Inclusive Prosperity Programs Shortchanged in Mayor Bowser’s Budget

My last post merely mentioned shortfalls in the Mayor’s proposed budget, due at least partly to the $100 million or so she chose to forfeit by doing nothing to halt the automatically triggered tax cuts.

I’ll turn now to my picks for programs she shortchanges, based on how she styles her budget — a roadmap to inclusive prosperity.” Still only summaries. And not all programs some advocates have flagged.

Nevertheless, more than I can cover in a single post with enough substance to convey what’s under-funded — or unfunded — and why that violates the budget’s promise. So I’ll deal here with what seem the most obvious and followup with a couple of others that matter too.

Education and Training

We also all know that education and relevant job training generally move people along the road to some modicum of prosperity. For many adults in the District, the first step must be remedial education — basic literacy in reading and math, help in preparing for the GED exams.

For others, appropriate programs include those leading to a regular high school diploma and /or vocational education courses in other publicly-funded institutions, e.g., charter schools and alternative education in regular public schools like the Ballou High School’s STAY program.

Several surveys have found that adult learners miss classes because they can’t come up with the transit fare. Eighty-six percent of the youngest who had subsidized transportation said it would hard or altogether impossible to attend without it.

No reason to believe that’s not true for at least as many older adults, who’ve often got to spend more of such income as they have on basic needs for both themselves and their children. And, of course, we’ve got to assume that some of all ages drop out.

The Deputy Mayor for Education recommended an adult learner parallel to the Kids Ride program, which covers the public transit costs of getting to and from school.

Not a big ticket item—a mere $1.5–2 million. But no money in the Mayor’s budget for it.

Double-Duty Work Support

The full, unsubsidized cost of child care in the District is higher, on average, than in any state. Though low-income parents are officially eligible for subsidies that help pay for it, as a practical matter it’s difficult, if not impossible to find a center that will accept them.

This is a long-standing problem rooted in the insufficient rates the District uses to reimburse providers. For this, among other reasons, it was shy roughly 14,000 slots for infants and toddlers in 2015.

They’re the most costly to care for properly, what with diaper changing, feeding and all — hence local center charges averaging $22,658 a year.

The kids are too young for pre-K, of course. But the quality of care, e.g., nurturing relationships, talking to, has more impact on brain development than at any later stage. The very young children who get it will do better in school — and thus have a better chance of sharing in prosperity.

Now, if you can’t find trustworthy care for your child, you’re unlikely to work. Nor enroll in an education or training program that would prepare you to do so. And you won’t do either if you can’t pay for it.

Charges for licensed childcare are likely to increase, since the District recently set new licensing standards that require not only teachers, but their assistants to have at least a two-year college degree, unless they’ve got an independently-awarded Child Development Associate credential.

Those who manage to get either surely — and reasonably — will expect increases in their pay. It’s already, on average, extremely low — $26,470, on average, according to the latest figures.

If they don’t get them they can find employers that will. And that’s likely to further reduce open slots, since replacing them would be as difficult as keeping those who left.

Yet the Mayor’s budget doesn’t nothing about this. It would instead put $15.3 million into a new initiative to increase center capacity. But the new slots would be market rate — helpful for better-off parents, but no help at all for the most in need of affordable care to move down her road.

Paid Family Leave

The Mayor proposes no funding to translate the paid family leave law the Council passed into an operating program.

That requires both the creation of a new agency to administer the law, e.g., to ensure employers pay what they owe, pay out to eligible workers for the time off they take, and a new computer system to make all this possible.

We know the Mayor doesn’t like the law. But the essence of being an executive is executing laws.

Forcing more than half a million workers to wait for who knows how much longer to either keep working when they need time off for compelling  for compelling family reasons — or at least as likely forgo needed income — hardly comports with including them in prosperity.

Her refusal to propose the $20 million needed to get the program started doesn’t, I think, reflect only spending constraints imposed by her deciding not to even hit the pause button on the tax cuts. But they do perhaps provide some cover.

DC Paid Family Leave Law Back on the Drafting Table

Last week, workers in the District of Columbia seemingly gained the opportunity to take off time from work for compelling family reasons without forfeiting their entire pay.

This, of course, is especially important for low-wage workers, who are least likely to have any sort of paid family leave benefit and least likely to have enough saved to carry them and their families through times with no wage income.

The bill the Council passed — the Universal Paid Family Leave Amendment Act — has gone over to Congress, which can block it. But the responsible House Committee probably won’t even try before the time limit expires, what with its focus on other interventions and members now back in their homes bases.

