Transcripts For CSPAN2 Joint Economic Hearing On Raising A Family 20240713

Remained below 4 for the past 18 months. In recent years, weve seen consistently solid gdp growth and job creation. And yet not withstand the successes for many parents across this country, raising a family has become harder and more expensive than ever before. The New York Times recently surveyed adults 20 to 45 who were parents or planned to be. One in four had fewer children or expected to have fewer children than they considered ideal. Economic concerns were foremost among the reasons that they fell short or believed they would. Over the past few years, the joint economic committees social Capital Project has been documenting trends in our associational life, that is, the web of social relationships through which we pursue joint endeavors, our families, communities, workplaces, and religious congregations. A critical source of meaning and social capital is, of course, the family. In fact, it is the central set of headwaters for social connectedness generally. Thats why two of the projects main policy objectives are making it more affordable to raise a family, and increasing the number of children raised by happily married parents. The goals of todays hearing are to examine factors affecting family affordability and to explore policy approaches that would allow more americans to start and raise the families they desire. Increasingly, family affordability has become a unifying concern among lawmakers and commentators on both the political left and right. We hear it in discussions around topics as varied as Child Tax Credits, declining fertility rates, increases in the cost of child care and housing, paid family leave, and student debt burdens. Motivating all of these discussions is a simple sentiment, it shouldnt be this hard to raise a family. The problem is multifaceted. It is complex, difficult to unravel and understand completely. Economic challenges such as debt loads and increases in the cost of living make family formation and expansion difficult for Many Americans. Even many families that are economically stable must deal with the challenges of balancing work and family. Parents want to afford the best neighborhoods and schools for their children, but that often leaves too little time to spend with them. Less time at least then they would prefer. As more families have sent two earners into the workforce, employers have been slow to accommodate their desire for worklife balance. Meanwhile, americans who might prefer something closer to a traditional singlebreadwinner family face prices for housing and other expenses that are bid up by dualearner households. And the growing ranks of Single Parents are hampered by their high poverty rates. The answer to how did we get here is complicated. Our first step must be to adequately diagnose the problems facing our families. What fuels the rising costs of healthcare, child care, education, and housing . How many people are hindered in family formation by excessive student loan debt, inadequate income, or poor job prospects . To what extent does declining fertility reflect changing preferences, economic barriers, or other factors . Does the rise of the dualearner family signal increasing hardship or simply changing values . The next step must be to come up with solutions. What is the best way to help more families afford time out of the workforce to care for newborns . Are there ways to increase workfamily flexibility that are minimally disruptive to employers . And less likely than others to discourage job creation. Are there Government Policies that unintentionally have contributed to increases in the cost of housing, higher education, and health care, which can be reformed . How can we make the tax code fairer to parents who bear the costs of supporting future generations of americans . We can make sure we have the workforce and the Taxpayer Base necessary to fund that over the programs of today but the programs of 20, 30, 40 years from now. Our panelists today will discuss some of these topics, and more. I look forward to their testimonies and to a productive conversation aimed at helping parents and strengthening our families. I now recognize vice chair maloney for opening remarks. Thank you so much to our panelists and chairman lee for calling this hearing. Nothing is more important that our families. Thank you for shining a spotlight on the challenges facing American Families. We cant agree there is a problem. Today, millions of American Families are working longer and harder, not to get ahead, but just to stay in place. Over the past four decades, wages have been stuck or have barely increased. Meanwhile the costs of child care, education, housing and other necessities have grown. Most families rely on two incomes just to make ends meet. Because thats what it takes to support an American Family today. Nearly 40 of American Adults report that they or their families have trouble paying for at least one basic need like food, health care, housing or utilities. The picture is no brighter when you look at specific costs. Take child care. The average cost of centerbased infant care is more than one quarter of Median Household Income for single working parents. That means those who need child care the most cant afford it. Or look at college education, which is almost a necessity in todays economy. Since the 1980s, the average cost of a fulltime undergraduate degree has more than tripled for public and private institutions. Todays typical graduate leaves college with 30,000 in debt. Or look at housing. Home prices are higher than ever and often out of reach. And over one third of renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. How are families responding to stagnant wages and growing costs . By taking on debt. Consumer debt, excluding mortgages, is now 4 trillion, its highest level ever after adjusting for inflation. Folks are also putting off Home Ownership, which can deprive them of a key source of wealth accumulation. Everyone in this room agrees that its more expensive than ever to raise a family. But we may disagree about the causes. And we may disagree about the solutions. I welcome the robust discussion that this committee provides. The entrance of women in the workforce is not the problem. We may hear that americans got married less frequently or later in life as women took on careers, and that this hurt fertility rates. But women have become key drivers of our economic success. Womens earnings boost the economy by trillions of dollars and are critical to American Families. Womens share of Household Earnings increased from 36 in 1993 to 45 in 2016. Women could do even more if we made it easier for them to enter and stay in the workforce. There are two key, overwhelmingly popular ways to do that, offer affordable child care and paid leave from work. Lets take a lesson from other oecd countries that provide these services and have significantly higher female labor force participation. And while were at it, lets make sure that women are paid fairly so they have strong incentives to work. On average, a Woman Working full time yearround earns just 82 of her male counterpart. For black and Hispanic Women its far worse. For too many, the American Dream is slipping away or out of reach. Some would say that the solution is for the federal government to do nothing. I disagree. It has a key role to play in helping to restore that dream. What can it do . What can congress do . Lets start by lifting the minimum wage. The house has passed legislation to lift the minimum wage to 15 by 2025 and give 33 million americans a raise. Its time for the senate to follow suit. We should expand programs and initiatives that we know work, like the earned income tax credit and Child Tax Credit. The eitc substantially increases employment among single mothers and reduces poverty levels for their families. We should make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable to allow the poorest families to receive the full benefit. The working families tax relief act, which expands both the eitc and ctc, would benefit 49 million children, including 2. 