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INCOME & WORK SUPPORTS UPDATE
October 2023
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How the Farm Bill Fights Hunger and Supports Small-Scale Farmers and Producers
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The Farm Bill is a monumental legislative package that sets food, nutrition, and agricultural policy for the nation. It must be reauthorized every five years and is up for renewal. This educational video weaves together the stories of Langston, a third-generation farmer eager to sell his products at scale at grocery chains, and Shyla, a college student from India who relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for help buying groceries. Their stories illustrate why we should all care about the Farm Bill: to ensure that SNAP and nutrition programs, as well as programs to support local farmers, are fully funded.
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| How to End Child Poverty for Good |
| Income support programs, especially cash transfers like the Child Tax Credit (CTC), are critical to ending child poverty. The expanded CTC achieved something monumental: it helped keep 2.9 million children out of poverty, cutting the child poverty rate by nearly half—from 9.7 percent in 2020 to 5.2 percent in 2021, the largest one-year decline in the child poverty rate on record. This version of the CTC allowed families with low to no earnings to claim the credit, which helped the program reach more Black and Latino/Hispanic children. Congress must make the CTC fully refundable permanently. |
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| Spotlight on Medicaid Renewals Is Bringing Long-Standing Issues to Light |
| The recent focus on Medicaid renewals has revealed that many states are not fully complying with federal rules, contributing to the high number of people—over six million—who have lost Medicaid coverage. The disenrollment numbers are tragic on a personal and systemic level. Some states have likely been out of compliance for nearly a decade. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has taken action to ensure fewer people lose Medicaid coverage at renewal, directing 30 states to reinstate coverage for 500,000 children and families. |
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IWS Updates
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The IWS team has launched a new project, Building Equitable Economic Supports in the South (BEES). Through the BEES project, we are partnering with organizations in Mississippi and North Carolina to improve access to affordable child care, cash assistance through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and health coverage through Medicaid. Southern states have historically limited public benefit access through both eligibility and administrative burdens more severely than other regions. Coupled with high poverty rates and large populations of Black people and other people of color, some of the greatest gains in equity stand to be achieved in southern states. In Mississippi, we are working with Springboard to Opportunities and the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative; in North Carolina, our partners are Blueprint NC and NC Budget & Tax Center. The state groups will first engage community members, gathering insight and ideas from eligible people. Then, with technical assistance from CLASP staff, the community input will be used to craft a policy agenda that aims to decrease barriers and improve access to programs. Once policy priorities are identified, the community groups and state policy groups will coordinate a joint advocacy plan to move the agenda forward. You can read more about the project here.
Welcome to Ram Sridharan, the IWS team’s newest intern! Ram is a law student at Georgetown University. Before law school, Ram spent four years at Ideas42 addressing discriminatory and exclusionary patterns within various public systems, such as sources of income discrimination in housing and biased decision-making within the child welfare system. He helped investigate and build evidence against regressive public benefits eligibility criteria such as invasive means testing, work requirements, and other administrative burdens that are known to discourage participation in benefit programs. Ram is joining the IWS team with an interest in TANF policy and the federal policymaking process.
The IWS team recently celebrated two marriages and a baby! Policy Analyst Teon Hayes welcomed a beautiful baby boy in her family, and both Senior Policy Analysts Parker Gilkesson Davis and Ashley Burnside had lovely fall weddings. Please send them well wishes!
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