The Mayor, who’d never liked the bill, refused to sign it. Wouldn’t veto it either, knowing the required majority of Councilmembers would override. But the law’s still not a finished piece of business.

In fact, the Mayor and heavy-hitters in the business community have succeeded in opening up the whole scheme again — always what opponents of a law aim for, since they have new opportunities to carve out exceptions, preferences and the like.

The Council Chairman, a strong supporter of the original bill, has said he’ll propose an alternative, hoping to quell the adamant opposition expressed by spokespersons for the business community.

But, he adds, the benefits won’t change. Doubtful then that the alternative will satisfy the Mayor, whose letter explaining why she wouldn’t sign the bill doesn’t accurately reflect what she said before.

Specially, she now says she’s gravely concerned because residents who work for the federal government or outside the city won’t get the benefit. She earlier, however, objected instead to coverage of people who worked for non-government employers in the District, but lived outside the city limits.

This, one notes, echoes the DC Chamber of Commerce, which also, of course, strenuously objects to the miniscule 0.62% payroll tax that would create the fund for paying the benefits.

One can surely understand the Chairman’s concern that the Chamber, the local Restaurant Association and other business groups will encourage members to resist what they must do to make the law work well — if not overtly, then by doing as little as they can possibly get away with.

One can also understand the Chairman’s concern about the Mayor’s response to the law — specifically her refusal to do the first necessary thing to make it work.

That would be including funds in her proposed budget to establish and then sustain the administrative apparatus needed to collect the required payroll taxes and then start using the funds to compensate eligible workers for their pay losses.

Lacking funding in the Mayor’s proposed budget, the Council would have to find the money — in other words, to shift funds from other programs, raise more revenues or some combination thereof. The District’s not truly short on money, but it’s already got pressing needs for more.

And as I’ve said, several times now — and as the Mayor said too — it faces likely, though as yet uncertain losses of federal revenues. Yet she’s responsible — or ought to be — for ensuring District laws have funds for administration, including enforcement.

Now here’s the thing that’s most striking to me. She had ample time to propose her own bill or, perhaps more politically savvy, changes in what the Council was crafting. Nada.

And we’ve nothing more now. Just the non-veto objections to what a substantial majority of the Council passed and her virtual charge to “revisit” it. Where’s the leadership here?

In any event, the Chairman seems inclined to consider the vocal business community’s preference for a mandate, rather than a payroll tax.

A bill reportedly just introduced by Councilmembers Jack Evans and Mary Cheh moves in this direction, but without relieving larger businesses and other comparable organizations, e.g. hospitals, universities, of any tax at all.

Specifically, it would reduce the payroll tax to 0.2% for larger employers (those with more than 50 employees) and to 0.4% for small employers. The larger would then have to fund the same paid leave benefits the current law requires however they saw fit.

The payroll tax would, as the current law envisions, create a funding pool to pay the benefits covered workers would receive when taking time off for certain personal and family needs.

Funds would apparently still be collected, managed and distributed by a District agency. But payouts would go only to workers for small businesses and other small-staffed organizations in the District, e.g., nonprofit service providers, research and advocacy organizations.

This, at first glance, would seem like a reasonable compromise. Whether it would satisfy the local Chamber of Commerce, Restaurant Association and other employers that fretted remains to be seen.

Likewise the Mayor, who’s understandably deferred a substantive response until her staff have delved into the bill itself. Worth noting, however, that she wouldn’t say whether she supports the benefits it preserves.

Nor whether it allays any of her other concerns, including the administrative costs District budgets would have to cover.

Councilmember Elissa Silverman — a champion of the original bill and now one of the advocates who’s outspokenly distressed by the move to change it — reportedly views the new bill as problematic because it would require a new agency or the equivalent to ensure that larger employers complied with their payroll tax obligations.

But we’d have needed provisions for enforcement anyway. And only the District can enforce its laws, though it could contract out the routine administrative functions. An earlier report on Councilmembers’ predilections suggested Evans might argue for this.

More to the point, Silverman questions whether the lower payroll taxes will suffice to cover the benefits workers for small employers will still be entitled to. One would hope that the Council would seek a disinterested, reliable projection.

Needless to say, some other ardent backers of the paid leave law are, like Silverman, distressed (to put it mildly) by the Council Chairman’s decision to even tamper with the paid leave law — “delaying and sabotaging” it, says a local union official on behalf of the DC Paid Family Leave Campaign.