7 million in new york state. And we should strengthen the supplemental nutritional assistance program. S. N. A. P. Not only provides a Healthy Foundation for americas current and future workforce, its also an investment in our economy. Every dollar of snap generates more than one and a half dollars in increased gdp. And, finally, we should join the rest of the industrialized world and provide paid leave to workers. There are only two countries in the world that did not provide paid leave for the birth of a child, america and new guinea. My bill, which was included in the National Defense authorization act that passed the house this summer, is a good start. It would provide 12 weeks of paid leave to federal employees after the birth or adoption of a child or to care for a Family Member who has a serious illness. Raising a family is hard and rewarding work. We need to do more to provide workers with tools to balance their work and family responsibilities. I appreciate the chairman statement on flextime, how that that would be very helpful for families. Todays hearing and our witnesses testimony will shed light on the actions we can take to make raising a family more affordable. It is incredibly important for the future of america, for the future of American Families and for the American Dream. I yield back. Thank you, vice chair maloney. I would like to introduce our distinguished panel of witnesses. Before i do that want to address the couple housekeeping matters. This is a joint committee of both members of house of representatives and of the senate. As fate would have it, both the scent of the house of representatives have decided to call votes right in the middle of this hearing. And so you may see members of the house and of the senate leaving and coming back. That has nothing to do with anything other than a responsibility to continue to vote while our colleagues are voting. Members of this committee, particularly those who are here, are very interested in this hearing. We will be here for every bit of time that we possibly can. I didnt want anyone to be alarmed when they see members filtering in and out. Okay, id like to introduce our witnesses now. First we have mr. Lyman stone whose adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise institute and Research Fellow at the institute for family studies. He has written a migration, Population Dynamics and regional economics. His work has been covered in the New York Times, the washington post, the wall street journal and numerous local outlets. Welcome mr. Stone. Next, mr. Ryan bourne who is the art sure chair for the public understanding of economics at the cato institute. Prior to his role at cato mr. Bourne was head of Public Policy at the institute of Economic Affairs and head of Economic Research at the center for policy studies in the uk. Mr. Bourne has written on a number of Economic Issues such as fiscal policy inequality, minimum wages and rentcontrolled and hes appeared on bbc news, cnn and sky news. He also writes weekly columns for the Daily Telegraph and the london paper city a. M. Thank you for being with us, mr. Next we have doctor Jane Waldfogel who is the Compton Foundation centennial professor for the prevention of children and youth problems at Columbia University school of social work. And the codirector of the columbia Population Research center. Dr. Waldfogel has written extensively on the impact of Public Policy come on the wellbeing of children and families here car work has focused on more family policies, inequality in Early Childhood care and education, poverty, social mobility, and the blackwhite achievement gap. She is author of eight books and has published numerous articles in peerreviewed academic journals. Welcome, dr. Waldfogel. And we have ms. Rowefinkbeiner who is the executive director ceo and cofounder of an Organization Called moms rising. She has been involved in Public Policy and grassroots engagement over two decades and has received numerous awards for her work pictures also an awardwinning author of books and articles of frequent public speaker on the contributor and host of the Reader Program breaking through with kristin rowefinkbeiner powered by moms rising. Thank you. We thank all of you for joining us today. We look for tearing her testament and we will now hear from you in the order in which you are introduced. Go ahead, mr. Stone. [inaudible] just hit the button until it turns red. Iq. Its an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me, mr. Chairman and ms. Vice chairman. Its an honor to be a today to testify on topics that are important to American Families. I am a fully with the American Enterprise institute, the institute for family studies. For my testimony today the views offered are solely my own. Most of my written testimony discusses fairly concrete questions a family affordability. The upshot is that contrary to popular narratives childrearing in america is not really that much more expensive than in the past. Some elements of raising a family have gotten more expensive, but the evidence suggests that the problem facing families is not simply a budget crunch. According to a wide variety of surveys, the average American Woman says she wants to have around 2. 3 2. 5 children. This value has been approximately stable for 30 years. And yet if current birth rates hold, the average young American Woman today will only end up having about 1. 7 children. That means for every ten women in america, there would be about six missing children. This is a new problem. From 19902007 the2007 the fertility gap was consistently just onethird as large. So what is going on . Instead of affordability, we should be discussing achievability. What is Holding People back from having the family they reliably say they want in surveys . The answer is basically marriage. Increasingly postponed marriage can account for at least half of the increase in the fertility gap over the last decade, and virtually 100 of the of the increase since 2000. But incentivizing marriage is a tricky question in a diverse society. Americans are justifiably uncomfortable with being lectured about getting hitched by anyone, especially the federal government. There are some good policy options available. First of all it must be said the federal government already has a marriage policy, and a policy is this. Workingclass people should not get married, middle class and wealthy people should. This is the poly stance of the tax code, offer welfare programs, almost everything te government does. A tax code gives you a handy if you have ceo in the family, as theres thus is unlikely to an equivalent amount and are tax brackets are of great benefit families with the most lopsided spousal incomes. But he to get eitc getting marriage can reduce your benefits by thousands. Theres a very real tax on marriage. In my written testimony i show how the marriage penalty can amount to 15 to 15 or even 25 a families income. Its no mystery why workingclass americans are getting married last. To be clear, the problem is tt government benefits per se, but their eligibility rules that discourage workingclass people from marrying. And the result is neighbors with scattered families, inconsistent fathers, overworked mothers and diminished opportunity for children. Fewer kids over all. So theres a very real way to make family life more achievable. Next the massive government buys against marriage, and especially workingclass marriage. The second respond to the marriage of first first explanr decreased in achievement is to reconsider our justifications for policies like the Child Tax Credit. The justification for the Child Tax Credit is not the parent are inherently cashstrapped, but rather parenting is inherently valuable to society. In other words, we should have a parenting weight because parenting is important work, and workers deserve to be paid. How we provide such wage may vary but we as a society should treat parents more generously than we presently do, and in a way that its blissfully communicates to parents that we see parenting as where the labor. When societies provide a parenting wage, the fertility gap shrinks. If theres not also a change in marriage norms of behavior, fertility rates will not rise by a lot. The best strategy is a onetwo punch. For family achievability to improve in america, its vital we in penalties for workingclass parent and increasing source social commitment to the work of parenting by providing a parenting which get whatever happens to fertility rates, the children who are born according to society a great opportunity, healthier families which engages any valuable public catechesis, parenting matters. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of committee, thank you for inviting him to testify today. Ensuring a family can erase affordably in america should be an uncontroversial Public Policy objective. Yet Government Policies at the federal, state and local levels today raise prices of basic goods and services to the disproportionate financial detriment of poor households in families with children. Households across the income spectrum spend large amounts on goods and services, but at their most basic should be considered necessities. Items such as food, shelter, transfer, clothing come to toulouse and often childcare. The average household in the poorest 20 by income allocates 57 of its spending toward shelter, food, transport and clothing alone. The average American Family with Young Children allocates 83 . Any meaningful analysis of family affordability must therefore consider the prices in these and other important product markets. In recent years housing a childcare affordability have become particularly pertinent and political issues, given their high toll on Family Budgets. High housing and childcare prices are often deemed market failures, necessitating corrective government intervention, rice controls, or subsidies. In both those markets existing government regulations actively constrained supply, in turn raising prices. Extensive Academic Work has shown up overly restrictive local Land Use Planning and zoning laws constrained new housing building, particularly in major cities. As demand for housing rises, and unresponsive supply of homes drives up the market price of housing services, forcing downsizing, longer commutes, or high rates and mortgage payments on poor families. Lesserknown is a statelevel Childcare Staffing regulations, notably restrictive staff child ratios and qualification requirements for workers which reduce the supply Childcare Centers in poorer areas, driving the price in reducing formal care options for families. Again and again one finds the same pattern of Government Policies