Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » maximum eligable participation

Building Wealth

jstuart — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:53:33 +0000

Baltimore The community organizing class at the University of Maryland School of Social Work had gone chapter by chapter through Citizen Wealth, so their questions were specific and pointed as they seized on themes that meant something to them or tried to put their arms around issues that often slip all of our grasp. The hardest questions involved the very real problems raised in Chapter 9 focusing on maximum eligible participation and whether we really have a program in the US to build citizen wealth not just in raising and distributing income but actually creating assets and long term income security.

The reasons the students questions were so hard is because we really have no satisfactory answers in current public policy. The largest federal supports continue to go towards home ownership through mortgage interest deductions on federal income taxes without any specific targeting for especially poor families. Furthermore the current tightened credit markets and the fight to prevent foreclosures have dampened the boosterism around home ownership as a real asset building strategy for the poor. As the students pressed the issue, it was obvious to me how vacuous the answers are that are provided by current policy and programs. A student from Cameroon also kept reminding me about my skepticism in the book about using debt to reduce poverty, so among my careful readers I had to be very accountable.

We need to directly confront the ideological and political objections to direct income transfers that are standing in the way of programs that would create actual family savings with incentives to increase and build protected accounts to marshal and expand financial security and create additional inducements that modify and direct behavior in such ways that expand assets. Simply put: we need to give money, encourage savings, and create accounts that can be used for the emergencies that devastate citizen wealth as well as the education, investment, further savings, and homeownership that can be leveraged to create citizen wealth and intergenerational wealth with permanent impacts for the family and the community.

Unfortunately all of the existing programs that move in this direction for the poor are small and precious and really only amounting to small change in the total expenditures designed to dent poverty. All of this is more pilot than program. We talk savings, but we are unwilling to create the hedge for the poor that a real bank account and savings book would do for people.

Professor Steve Soifer was engaged by the question and sent me several emails late into the night reminding me of the power of compound interest based on incremental payments over decades in adding up to real assets over time. Somehow we have to give people the leg up to either save incrementally or allow the government to create accounts for families or children to create real wealth. Let’s spend some time doing the “organizing math” to figure out what it would take to create citizen wealth this way.

Thanks to the Community Organizing class at UMSSW for doing the hard work with me!

Learning by Listening about Citizen Wealth

jstuart — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:30:20 +0000

Los Angeles After a week in California from Benicia to San Francisco to Oakland and finally Los Angeles, I found myself scratching my head as I headed home about what I was learning from people’s comments and questions about the continued attack on citizen wealth in America.

In Oakland Alfredo Avila with the Applied Research Center raised the issue that deliberate delays and forced appeals for the elderly apply for social security were extending some delays in receiving benefits by eligible individuals up to 18 months. I pressed Alfredo because I had not heard this and didn’t want to crawl out on a limb, and there was headshaking throughout the crowd and nods of confirmation.

What about legal services lawyers, I asked, weren’t they challenging this? Several people in Oakland raised the fact that not only are the offices now barred from any “impact” litigation, which is exactly what this might be, but privately told tales of legal services directors who embraced the restraints more interested in protecting their limited funding than really assisting the poor in making changes.

I repeated these stories I was hearing in Oakland while we were all sitting around the table talking about Citizen Wealth in Los Angeles at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center. Kent Wong, director of the program, seized on the point and while ticking the points off on his fingers, went down the list of areas where he knew the pending reauthorization language for the Legal Services Corporation barred impact legislation and moreover almost anything that would even challenge government regulations or performance for the poor.

Donis Borks, a regional representative for the UAW local that represents many legal services offices around the country, was in attendance as in happened. He nodded his head as Kent spoke as did Myesha Jenkins, a law student at USC. Borks later mentioned that during the discussion of the book’s argument for maximum eligible participation that it had given him an idea, because legal services intake workers were also not making sure as they did the paperwork with clients to check and see if they were eligible for other programs, and this could be easily and meaningfully done. I was excited to hear that and jumped on the point. Donis quickly added it would take their union to make this a priority because he doubted the office directors would easily do so.

Stories like these have been moving and keep me pushing forward, but at the same time it is discouraging that while confronted with the constant erosion of citizen wealth support for lower income families we are still caught in the conundrum of finding the spirit willing and the flesh and follow through so weak.

Massachusetts Immigrants Maybe. Poor, Doubtful

jstuart — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:26:09 +0000

Baltimore A compromise of sorts seems to have been reached in Massachusetts to provide some form of health coverage for the 31,000 LEGAL immigrants in the state that had been bounced off the rolls as a cost savings measure. The other victim of this cost cutting were the poor families whose automatic enrollment in the program ceased so that the state could save an equal amount of money by forcing them to go through the arduous application process for benefits and cynically knowing that enough families would not be able to navigate the bureaucracy that that they would save $65 million in that way. Immigrant groups like the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition saw this as a “temporary” solution and a not totally satisfactory one. Voices for the poor on their being the brunt of the other part of this cost saving were silent, as near as I can tell, yet this is a life and death question for them as well.