I wouldn’t go there at this point. We need, I think, to have a strong paid family leave law that has as many affected and other actively interested forces on board as possible.

A lot of work to do before — and after — covered workers can actually start taking leave without forfeiting all their pay. And it won’t get done effectively unless the Mayor exercises the leadership that only she can.

DC Set to Make Family Caregiving More Affordable

Followers may have noticed that I’ve taken a break from blogging. The rapid recovery I was experiencing after my fall in late November took a 180 degree turn such that I could barely sit due to the pain, let alone concentrate on policy issues.

Ultimately, I wound up back in a rehab facility and have only recently returned home. As I lay in bed there and now sit propped up in a pillow-cushioned chair, I find my thoughts riveted on our healthcare system.

One hardly needs fractured bones to worry about the fate of many millions of people who may no longer have affordable health insurance. I’ll have more to say about this.

But, for the time being, an insight that reaches beyond healthcare policy per se.

During both my brief stays in rehab, I raised concerns about how I would cope alone when deemed mobile enough to return home. The therapists, caseworkers and on-the-scene physician invariably responded with “Don’t you have family?”

Yes, as I suppose most patients do. But that doesn’t mean we have family members who can take on responsibilities for helping us with what the professionals call activities of daily living, e.g. bathing, dressing, cooking, housekeeping.

Lots of reasons that family members can’t become our primary caregivers. They may, for example, live so far away that they’d have to temporarily relocate. They may have children who need their daily care. They themselves may have health problems that limit what they can do.

Not much policymakers can do about these. But they can address one common barrier—potential lost wages or even jobs.

As you probably know, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act protects some workers from the latter. But it covers only about 60% of workers.

Laws in eleven states and the District of Columbia expand eligibility in various ways. But only five states and the District require employers to directly or indirectly compensate workers for any of the wages they lose when they take time off because of illness.

A handful of local governments have more expansive paid sick leave mandates than the state they’re in. But virtually all these laws exclude workers employed by small businesses—in some cases, very small, in others not.

The District also expressly excludes whole categories of workers, including all restaurant wait staff and bartenders who receive the subminimum tip credit wage.

In short, this safety net is a patchwork of protections that force hard, consequential choices between working for pay and caring for sick or disabled family members.

The District, however, is set to join the four states that enable workers to take time off for illness or other compelling reasons without forfeiting the income they need.

The DC Council recently approved a bill that would replace all but 10% of the wages that lower-income workers lose when they take time off to care for family members—not only those who are sick or disabled, but newborns and newly-adopted children.

It would also effectively supersede the paid sick leave exemption for most tip credit workers. And it would cover, at a lower replacement rate, all high-paid workers, as Rachel Sadon at DCist explains.

The bill caps the amount of paid leave workers can claim for each of the specified reasons, allowing up to eight weeks to care for their babies and/or develop a trusting relationship with a newly-adopted child.

Care for the likes of me would be capped at six weeks—a maximum the Council whittled down to add two weeks of personal medical care.

The bill adopts the paid leave model that California pioneered. Instead of requiring employers to pay their workers when they take time off for authorized reasons, it imposes a tiny payroll tax—0.62%.

The funds would go into a pool and then to workers entitled to replacement wages. So all District employers would collectively pay time off for all people who work in the District, except government employees.

The bill is the latest iteration of a proposal Councilmembers have worked on since 2015. It’s proved very controversial—and still is. “This [the final vote] is the battle, not the war, says a member of the DC Chamber of Commerce board.

The Mayor seems inclined to let the bill become law without her signature, thus indicating her disapproval without triggering a vote to override a veto. She clearly views the legislation as unfinished business, predicting the Council will have to revisit it before it becomes effective.

Translating the bill into a viable system would prove challenging, even if the administration wanted to make it work. One can only hope that it sets aside its reservations or comes up with a better solution.

I don’t know enough to know whether there is one. What I do know is that our healthcare system assumes a family caregiving role that our labor laws don’t accommodate.

The lack of paid time off leaves sick and disabled people vulnerable. My summary here indicates other compelling needs that may get short shrift.

But they often don’t because workers (mostly women) quit their jobs or shift to part-time work so they can fulfill family responsibilities.

This puts them at a disadvantage when they’re ready to return to the workforce or full-time employment. And it’s likely to disadvantage them when they’re ready to retire because the years when they earned nothing or very little often become part of the base for calculating Social Security benefits.