increasing prices. The federal sugar programs, milk marketing orders and ethanol mandate raise the price of families groceries. Federal fuel standard regulations and state level automobile dealership laws inflate the cost of driving. Protectionist tariffs raise retail clothing and footwear prices, instead occupational licensing laws create barriers to entry for workers, raising the prices of services from hair braiding to the industry. My research has sought to aggregate the price effects of all those policy stated. Using very cautious assumptions i find that combine the raise prices faced by typical poor families by anywhere between 830 3500 per your you direct. That is between seven and 30 of average aftertax income for households in the bottom quintile. It doesnt consider the potential huge indirect costs we know for example, that elevated housing childcare and transport costs make it more fiscally and financially difficult for families to access jobs with higher wages. Im doing the worst of these price inflating regressive regulations could therefore benefit for films considerably. For example, estimates suggest relaxing the average mandated staff the child ratio by just one child across all age groups could reduce childcare prices by 10 or more. Addressing Government Policies that drive high prices at source would dampen the demands we see for risky written control measures, Affordable Housing mandates, higher minimum wages, government subsidized childcare, and new tax credits or expanded allowances. My main message today is simple. Before proposing new or expanded federal programs, we should acknowledge that important promarket reform levers already exist, ticket of the state and local levels of government. These regulatory changes, especially in housing and childcare, would not require yet more federal borrowing, nor do they come with the risks associate with wage and price controls. Such an agenda may not be the full or final answer to the challenge youre considering, but again before reaching for new programs or regulations we should at least attempt to undo the harm caused by existing interventions. I need to go vote. Im going to pass the gavel over. Thank you all for being here today. So having coming late, okay, dr. Waldfogel, please continue testimony. And ms. Rowefinkbeiner, your next . Okay, go right ahead. Thank you, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. Ive spent the past 25 years studying policies to support families and promote child wellbeing, especially for the 11 and half million children in poverty and the 27 million just above the poverty line. Much of my recent work uses the Census Bureau this supplemental poverty measure which allows us for the first time to gauge the antipoverty effects of the full range of policies that congress has enacted. That work makes it clear that to set the policies are critically important, refundable tax credit, eitc, and the Child Tax Credit, move 4. 5 million children out of poverty s. N. A. P. And other food and nutrition programs move 2. 4 million children out of poverty. We also good evidence these policies reduce family stress and improve child child healthd government. But income poverty is not the only challenge that families face. Since 2012 with the support of the Robin Hood Foundation our group a club he has been serving new york city register with my poverty is just the tip of the iceberg while 1. 6 million new yorkers are poor, 4. 4 million face poverty or Material Hardship or Serious Health challenges. Its not just families below the poverty line who struggle to put food on the table, pay the bill or cope with ill health. What we do to better support American Families . When you just above recognizing that the majority no longer have a stayathome caregiver. But our Public Policies have not kept pace with this reality. The family and medical leave act still provides only unpaid leave to only 60 of the workforce, federal childcare subsidies reach only 15 of the income families who need them. Employee policies address some of the gap but mostly for more advantaged employees. While 40 have access access to some paid family leave, those who are low income, parttime, or hispanic or much less likely to be covered. Only a tiny share receive any help from employers to pay for child care. But we know from a large body of research that these policies matter. When employees have access to paid family leave, they are much more likely to be employed. They have higher earnings. Mothers are less likely to be depressed. They breastfeed for longer. Fathers are more likely to engage in caring for children. Infant mortality and hospitalizations fall. Opinion service surveys consisy show americans favor paid family and medical leave. These policies are also endorsed by employers. My colleagues and i have been serving a players in states with these laws including small employers who are often missing from such service. In three states with paid leave laws, rhode island, new jersey, new york, we found twothirds of the voice were supportive of them. The evidence on childcare is also extensive and clear, highquality child care improves childrens health, their cognitive developer, their social development, especially for disadvantaged children. Yet too few americans can afford especially in Early Childhood. When more subsidies are available, parents are more likely to be employed reducing poverty and promoting family stability. Our estimate suggests universal childcare could reduce poverty by onethird among families paying for child care. We also need to look to government can do to help families where a parent is not working or not able to work enough hours to Public Programs asked nap and private programs like food pantries play a crucial role but families also need cash to buy their Children Clothing and school supplies, pay rent and utilities. For this reason virtue all our pewter countries have some form of universal child allowance or child benefit, paid monthly or more frequently to all families with children. Our Child Tax Credit is the closest policy we have two this but, unfortunately, it leads out the lowest income for whom it would have the biggest impact. 23 million american children, one in three, live in families who earn too little to receive the full Child Tax Credit of 2000 per child that was authorized under the recent tax cuts and jobs act. This includes over half of black and hispanic children are close to half of Young Children and world children. So in summary, while theres ample evidence about the Critical Role of safety net policies like the eitc, the Child Tax Credit and s. N. A. P. As was the efforts of groups like robin hood, its also clear we need to do more. Its high time we join our peers in providing paid family and medical leave, quality affordable childcare, and universal child allowance. Go head, ms. Rowefinkbeiner. Thank you, chairman lee, eyes chair maloney amid of the joint economic committee. I am kristin rowefinkbeiner, executive director of moms rising, an organization with over 1 billion members working to increase, economic security. We are on the front lines of this crisis in america. Experts agree, it is getting more and more expensive to raise a family and that has dire consequences. Our country, our workforce and our economy has changed but are policies are woefully out of date and families are suffering as a result. And good news, this crisis is solvable. The policies moms rising support will boost families and our economy alike. The work we do list dads, grandparents, people with all types of families and, of course, moms. The situation is urgent. At moms rising we are from people expensive this crisis each day. Stories like this one, jamie eder has been juggled three parttime jobs between the two of them and then couldnt afford childcare. Jamie could only work when her husband was home with a toddler. Until they start getting s. N. A. P. Their fouryearold and jane herself often had to go without healthy food. Nobody level anyone Holding Multiple Jobs should struggle to put food on the table. But to me families face stark choices like jamie. A full one in six children in a country now live in food insecure households. Jamie isnt alone. One in three households are now paying more than 30 of income for housing and more than half are renters. College tuition has tripled since the 1980s and student debt exceeds 1 trillion. Childcare now costs more than a Public College in most dates and black and latino family often enough having to spend more of their income on childcare than anyone else. Meredith from florida and her husband planned for years but still ended up with Student Loans, health care, child care and housing costs that made it hard to stay afloat. Their Student Loans cost as much as a car payment. They paid 1000 per month for child care. They live with her parents to try to save money. The terrible truth is that as costs and net productivity have been rising, wages have been largely stuck for decades. This means wealth inequality is increasing. The racial wealth gap is persisting, and most people raising children in america are facing a financial crunch. On top of this, women are being pushed even further behind by wage, hiring, and advancement discoloration. Women of all races on average are paid just 80 cents on a mans dollar, and moms of all races on average expense increase wage discrimination due to Structural