in global … Continue Reading
Trump shouldn’t gut the program that helped rescue my state
by Haley Barbour
04.12.17 If the politics of national service is a thorny subject for congressional Republicans - scrutinizing programs long embraced by Democrats but preserving programs seen as both patriotic and worth the money - financing it, or, in the words of White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, asking "a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit" to keep paying for it, is even thornier. In the era of skinny budgets, it's easy for congressional appropriators to lump national service programs in … Continue Reading
Special Ed School Vouchers May Come With Hidden Costs
by Dana Goldstein
04.11.17 For many parents with disabled children in public school systems, the lure of the private school voucher is strong. Vouchers for special needs students have been endorsed by the Trump administration, and they are often heavily promoted by state education departments and by private schools, which rely on them for tuition dollars. So for families that feel as if they are sinking amid academic struggles and behavioral meltdowns, they may seem like a life raft. And often they are. But there's a ca… Continue Reading
What Betsy DeVos Can Do for Trans Youth
by Rep. Susan Davis (CA-53)
04.11.17 Civil rights are at the heart of having access to a quality education. In fact, in his address before a joint session of Congress President Donald J. Trump said: "Education is the civil rights issue of our time." This was just six days after he ordered the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to rescind protections for trans students. From desegregation to Title IX, the federal government has a responsibility to protect the rights of all students. President Barack Obama was ke… Continue Reading
Reversal: Some Republicans now defending parts of ObamaCare
by Peter Sullivan
04.09.17 The House's debate over repealing ObamaCare has had an unintended effect: Republicans are now defending key elements of President Obama's health law. Many House Republicans are now defending ObamaCare's protections for people with pre-existing conditions, in the face of an effort by the conservative House Freedom Caucus to repeal them. Some Republican lawmakers are also speaking out in favor of ObamaCare's expansion of Medicaid and its mandates that insurance plans cover servic… Continue Reading
House Education Committee Approves Bill Updating Juvenile-Justice Law
by Andrew Ujifusa
04.04.17 The House education committee approved a reauthorization of the federal law governing juvenile-justice programs, repeating a move to overhaul the law that it took in the last Congress. The committee sent the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2017 to the full House for consideration on Tuesday via a voice vote. The bill is similar to the Supporting Youth Opportunity and Preventing Delinquency Act of 2016 that the House overwhelmingly approved last September. That bill didn't make it over the finish… Continue Reading