Roosevelt | 25 Ideas for Working Families in America (2007)

Access to Housing

Inclusionary Zoning for Increased Access to Affordable Housing in Los Angeles

Kether Hayden, Occidental College

By implementing Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) in Los Angeles, the city can increase working peoples’ access to affordable housing with minimal budgetary expenditure.

A Home for the Working Poor

Kevin Chang, Brian Levy, University of Georgia

Cities implementing a Definition of Family zoning ordinance can improve home ownership for the working poor by modifying the ordinance’s restrictions in order to target its intended populations.

Income Supports

State Earned Income Tax Credits

Alexander Bartik, Brandon Fong, Gregory Geusic, and Eric Kafka, Yale University

By piggybacking off of the enormously successful federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, states can provide much-needed tax relief to low-income workers with minimal administrative costs.

Federal Farm Subsidies Limitations Proposal

Sheila Korth, University of Nebraska

This proposal would eliminate loopholes in the farm subsidy payment system and would redistribute subsidies from large corporations and farmers to small and medium-sized farmers, while benefiting rural communities.

Indexing the Massachusetts Minimum Wage

Jason Poulos, University of Massachusetts

Massachusetts should increase the state minimum wage and index it to the Consumer Price Index to restore the purchasing power that the minimum wage has lost over the past decade and to protect its purchasing power against future inflation.

Welfare Reform: Focus on Community Service

Kate Berlent, Hamilton College

By placing at least 15 percent of welfare recipients per state in paid community service positions, we can decrease TANF caseloads and increase self-sufficiency among workers while directly improving communities.

Child Care

Empowering Families to Choose Quality Childcare in New York City

Amy Abbandondelo, Carl Nadler, New York University

Current New York City childcare subsidies should be restructured so that they are provided directly to consumers and are aligned with the quality of the care provided. Quality would be evaluated by preexisting nonprofit accreditation services, whose work would also be subsidized.

Helping Working Families with Children Under Five

Hallie Fox, Middlebury College

States should provide graded tax credit for working families with children under five, to be used for quality childcare and to encourage better education & licensing of childcare providers.

Expanding Access to Services to Combat Child Poverty in New York State

Charlotta Chung, Saint Lawrence University

In order to combat child poverty, changes should be made in how our welfare system provides services and money, primarily by modifying existing restrictions and significantly expanding the number of people eligible for access to government support.

Support Effective Programs to Reduce the Number of Child Support Enforcement Cases

Lauren Barnett, Princeton University

The Office of Child Support Enforcement should fund child support and parenting education programs. These programs can reduce the number of child support enforcement cases by (1) training more informed and responsible fathers who are more likely to pay child support without OCSE intervention and (2) reducing the number of out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

Access to Health Care

Tax-based Automatic Enrollment in SCHIP

Robert Nelb, Yale University

States and the Federal government should use tax return information to streamline income eligibility and automatically enroll children in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Primary Adult Care: Pulling Maryland Citizens out of the Uninsured Trap

Laurel Murphy, John Hopkins University

Maryland should amend the Code of Maryland Regulations to eliminate the asset requirements for the Primary Adult Care (PAC) program. Eligibility requirements should be based solely on age, residence, and income to better serve individuals with low incomes.

Single-Payer Healthcare

Jake Grumbach, Columbia University

By implementing a Medicare-style health insurance plan for all Americans, paid for through income and estate taxes, we can provide more adequate care for everyone and help the 18,000 people who die each year due to a lack of health insurance.

Increasing Healthcare Insurance Enrollment In the District of Columbia

Matthew Parelman, George Washington University

To reduce the number of uninsured residents, the District of Columbia should pass a law mandating that all applicants for city low-income services be screened and, if appropriate, enrolled in a public healthcare program.

Crafting State Health Policies to Cover the Uninsured

Lawrence Fried, Cornell University

By creating high-risk insurance pools and tax incentives, individual states can reduce the number of individuals without health insurance coverage.

Certificate-of-Need Laws: Barriers to Lower Costs and Higher Quality

Deep J. Shah, University of Georgia

Certificate-of-Need (CON) laws restrict competition among healthcare providers and lead to higher healthcare costs. Removing CON laws in every state will reduce federal healthcare spending and improve healthcare quality for every American.

Building Social Capital

Social Capital Block Grants

Niko Karvounis, Oxford University

Social capital is essential to promoting community development. To ensure that local community foundations develop, social capital block grants should be incorporated into existing community block grant programs.

Improving Accessibility to Art Museums

Nancy Thebaut, Agnes Scott College

The federal government should implement a 20-cent consumer tax on plastic and paper shopping bags to internalize the environmental costs of bag consumption. The legislation would both discourage use of disposable bags and raise money to implement a more comprehensive bag-recycling program.

Meeting Challenges Facing Working Families

Predatory Payday Lending Reform

Alexander Bartik, Lulu Cheng, Brandon Fong, Gregory Geusic, Benjamin Lazarus, and Jacob Koch; Yale University

By structuring laws to close readily exploited loopholes, states can effectively prevent the predatory payday lending practices that exploit the desperation of America’s workers.

National Guard Readiness Certification Requirements

Kai Stinchcombe, Stanford University

States should pass laws requiring that, when the state’s National Guard troops are serving overseas, the governor has to report every 30 days on:

(1) Whether the troops are properly and safely equipped,
(2) Whether the overseas deployments are adversely straining the soldiers families, and
(3) Whether the state can adequately respond to disasters it is likely to face.

Strengthen Paternity Leave by Encouraging Voluntary Standards for Businesses

Sofia Brill, Yale University

In order to bolster women’s equality in the workplace, the U.S. Department of Labor should promote a non-binding set of standards to strengthen paternity leave.

Expanding the Family Medical Leave Act

Kaitlin Canty and Samantha Sherwood, Union College and University of Connecticut

By reducing the employer eligibility threshold, extending unpaid leave, and adding partial paid leave, we can strengthen the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to better address the needs of working families.

Partnerships for Minority Empowerment: Restructuring the Current Population Survey

Helen Cheung, Leo Espino, University of Washington

Government-nonprofit partnerships should combine their trade-specific strengths to encourage minority and immigrant participation in the Current Population Survey, with the government providing financial resources and the local nonprofits supplying their frontline knowledge.

Community Partnerships to Curb Domestic Violence Against Immigrant Women

Morgan Patten, Wright State University

The Office of Violence against Women (OVW) should partner with community organizations to develop more cultural- and gender-sensitive guidelines and programs that address the problem of domestic violence in immigrant communities.

Stemming the Tide of the Uninsured

Brian Levy, The University of Georgia

The federal government should provide incentives encouraging all 50 states to require that insurance companies offer flood insurance to all Americans; market competition through multiple providers will improve service and lower consumer costs.