Racism. This is happening despite studies showing a direct correlation between high levels of women in corporate leadership and higher profits. Families need womens wages as does our economy. Women became half of the fulltime labor force in the last decade, and threequarters of moms are now in the labor force, more than half are the primary breadwinners. In our Consumer Fuel economy women and moms make their threequarters of purchasing decisions. When women are not paid fairly and do not have funds to spend, our entire economy suffers. Its long past time to move our policies into the 21st century to match our modern labor force so families and our economy cand thrive. We need to address these challenges are multiple angles, better, fair wages, updates are at data policies. And we need to make basic necessities more affordable. Good news, theres growing momentum for policy change that sells many of these issues. Dozens of states and municipalities are passing paid on the medical leave, earned sick days, and pay equity laws. But to really move the needle we need change at the federal level because when this many people having the same problems at the same time, we do have an epidemic of personal failings. We have a national structural issue that we can and must altogether. Specifically we need to move quickly to pass the family act so people can afford access to pay found medically. The child to 40 pounds act, the working families tax was i, the paycheck fairness act, the moms act and the maternal care act to address Maternal Mortality of the Racial Disparities that drive it. The Healthy Families act so people can earn paid sick days. The pregnant workers fairness act and the National Domestic workers bill of rights. We also need to raise the federal minimum wage and mortally have a cover all workers, and sure everyone has access to healthcare coverage including Reproductive Health care. Make college and housing affordable. And mass incarceration and invest in children and families including with s. N. A. P. , wit, the eitc, ctc, tanf, head start and medicaid come all of which inject funds into our economy. The list is long but important. These policies work for families and deliver significant returns for our economy. For instance, for every dollar invested in childcare there is a return on investment of up to nine dollars. You cant buy returns like that anyplace else. When update outdated policies, we all win, each and everyone of us. We cant and we must make it more affordable to raise a family in america, and i know together we absolutely will make that happen. Thank you. I want to thank you all for your testimony today. We have boats taking place both in the house and senate. I am going to try to get through a few of my questions, and then either chairman lee will be back to take over the gavel, or we will take a real short recess, depending on how long that takes. Takes. I want to start with you, dr. Waldfogel. I was curious, are you familiar with the two generation approach to reducing intergenerational poverty . Yes. What are your thoughts on its role in potentially taking those federal policies that already exist, taking aside the need for additional policies, but better coordinate his oath to support the development of families and an emergence from the cycle of poverty . As you probably know its a model that is attracting a lot of interest. There is a very Successful Program underway in tulsa, oklahoma, directed by one of my colleagues. Its a winwin, so theyre taking proven Early Childhood Education Programs which will help engage parents, and they are matching those and tying them to employment and Training Programs for the parents and not just random generic employment in training but in the healthcare sector or sectors with usually a demand. We know from research i would parents are involved in education and training, their children do better in school and to do better in preschool. And likewise, children are going to do better in preschool if the parents are stably employed or in training and a more stable resources. I think we dont do enough of that. We dont do enough of thinking across programs and its a really promising model. I appreciate your comments on that. I know that in new mexico we sing groups like united way and others that it abu tried to pul these pieces together and act as a coordinator to support the family as a whole that has had some real, some very positive outcomes. Weve seen that in both liberal and conservative states, and very different politically different efforts to have real success with this approach. It is certainly something ive introduce legislation on and continue to hope to push. One of the other challenges that we have in my state, and i think this is becoming an issue across the country is the new mexico more than 10 of children are actually being raised by grandparents. Historically, extended families have been an incredibly important part of our culture and represent a significant asset to all of our communities. But what should we be looking at within the federal government, and states, to make sure that as were supporting families we are not just thinking about mothers and fathers, especially in those cases where another Family Member is actually the direct Childcare Provider to those kids . Its a really important question. The statistics i was residing about only 60 of workers having access to the fmla, only 40 of workers having some Employer Paid family, only 15 have access to federal childcare subsidies, that pertains to parent for an title to these programs. Grandparents are often boxed out entirely so theres a lottery to get these things in the first place. Its heartbreaking if you hear these grandparents have chosen to take on or had to take on these grandchildren and yet are not able to get access to the programs. We really need to clean it up. Under the fmla and the various state family paid leave laws theres a lot of variation as who counts the family and theres a lot of debate about who counts as family. A for sure we including grandparents. You think we should be tying those benefits to the child, so long as they have a legitimate caregiver . Obsolete. Same thing with the eitc with the Child Tax Credit absolutely. Many of these people i will in their retirement years and have fixed incomes and yet have all of the incredible burdens of trying to not only raise the child but then after that also help them through the education. Yes. Ms. Rowefinkbeiner, i wanted to ask you about, if you could expand some on unhappy family impacts the presence of fathers and other caregivers in the life of a child, and what impacts then come from that . Access to pay them in medically is a winwin for families, business and our economy. Its one of the true policies that just makes you want to clap and give it a standing ovation because we see that when families have access to paid family leave, that actually if that statement paid family leave as well, then we see those wage gaps between women and men and between moms and dads go down. When we have pay parity, if women had pay parity, then 50 of children would be brought out of poverty. Our gdp was the increased by 3 and we would add more than 500 billion into our economy. So making sure dads also a time with children actually helps moms thrive. When you look at some of the other countries and we did note most of the countries had some form of paid family except the United States, we see that somehow found having dads have access to paid family is so beneficial for the whole economy because again when women have money to spend on a making the majority of our consumer purchasing decisions, and an economy were sent 2 of gdp is based on consumer purchasing decisions, we all the better but if we have this wage gap with moms and a significant than we do worse over all. These countries some of the other ones who have had paid family family medical leave, action often offer a bonus package if the dad takes lead, then the family overall would get an additional amount for paid family medical leave because they found to boost the economy so much. Other things about this winwin of this policy, and again i love this policy, is we see businesses are helped out with retention, productivity and have lower retraining cost. We also see taxpayers are help out. In some states like california within that page on the medically for longer than others, we can see theres a 40 lower in the first nap and tanf because people have that bridge moment of having those costs come in as Childcare Costs more than college, and if an Childcare Costs arcs were not high. But not to forget what you brought up which is a sandwich generation. We need paid them medically and need for all workers and windy grandparents to gavel to take it as well as parents and other Family Members. So in comparing in places that are instituted paid family leave, medical leave, and those who have not, there have been consistent Data Transfer showing an actual increase in economic productivity . Yes. Actually dr. Waldfogel did the original research. When i first found out about the mom which kept him which is huge, moms are making 71 cents to a dads dollar and months of color due to Structural Racism are expensing increased wage hits with latina moms making as low as 46 with effectively the same resonant . With the same resume. I love the studies of two pieces of paper, one resume, billy different is