Governor Deval Patrick said that this program would cost the state about $40 million, so they have still saved $25 million on this mess. I’m not sure how much of that savings has to do with the fact that for many of these families they will not be restored to this level of healthcare, even though less than they had before, until December. Originally, the report had indicated that 35,000 legal immigrants were being denied coverage. This announcement says 31,000 will be covered. I also have no idea what will happen to the 4000 families not mentioned, but maybe this is what they call a “rounding error” in Massachusetts now. To get a savings at the level of $25 million means that for these Massachusetts residents there will be no hospice care, no skilled nursing care, and a huge increase in co-pays for everything imaginable. But, I guess the view in the Bay State is that this is better than nothing, and indeed who can argue with that, especially poor families who seem to still be caught in the nothing bind.

As a footnote to the national debate, clearly the hiatus in coverage and the cutback in benefits comes “thanks” to a deal Governor Patrick was able to make with a no-name, unknown Missouri health insurance company. If ever there were a case for the “public option,” as it’s called now, this might be it.

Being a Citizen Wealth guy, I’m still stuck though on the other part of this budgeting fiasco, and this is the push out of the poor from automatic enrollment. What are we doing about that Governor Patrick? Where’s the care and compassion for the least of our citizens in the great state of Massachusetts? Where are their voices and who will help their feet hit the pavement in protest? The silence is disheartening to me, but their lives have equal value and need equal effort in finding a solution, be it temporary or permanent.

Poor are Pawns in Massachusetts

jstuart — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:15:06 +0000

New Orleans The poor became pawns as the big players in the Massachusetts stand-off over health care coverage continued to up the stakes in this struggle with the news that Massachusetts General Hospital sued the state complaining of tens of millions in unreimbursed care. They argued that Commonwealth Care – the state’s highly touted plan – “…was never, ever supposed to be financed on the backs of the poor…” according to Elaine Ullian, Mass General’s CEO as quoted by Abby Goodnought in a follow-up story in the Times.

Hmmm….maybe, just another self-serving statement as one lays down a placeholder in court in this stalemate.

My problem continues to be that the poor are getting short shrift here as these big players rumble around on the field supposedly in their name.

Meanwhile in the pure cynicism I pointed out yesterday is already hardening into common wisdom and accepted truth. As you remember, half of the so-called savings in Massachusetts is coming by playing gotcha with poor, eligible families and no longer automatically enrolling eligibles but counting of the fact that they will not access Commonwealth Care to the tune of almost $70 million if they have to go through an application process. Still makes me sick to write this.

And, sure enough in the way this issue was buried in the story yesterday, it has unfortunately disappeared in today’s story. Meaning that a “compromise” could arise which helps legal immigrants and still screws the poor.

Here’s the line today in the story, proving my fears:

“To help close a growing deficit, the Democratic-controlled Legislature eliminated coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants in the new state budget. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, is seeking to restore about half of the $130 million cut, but lawmakers have expressed reluctance, saying that doing so would require cuts to other important programs.”

Disgusting!

Massachusetts to Poor: Gotcha!

jstuart — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:20:46 +0000

New Orleans Funding problems in Massachusetts has led the state to announce that barring some deal or injection of funds, Commonwealth Care, the mandatory state health plan will stick it to two groups: legal immigrants and the poor who can be confused.

There is already a righteous uproar about 35000 legal immigrants that are arbitrarily being denied coverage, solely because they are immigrants. The Massachusetts Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA) and others have already raised their voices appropriately that this is outrageous and Governor Duval Patrick seems to be responding. I will leave this to them.

But since the poor have been voiceless and the issue goes right squarely to the heart of my frequent discussion raised in my book, Citizen Wealth, I’m going to slam my fist on that table, because, if anything, it may be even more reprehensible.

Buried in the Amy Goodnaught story in the New York Times today (10^th paragraph in the middle of the report) is the stand alone sentence with no other explanation and comment, as follows:

“In addition to dropping the immigrant insurance program, Commonwealth Care will save an estimated $63 million by no longer automatically enrolling low-income residents who fail to enroll themselves.”

The air was sucked out of my chest. This is simply unconscionable. There are no adjectives that can describe the cynicism that could provoke such a decision. This is the antithesis of good public policy and an affront to creating either citizen wealth or any semblance of a safety net.

In Citizen Wealth and everywhere I can, I have argued that we need to achieve maximum eligible participation in all programs that have been designed to provide benefits to lower income families but that are lagging at less than full participation to clearly eligible families thereby thwarting the entire purpose of these benefits. Furthermore, I’ve argued that we have the technical capability to achieve full and automatic participation given the advances in computerization and technology in recent years. Massachusetts is providing the glaring, terrible, and shameful proof of this capability, but making the small adjustment of turning off the controls from automatic to manual, and knowing that means that enough poor people will fail to get the simple access that by stealing healthcare from the poor they will “save an estimated $65 million.”

If there aren’t organizations and individuals in Massachusetts of all places who will rise up and oppose such a slap at the lowest income citizens, then what is the chance for citizen wealth and real health care protection in the rest of the country? Where is ACORN when it is most needed? Where are you Judy Meredith, ace lobbyist for the poor? Does the Coalition for Human Needs still exist in Massachusetts? What about Haymarket and Discount? Where is Lew Finfer right this minute and hundreds of others?

Stop this now!