Long-Term Dangers and Effects of the Great Recession:
- The Recession Generation: Preventing Long-term Damage from Child Poverty and Young Adult Joblessness [1] - Fear that without immediate action the effects of the Great Recession will linger for years and cause lasting damage to children and young adults. This report by the Coalition on Human Needs urges expansion of federal spending on job creation targeting low-income communities, state aid to cover rising Medicaid and education costs, expansions of job training funds, child care support and nutrition assistance for families facing lost income.
- How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America [2] - 30 months after it began, the Pew Research Center finds that the Great Recession has led to a downsizing of Americans’ expectations about their retirements and their children’s future and a new frugality in their spending and borrowing habits. 55% of the U.S. labor force have experienced some work-related hardship -- be it a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work -- with Blacks, Hispanics and young adults bearing a disproportionate share of the job losses.
More Affordable Insurance for Employers and Individuals Under Federal Health Care Law:
- A Helping Hand for Small Businesses [3] - Families USA and Small Business Majority released this report highlighting how the federal health care reform law helps small employers and their workers obtain high quality, affordable coverage, particularly finding that 4 million small businesses with be eligible to receive tax credits for to help buy insurance for their workers in 2010.
- Reducing Health Insurance Tax Credits Would Jeopardize Market Reforms and Cost Controls [4] - With opponents of the federal health reform law calling for scaling back tax credits for working families to afford health insurance, this report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities emphasizes that such action would undercut the effectiveness of the proposed health insurance exchanges and hurt insurance market reforms designed to control costs in the health care system.
Anaylzing the Right-Wing Legal Theories Aimed Against Progressive Policy:
- Doomed to Repeat History: The Right Re-embraces Lunatic Legal Arguments [5] - With America’s right now trying to revive discredited theories of the Constitution that once blocked child labor laws, this memo from the Center for American Progress outlines how conservatives are over-reading the Tenth Amendment and twisting legal analysis to try to attack progressive policy. Ironically, as this memo notes, a supposedly populist movement is actually demanding that an unelected Supreme Court step into to block decisions by elected officials to impose a conservative agenda on the nation.
- Are State Challenges to the Legality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Likely to Succeed? [6] - In analyzing whether individuals or states have a strong constitutional argument against national health reform, this Urban Institute brief finds that the legal challenges are weak at best and unlikely to affect the law’s provisions.
Better, Not Smaller: What Americans Want From Their Federal Government [7] - With public confidence in government is at an all-time low, this major new survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress finds that clear majorities of Americans still want more government action on energy, poverty and education, but want them done more efficiently. Rather than a rejetions of "big government", Americans are demanding a priority on programs that work, better evaluation and transparency on programs and agencies, and better use of technology to improve management of government.
2010 Kids Count Data Book [8] - According to this annual report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, improvements in child well-being that began in the late 1990s stalled in the years just before the current economic downturn. The report also emphasizes how poor data collection is on the status of children and urges increases in the sample size and frequency of surveys of social and economic well-being in the American population.