they are a mom and the others they are a nonmom. This was a study done and it was down there 80 less likely to be hard if youre a a mom and offd 11,000 lower starting salary were as dads get the wage boost. Getting rid of this wage hit when with so many moms being the primary breadwinner is so important to our families and our economy. Does that wage gap persists even after mothers return to work . Yes. The wage gap persists for ever. There are policies like the paycheck fairness act which would also need to pass, and what that does what is important things that this is you cant use prior Salary History to great current salary earnings so youre compounded wage hits that youve experienced over time dont determine your future Salary History. One of the things that dr. Waldfogel found that it do what bring this to her because she probably at this, is theres no single Silver Bullet solution. We need paid from the medical leave, affordable, accessible childcare and we need sick days and when you access to affordable healthcare. Families are crunched. We have a modern workforce and a Public Policies are stuck in a time that maybe never existed. We need to bring up our workplace protections, our floor for place protections, and then well see those wage gaps narrow and then we all went. You might say theres no Silver Bullet but there may be silver buckshot. Yes exactly. And we can do. In the past and the United States we passed packages for many things that have many Different Solutions together that we can pass packages and in the daily pass these laws to make the changes we need. It is long overdue. I want to thank you all for your testimony. We are going to take a really quick recess here for about ten minutes. While the chairman returned rei can go vote as well. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] thank you for your patience. Both the senate and house on the middle of votes grateful to my colleagues from both houses and both sides of the aisle in sharing the gavel as we piggyback and forth to cast votes. We will now begin five minute rounds of questions, or in my case and maybe longer the net deepening on how long it takes my colleagues to get back. Which is the upside of this sort of thing happening. It can result in a time. Windfall for those of us privileged enough to be here. Mr. Stone, lets start with you. At the end of your testimony you say that our laws should communicate to the citizens that we as a society, as a country see parenting as worthy, dignified, and important work. In your opinion would our laws do a better job of communicating that message if we allowed parents to draw for Social Security benefits immediately following the birth of a child so that mothers and fathers alike could access their own savings at such a Pivotal Moment . Absolutely. I shared the view expressed by several people on this panel that having our lack of any solution for leave time is a serious issue. Having the option to do in an actual early sound way that is not inhibiting a mothers ossining high for example, because when you hoisted onto a copy, the observed effect is diminished hiring of mothers which is not the outcome in fs1. If you pay for it out of public coffers, then you have difficulty with passing the bill, frankly due to essentially wheres the money going to come from . Doing it in a way that is wellrun budget neutral is quite reasonable i think and is a great improvement over what we have now in terms of communicating to parents and to potential parents that society is with them on this, that you are not this work alone. Thank you. That is somewhat at the conclusion that ive reached. Ive done a lot of work with senator ernst from iowa and with ivanka trump at the white house in trying to move that idea forward. The idea here is that this is money that the parents themselves already are entitled to. The question is what does the government do with that money between the time that it is earned and the time that happened to retire. Its my belief and that of the individuals ive mentioned that parents ought to have the option of deciding to tap into some of that at the time they have a child. In your testament to speak up at the marriage penalties for low income families in our tax code and in means tested welfare programs funded by the federal government. You conclude the better, has put its stamp on the scales against workingclass marriage. What are some of most important policy fixes you can think of that would help remove the antimarriage bias in our tax code in our federal welfare system . In the example families by providing in my written testimony, most of the piddly may experience comes from the earned income tax credit as well as to some extent from s. N. A. P. And from housing vouchers, housing benefit generally. The earned income tax credit is actually procedurally a simple fix. Just double the eligibility thresholds if you get married. The problem is that this costs summer between 100 250 billion per year. Which is, yeah, those are large numbers, right . Youre not going to find that out of those cushions. Nope, youre not. So to do this is not just the simple fix one thing. You cannot afford the current level of generosity for supers if extended to the same way for married parents so you need to do a wider fix. A simpler thing would be to simply, instead of having the earned income tax credit be sort of a backdoor Family Support program, just replace it with a simple and wage and it also route more money to either the Child Tax Credit or some other child specific focused benefit. Its not clear why we would say because you have children the government will be even more determined to support your work outside the home. We of course what to support people with children but i dont think our desire to support children is necessary contingent on them, in the case of the eitc, being unmarried and working outside the home. There is no clear rationale for this structure. So eitc is a big one but you see similar problems in every means tested program. You have a similar issue. You cant just change what you thresholds. You have to statutorily in most cases we write the whole program. Thank you. The tax cuts and jobs act that Congress Passed in 2017 includes a a doubling of the Child Tax Credit, and an expansion of its refund of italy to cover the payroll Tax Liability and counteract the parent tax penalty. In your written testimony you wrote that a model family, leon and emma, are trapped out of wedlock by the marriage penalties in our tax code. So this couple you describe, leon and emma, or effectively trapped out of marriage as result. You note the only tax provision that did not penalize them is, in fact, the Child Tax Credit. How could the salmon have fared without the Child Tax Credit expansion . Why is it important for the rest of our tax code to treat them with similar fairness . In this case what happened was that when, in this case emma, is the one you have as the custodial parent before marriage, and she is claiming so i mispronounce that name . I thought that was liam and emma. I just think the most common male and female birth names of 2018 and assigned them. So she is the custodial parent for these two two children, bur income, which is a modest income, i think its like 16,000 is what i what i put in, but its not enough for her to actually get the full refund, the full nonrefundable portion of the Child Tax Credit. Once they get married, once liam and emma married, their combined income is enough. Also because they get married and the eitc a smaller, they can score more refundable on the other side because those offset to some extent. Keeping on income cant always get the refund ability or the nonrefundable section is offset. In this case actually the Child Tax Credit expanded in generosity when they got married because of how the nonrefundable portion interacts with the refund ability of the earned income tax credit. Its sort of some thorny math. They lost money on the eitc, was a big loss. Emma was getting 5000 before but when you get married, i believe they dropped to nine virtually no eitc benefit. At the same time they lose some means tested benefits on the other side which uses say that the tax code is saying even though you perhaps love each other can even though you have jobs, they are not making large amounts of money a couple making 36, 37, 38,000, theres a reason shouldnt be able to have the American Dream. Maybe they would like to be raising these Children Together and would like to be married but the tax code says sorry, if you get married youre going to lose 10,000. We should not be punishing them for that. Right. Were punishing responsible decisions that i think it would anyone thinks these people, they want this. Its not a state job to get between them in raising their Children Together. Right. Thank you. Senator cassidy. Chairman lee, thank you for putting this on. This past spring senator sinema and i announce a bipartisan solution thank you for nodding her head yes, youre familiar with it, to a 40 pounds. I was it is currently the only Common Ground paid leave play in the senate. Im happy to report additional republican and Democratic Senators are now supporting and working with us on legislative tax we hope to introduce this fall. To get background, for many dual income families the first year following the birth or adoption is the most expensive. In subsequent years less so. Just to get context of our bill, that tax cut and jobs act that was being discussed increase the Child Tax Credit from 1000 to 2000. 