In the meantime, families whose breadwinners sacrifice to provide care have to make do with less or no earned income. This is a problem for all working families, but especially those dependent on a low-wage worker.

It’s also a problem for state and local governments because they must make do with less tax revenues and increased needs for safety net benefits.

Ideally, we would have a nationwide paid sick and family leave law. That’s obviously not in the cards during the next four years. So here’s another case where states and the District must do for their residents what Congress and the President won’t do for all Americans.

 

No Secure Three-Legged Stool to Support Seniors

My recent post on Social Security left out two related pieces of the story — why retirement benefits don’t cover basic living costs and why the concept underpinning Social Security merits rethinking.

Why Social Security Doesn’t Give Seniors Income Security

If Social Security afforded seniors financial security, we wouldn’t have about 6.5 million of them in poverty — or nearly 13.8 million more constrained to live on incomes less than twice the applicable, very low threshold.

This, as I’ve said, is partly because Social Security retirement benefits are based on past wage income. But it’s also because they’re not supposed to suffice for financial security. And they never were.

Sometime in the late 1940s, financial security for retirees came to be commonly characterized as a three-legged stool, supported by Social Security benefits, pensions and private savings.

We see this assumption baked into the benefits, which now average $1,348 a month. That’s less than 150% of the poverty threshold for a single senior.

And the average, of course, masks the range. At the low end, roughly 30% of retirees and their dependents get less than $1,000.

How Other Legs of the Stool Don’t Support It

“All three legs of the stool have been whittled away,” says economist Jesse Rothstein in a paper that proposes a multi-part expansion.

But for Social Security, the whittling is only prospective, i.e., benefits cuts that will occur if Congress doesn’t do something to shore up the Trust Fund — or if Republican policymakers take a knife to them sooner.

What then about the other two legs? Pensions, as you know, are going the way of the woodbine and twine, especially in the private sector.

Employers that can have replaced them with 401(k) accounts or the equivalent — at least, those that think they’ve got to provide some sort of retirement benefit. Far from all do.

The rest don’t necessarily let all their workers participate. They can legally exclude those who don’t work, on average, close to half time. They may, in some cases, exclude workers supplied by temporary agencies — and in all cases, those they’ve misclassified as independent contractors.

Workers who are eligible don’t all seize this opportunity to save for retirement. About 16% of those nearing retirement age don’t — roughly the same as the percent of workers nearing middle age.

Those who do participate often don’t contribute the maximum they can. Only 10% did shortly before the Great Recession set in. Many of the rest presumably couldn’t afford to. Probably still can’t.

Rothstein flags other problems with the 401(k)-type plans. First off, they generally allow workers to decide how to invest the money they’ve contributed, within limits imposed by the financial plan or plans their employers offer.

These come with fees that look small, but add up over time. And, face it, knowing enough to choose which funds to invest in — stocks, bonds, a variable mix — and knowing when to move money around and when to sit tight require considerable expertise.

This is one, but far from the only reason that long-time workers lost, on average, 25% when the Great Recession set in.

These hazards apply equally to Individual Retirement Accounts, though the much lower limit on contributions necessarily limits losses. Gains also, of course.

Don’t look to the third leg to offset the weaknesses of the others. Seems that a very large number of working-age adults simply don’t have enough money to save — or at the very least, spend all their take-home pay.

Well over a third who earn less than $50,000 a year have no money in a savings account, according to a recent survey. An additional 35% have less than $1,000 — a minimal cushion against any unusual expense or income loss.

Low-income households headed by someone nearing retirement age have less than $10,000 in liquid assets, including money in bank accounts, retirement savings accounts and other sources they could readily tap, e.g., the cash value of a life insurance policy.

For all these reasons, Social Security is the major source of income for most of us older folks — and virtually the only source for 21% of married couples and about 43% who aren’t married, including presumably those whose spouses have died.

What If We Do Nothing

Rothstein is far from the only expert to seize on problems with our current system for financial security in our “golden years.” A team of economists predicts that the number of poor and near-poor retirees will increase 146% by 2022 if nothing’s done about Social Security and retirement savings accounts.

The increase could actually be larger because they don’t project for seniors over 74 years old. Even so, nearly 24% of all but the top-earning workers who were nearing retirement age in 2012 will be poor or near-poor only four years from now.

And if they’re struggling then, they sure won’t be better off if they manage to survive to a ripe old age, despite the hardships they’ll have suffered.