California

Editor's note: this post appears as an op-ed in today's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. It is authored by Judy Darnell, Director of Public Policy at United Ways of California, and Aleta Sprague, Policy Analyst at New America Foundation.

After Melissa’s parents kicked her out at age 15, she survived on her own for years. She eventually married and had children, but her husband was abusive. Melissa left him after he broke her 2-year-old’s leg. She needed help to pick herself up. So what stopped her from getting it? Her 8-year-old van.

Until recently, the “three-legged stool” was the reigning metaphor for achieving retirement security. Workers could anticipate being supported as they aged by a combination of Social Security benefits, private pension income, and personal savings. This model no longer holds. Traditional pensions have almost disappeared from the private workforce, personal savings are low, and Social Security benefits face political and actuarial threats. The new model relies on defined contribution (“DC”) plans like the 401(k).

As we’ve been saying for many years, America faces a retirement savings crisis. We think Congress has a good opportunity to address the crisis, which is why we recently sent comments to the House Ways and Means Committee recommending ways to fix the nation’s retirement system. However, we’ll freely admit that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Today, the Asset Building Program is releasing a new issue brief about an innovative, state-level response to the retirement savings crisis – the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program. Currently, over six million private sector workers in California lack access to a retirement savings account through their employers; nationwide, only about half the private workforce has access to such accounts, and low-income workers have particularly low rates of access. California Secure Choice (“CSC”) would automatically create an account for all private sector workers in the state who lack coverage through their workplace, thus enabling a much broader swath of the population to accumulate essential savings to supplement their Social Security benefits. Below are some key features of the program:

Two events this week explored some important policy territory for government supported retirement savings accounts. First, at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a panel of experts and policymakers met on Tuesday to discuss the future of retirement security in light of proposed cuts to Social Security, the marked shift from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, and the possibility of state-level action to ensure greater access to savings opportunities. Yesterday, an event at Brookings explored the implications of a recent study suggesting that tax incentives may be an ineffective tool for promoting retirement savings. While each discussion featured a range of perspectives, both highlighted the success of default features like automatic enrollment and explored the potential of retirement accounts tied to the worker rather than the workplace. Still, the question remains: how can retirement policy effectively help workers both contribute to their accounts and maintain their balances until retirement age?

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which provides funding to legal services organizations throughout the country, is an essential feature of the safety net—though rarely described as such. LSC funding is used to provide civil legal services to households at or below 125% of the federal poverty line. Unlike in criminal cases, where the right to counsel is constitutionally guaranteed for indigent defendants, parties to civil cases have no such right under federal law. In other words, depending on where you live, it’s perfectly legal for you to lose your house, all your possessions, and perhaps even custody of your child without ever talking to a lawyer, no matter how little money you make.

LSC-funded services are crucial in helping keep many families afloat. Yet perhaps unsurprisingly, like other social services programs, LSC has faced major budget cuts, and continues to see its funding attacked. Over the past three decades, LSC’s budget has been effectively cut by just around seventy percent. One member of Congress even proposed an amendment to the FY 2013 House Appropriations Bill that would have ended all funding for LSC, citing the organization as “nonessential” and alleging fraud (it failed, but received 122 votes in the House). Like the proposed cuts to SNAP, cutting LSC’s funding—or even failing to increase it—could have truly dire consequences for low-income communities nationwide.

How messed up is California government? In Tuesday’s state elections, the interest group that struck the biggest blow for representative democracy and good governance was Big Tobacco.

We are told that in California politics and government, 2012 is shaping up as a very big year. That there will be — says Gov. Jerry Brown as he channels the philosopher Thomas Hobbes — "a war of all against all." That parties and interest groups are headed to the ballot with initiatives to gore one another's oxen. That we are about to decide the big questions of taxes and budgets and schools and maybe pensions.

Nonsense.

The CFPB is the law of the land. The agency was created last year when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed by Congress and signed by the president. This is how laws are made. It says so in the Constitution. A minority of senators can't decide on their own to nullify the law. And tellingly, few are raising the objection that Richard Cordray is unqualified for the post. In fact, he has received glowing and bipartisan support, especially from those he worked when he served as attorney general for Ohio.

(originally published at Fox & Hounds Daily)
The two items in this headline would seem to have nothing to do with each other.

But they do.

The logic of the ban on gays in the military – which is to say the illogic of that ban – is the same illogic that has shaped the California budget process.

Before the lifting of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – before the establishment of that policy – the U.S. military had an outright ban on gays serving in the military. So naturally, there were no gays in the military, right?

(originally published at Fox & Hounds Daily)
The media consensus is that Herman Cain’s goose is cooked. The reason? New accusations that he’s a sexual harasser.

This of course makes no sense. Because they have a name in politics for sexual harassers.

Winners.

Here’s a test try to think of a sexually harassing politician who lost because of his behavior (or her) behavior. It’s hard, isn’t?