2000. So under our proposal the child, the family who has the newborn child gets 5000. They pulled forward that benefit from subsequent years. So instead of 2000 in year two of life, they would get 1500, and on debt until it is payback. We like it. Doesnt raise taxes. Payroll taxes inherently are regressive and so we avoid that. It has no mandate upon the employer or the employee, and it does not increase the federal deficit, de minimis, if it does at all. In fact, i think we heard from someone of you is some aei. One thing that we learned we did the symposium there is it may be beneficial to the government fisc, at least one theory which seems plausible because when a mother remains attached to the workplace, instead of going public assistance, which has implications for the child and the mother longterm, she remains attached and the accumulation of seniority and training allows her wage base to grow as opposed to be brought back in and then begin to grow. We think it has downstream benefits for mother and child. And by the way, it also extends to parents, to a father, but obviously it is the mother who breastfeeds, for example, so intensely that when we use more often which is why i use the feminine. So, dr. Waldfogel, if i pronounce it correctly, your nodding your head affirmatively, so i would just ask your opinion on that any suggestions you would have to make it better. I have to say im just so heartened to hear a discussion of two different proposals for paid family leave, so i i just think it is a fabulous that this is on the agenda any really serious way and that we having a conversation were having about how to find it because there really is the issue now. This is a sea change somewhere with an unpaid family and medical leave. What used to be what is this thing, and should we do it . Its so heartening when out in a place where were all in agreement that new parents to have some paid leave, and were trying to figure out how to pay for it. I think this is incredibly heartening. Weve heard about a proposal of people can draw down from the Social Security people could draw forward their Child Tax Credit. I have to staff concerns about both those proposals because as much as id like to support new parents and i think ive written about that more than anybody else over the last 25 years, so actually get the importance of paid family and medical leave but i really worry about what happens in the out years windows benefits have been drawn down. Families with two and three year olds also need the Child Tax Credit. Its a huge Antipoverty Program and i would hate to be robbing families later in childhood. Likewise, we used to have a big problem with elderly poverty in this country. We still havent completely tackled it. Social security is the biggest Antipoverty Program we have, and so i worry about families drawing down the Social Security because they want to do the best for their children. Ive been studying, there are now eight states that the past these payroll by the payphone and medical leave laws. They are working really well. Its pennies per week to find them. Weve been talking to employers am including small employers. Every state with talk to employers, twothirds of them are supportive are very supportive of these laws. Another ten or 15 or 20 are neutral. That means the just attention if employers are opposed. The public is passing these things. Let me policy for a second. I have limited time so let me pause. I will also say if youre going to do it through a payroll tax, that will be regressive. Its easy to speak of that which is de minimis for some of his more affluent but for a working phone that is so cold de minimis amount is actually significant. I will also say i think research shows, the more financial burden you put on an employer to employ somebody, the more likely they will figure how to become more productive and lay folks off. So i think there is a little bit a false narrative that there is no cost on raising payroll taxes for a more generous benefit. Youve spoken how pro natal policy dont increase with natal, if you will, increase fertility, suggesting, as i gather that a financial decision if a child is into expensive they choose not to have another child, but if you have however, whatever form it takes, a Child Tax Credit, would that be a pro natal policy . So, the research on pro natal policy making is that when countries spend money trying to get slightly higher fertility rates, that they do get a little bit of a bump, but it does cost a lot of money to get that increase, however, the most Cost Effective means of bringing about some increase in the desired birth rate, the number of births that women intend to have, is through frontloaded benefits. That essentially giving people 10,000 upfront does get you has a larger influence on child bearing influence than 1,000 for 10 years. Its more likely to have impact on child bearing issues. When youre taking it upfront than from the money down the road. The concern that they may need the money down the load and you may frontload and they need it later. And we spoke nicely of interaction, but we do know that typically people have their children when they are at lower point of their earning potential. Because income tends to rise over their age cycle. Particularly as you obtain your attachment to the work force, et cetera. If you will, the kind of interaction, yes, we pull forward and because you maintain that attachment, your salary continues to rise. And backfill, and the first year of life is the more expensive year of life. And ill take one more so the chair just took a so, and we also would point out, by the way, if we think that cbo would not score ours as being very expensive because money is out there and so what they may do in sweden, the occasional child who dies before age 10 at which point the money is forgiven, but it wont be something more than that. Ill thank you all for your time and yield back to the chair. We are going to turn now to mr. Hecht. Im going to file a final vote. And my apologies for house members over voting for legislation, and im helicoptering in here without the context of what you all presented. I did have an opportunity to quickly peruse your testimony. I thank you all for being here. Id like to start with you, certainly youve probably already talked about this, but unfortunately, i wasnt here. Im fascinated by your research finding a relationship between fertility rates and Home Ownership. By tolerating impedimentia, do we defacto have a possibility of lowering our fertility rate . Is that what youre suggesting, sir . I dont know that its specifically about Home Ownership, i think its more about housing costs. So there are many ways to manage housing cost. It could be by buying an affordable home or renting in a neighborhood thats affordable. My concern is that housing costs are the one place where the amount that families spend on children is, in fact, being outpaced by price. Where theres real solid evidence of considerable Financial Stress on families in the housing sector. And thats driven theres a lot of research on this, its driven by local policies, choices about land use, about where people can build the codes that they build under, these sorts of things, my concern, i did not focus on that in my spoken testimony because this is largely a state and local choice. The extent to which anyone in washington can fix this is, with all due respect to the building were in, somewhat limited. So its a serious problem. Theres an enormous amount of Research Suggesting at that land use regulations and shocks to the house of pricing, especially in the rental market, but in the home the owned market as well, have a negative impact on peoples ability to achieve their familys desires. This is a real concern. Its policy driven, but its local policy. Its 50,000 municipalities that you need to convince to stop zoning against familiesments so the correlation, the inverse correlation is price, whether theres an equity position or not and fertility . Yes. And theyve had the privilege the last two and a half years to chair the new democrats housing collation task force and weve come away with a couple of researchbased findings that i think are relevant to this conversation. The first of which is that in the last 15 years, the single largest increase in Household Budget has been for housing, more than health care, more than higher education. Its masked by the fact of us that those of us who have been in for a good 15 years or along 15 years have not experienced this, of all major household expenditures, the cost of rent or conversely the cost to pay your mortgage has gone up faster than anything else that theyre confronting. Number one. And number two, that this problem is materially contributed to by a lack of supply of housing stock, which, of course, compels people to stay renting which drives up occupancy rate which drives up rent and causes more people to be rent burdened and require subsidy and causes more people to be homeless, but i dont think either of those observations captures the insidious effect on the Home Ownership side of the deferred home acquisition by millennials and we have measured this. Its pretty clear, the 28yearolds more likely to be living upstairs at mom and dads house than ever before and why i never miss an opportunity to point this out is, in an era when defined benefit Pension Plans are falling through the basement, peoples Retirement Security has been diminished and the number one, the number one asset that the average american invests in contributing to their Retirement Security is their home. Care to respond to my diatribe . Yeah. So theres a lot there. So the number one asset that many families are invested in is their home. The funny thing about owning a home, see, if you own a share of a company then maybe you get dividends or maybe you get a report regularly and youre going to sell it later. The funny thing about owning a home, your dividends come in the form of not getting rained on and then you actually have to put a lot of extra money in it. Its this company that you own a part of, but you have to buy a new roof for the Company Every so often and then a new hot Water Company or you have to buy a new hot water heater for the company and keep big stuff for whats allegedly an investment. Now, the problem is that when you view the home as an Investment Vehicle rather than essentially form of durable consumption which appreciates, it creates an incentive to lock other people out. Essentially, it says, well, my home is an investment so im going to make sure that my School District remains the type of people that people who will buy my home want their kids to go to school with. My home is an investment so im going to make sure that not too many other homes get built so that if somebody wants to live here, they have to buy my home. I understand that Many Americans have bought into the story that the roof over their head is also their retirement, but i would suggest that, first of all, this is not always historically been the case. Typically, your security in retirement was that you had children who would take care of you and secondly, that this investment, this idea that the home needs to appreciate forever, it creates a toxic politic exclusion at the neighborhood level. The only path forward is for very large number of neighborhoods in america to realize that theyre going to increase in quantity of houses, not in price of houses. So, Home Ownership may be very important for the benefits it provides to a family in terms of security, but i think that americans expecting that real estate, particularly personally held real estate will be their Retirement Security are going to be in for a nasty shock. Are you suggesting that theyre mutually exclusive . There are times and places where real estate will appreciate and it will not have a negative impact on anyone else and its not a result of exclusion, but there is an abundant amount of research at this point that suggests that most of the really hot real estate markets in america are that way, not just because people decided that neighborhood was amazing, but because new supply is being kept off the market, generally by local regulatory choices. But in a market where demands significantly exceeds supply. Create new supply. It would be hard for me to exaggerate how strongly i agree with you, mr. Stone. It is a supply issue principally, its not a demand issue. Were over 7 million Housing Units short in this country and it creates all sorts of problems to families, many of which have been set forth here. Mr. Lahood. Well, i want to thank the panelists for being here today for your testimony, and having this conversation and thank the committee for having this hearing today. Maybe a question to all of the witnesses here. Arguably we live in one of the most prosperous times in our modern history in terms of economically and where were at and looking at the measurements and yet, many people claim that having children is too expensive. Can any of you talk a little about whats going on there and maybe some of the reasons for that . Or there is some validity to that . Yeah, mr. Borin. Well, i think we have to split this issue into thinking how people exist with costs today and change expectations over time. I agree with much of what mr. Stone said earlier in that if you look at the broad trends of costs of everyday basic goods and necessities over time, and bundle up that basket of goods, actually the affordability of raising a family on fixed expectations about what you want to get or what you want to provide for your children. And most there is, most families havent gone up, but over time, peoples expectations rise about what they want to deliver for their children. You want to invest in after school clubs and activities. You want to provide them with the best quality child care available for you. So the amount actually spent by many families on children has risen. Thats not a say that policy doesnt play a role in raising prices from what prices could be in a much more market friendly economy and much of my search has been attempting to show that in key markets that occupy large segments of Family Budgets particularly child care and housing costs, there are big regulatory barriers which restrict supply of new goods, such that when demand raises for child care or demand rises for housing there isnt an adequate supply or response. That manifests itself in the housing market, mainly through local zoning and Land Use Planning laws, which particularly pernicious in many growing metropolitan areas. But in child care, it also manifests itself through staffing regulations and occupational licensing, which manile parents in upper income desire that type of improved quality from child care, more interaction between staff and children and Better Qualified staff, but when that imposes a policy across the state level, that has the effect of raising child care prices and forcing many poorer families out of the formal child care sector and into the i guess to summarize that point, i agree with mr. Stone that over the longterm if you wanted exactly the same expectation for your kids as 30 years ago, things probably got more affordable and our expectations change and that means that over time, people are spending more money on their families and there are certain policies, particularly at state and local levels which raise prices in those sectors. Is there a suggested policy change to help remedy that . Well, the main point i made in my testimony, the two big ticket items are housing and child care. For many families with Young Children, and most of the positive regulatory changes that could be made would primarily occur at the state and local level. And now federal government policy can push in the right direction, i may not agree with all of the current federal subsidy programs and their existence, but to the exit e ent extent were going to have them. Greater conditionality and make sure were not rewarding bad policy by subsidy to child care and housing i think is something that the congressmen and women should be looking at. Mr. Stone, do you have any comment on that . I agree. Okay. Doctor, i know you nl 0 have 30 seconds here, do you want to come in . Yes, i would just from the historical perspective, i think we have to just remember the sea change that weve seen in American Families and from the stay at home, you know, care giver, single breadwinner model to the dual parent model and now most children are growing up with both parents in the labor force. We havent come to terms of that in terms of the need for paid leave and support for child care. Child care, even if less regulated and we really havent come to terms with that. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Dr. Waldfogel, 2006 maryland ranked fifth in the country in terms of most expensive child care, a. An of 14,000 in closer to d. C. , it can cost 37,000. The maryland General Assembly is working to expand prek, but its still not universal and wont be in the near forseeable future. Can you speak from benefit of families, having universal prek and having higher income for the families . We now have a lot of research about universal prek and the benefits that it offers for all children. So the benefits are largest for the low income children, children with the least educated parents because it helps them catch up, but its beneficial for all kids, and it also is a very important form of child care for that year before school. But as youre indicating, universal prek will only cover the year before children start school or in some states, theyre extending it down to a second year and it still leads infant and toddler years which are the most expensive uncovered. The federal government has a child subsidy care for low income families and its only funded at a level that would cover subsidies for 15 of the low income families who are eligible. Basically its a lottery, if youre a low income family theres a lottery. If youre lucky, you hold the Winning Ticket and you get a child care subsidy, if not, youre out of luck and thats just unconscionable. The number ive heard on return for investments, 41, do you think thats reasonable . I think with child care its all about the quality. The best quality programs as high as eight or nine to one. The lower quality programs its less than that. Thats why we need to be careful about proposals to cut the quality and the regulation. There are two sides to that. Theres reduced costs and then theres the benefits and risks of putting children in substandard child care. When we talk about the lack of affordable child care, i wanted to talk about the populations more affected than the others and also, you dont mind speaking to im a cosponsor of the children and family act. Which will include high quality child care options year round. What are some of the proposals, those that are most needed . Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you for being a cochair for the family acts. Acts of moms rising, over a million strongly support as well. As youve heard we hear from our members about three key areas of crisis in child care, theres affordability, were hearing about right now and accessibility and 50 of parents are living in child care deserts. So matter how much money they had they couldnt find child care and also excellence. So we really need, as the doctor said, high quality, Early Learning programs to make sure that every child has the student to thrive. Thats where we see our strongest return on investments. Importantly, we need to make investments in child care and Early Learning starting from zero to age five until they get into kindergarten. What were seeing is incredible gaps in coverage. We need to start with paid family medical leave and move into subsidized child care thats real subsidized child care among the workers, among the lowest paid in our nation and it includes components that relate to those and then we need universal prek and we need a system that includes the education of our children because here is one thing thats important. Parents need space in routine places for their children to be so they can work and parents are increasing in the labor force. And they need that to thrive and be our future leaders and fair pay. One point that people were talking about a moment ago was about weve had increased productivity in the United States of america and while productivity has gone up, 70 in the past 30 years, luol wages remained quite stagnant in the last couple of decades. What do you see that kids 4 years are in prek. Where do you see the 2s and 3s and publicprivate, what does that look like . Thats an excellent question. Right now we have a patchwork approach and dont have a smooth line through child care. What we need to do we need to make the child care for families pass and look at restructuring our tax code and advance policies that allow parents to be in the labor force and make fair wages no matter where they work. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank all of you very much for coming. Im sorry weve been in and out with these vote things that we have to do. I want to push back first on mr. Bourne on the overregulation of child health care. I know it is expensive, but im from virginia and i promise you every regulation that we have there was the result of some tragedy. And ive been part of this for 5 years, whether its the quality of the people were hiring and were doing criminal background checks or the quality of the facility or every time that some child dies, we end up trying to find a way to put the regulations in place to make it safe for all of our kids. I also, you know, seems to be a subset of this is pushing back against women in the work force, has caused all of these problems and yet, one of the things the committee pushes for is growth in gdp. I think the post world war ii america has only been possible because of the women in the work force. The committee has pushed back a bunch because women are as a relatively smaller percentage in the work force, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago and slowed down our Economic Growth. So, to dr. Wallvogel. The net effect of the tax cut and jobs act, do you see that it paid nearly enough attention to our lower income folks, the ones that arent getting married because they cant afford to it . I mean, we were talking earlier about the expansion of the Child Tax Credit contained in that bill and that certainly was very important for low income families. So, that i think that that was a huge plus in that bill. But are you speaking of other specific provisions or ments and thank you for pointing out again and again, that and the earned income tax credit. One of the things were trying to push through the house right now is the significant increase in the earned income tax credit, especially for childless individuals. Yes, yeah, its very important. Childless individuals are young people who are the parents of tomorrow. Theyre about to become parents, turns out that young adults are the poorest age group now in america, who knew . I would have thought that Young Children are poorest age group, but young people 18 to 24 are our poorest age group and could benefit from the childless and noncustodial fathers are another group. We have been talking today about the importance of father involvement and how we want to make sure that theyre involved. So, yeah, we want to be evenhanded in our policies in supporting moms and dads and supporting young people on their pathway to starting families. Mr. Stone talked and wrote very well about the marriage penalty, so many of our formal programs hurt you or move in the wrong direction when you get married. From a moms rising perspective you have you thought how you would overcome the various marriage penalty processes in our program, beginning with the tax code . One thing that we hear from our members again and again is that people should be able to determine who is their family and how theyre raising their children. We heard earlier today about grandparents who are involved, also, in families and about the sandwich generation, so the important thing to do is look at reality of families today and make sure were treating them equitable and equally and updating our outdated policies to match our modern work force, that women are in the work force to stay. And companies that employ us have higher, and there was a study at pepperdine, what happens with women in leadership. We want to make sure that everyone has a chance to thrive and were in it for r for the long haul to make sure that that happens. The same question back to you on the marriage penalties . Have you been together your comprehensive leads for senator lee and us to fix that . Pieces are actually in the work. There is an interesting case where we just heard a very large marriage penalty advance. Very well intentionally. We know that they r it discriminates childless couples, it does. For example, if both of the individual people were getting the full eic and the marriage penalty would be larger, another 5,000 lost when they got married. So he if we even things out for childless people without mixing the basic antimarriage position thats written into the eitc. Weve made it worse. This is the position we make it for today. The person thats single today marries tomorrow. The childless people, theyll be tomorrow. We end up creating barriers to the life that they themselves want. So, i want childless people to be treated equally, which is why i mentioned it would be better if we did it through a flat wage subsidy that didnt refer to status. If youll have this filed when you have your taxes. I wouldnt want to be when t the theyll be separate. It sounds like you and andrew yang have been talking. An interesting idea. Senator hassan. Thank you, mr. Chair and thank you for holding this hearing. Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here. I had a question to dr. Waldvogel, i understand theres been considerable discussion on paid family leave. I want to follow up on one aspect, and ill add my voice to the chorus. They shouldnts have to its been great to see the enact the paid family medical leave to try to address this issue. I think as weve discussed these programs provide replacement wages for those who have to care for a newborn, an adopted child, a family in need or address their own health care crisis. I know theres been discussion here today about the benefits of paid family leave to the Family Members. But could you address a little the benefits of employers. What have we learned how that really its in the workplace. Thank you for the question its a importan important ones. Employers are in a tough position looking for employees in a tight labor market. Whats valuable for them is having talent and retaining it and whats costly for them to losing that talent. When we talk about employers and weve been serving since they had these laws. Even the small employer, we give leave anyway and we have to give them leave. Somebody is ill, her husband has cancer. Her mother breaks her hip, and she has a baby. With these laws, they get paid, we dont have to pay them off our payroll. So its through the social insurance fund. What weve also heard vast majority of the time theyre covering the work by giving it to other employees or waiting for others to come back. Its rare to here a replacement worker, 15 of the time and only 15 of the time say i had trouble covering the work white the person was out. So its not surprising that were hearing that twothirds of our employers that were speaking to and this includes small supporters are in these laws. When we started the survey i was worried what we were going to find and 10, 15 are opposed and i suppose 10 to 15 of employers would oppose pretty much any law. The fact that were finding about 85 or 90. Either supportive or neutral i think is pretty impressive. Thank you for that and i think its pretty i am New Hampshire one thing i wanted to touch on is the issue of businesses needing more skilled workers because, again, thats probably the number one thing i hear from businesses across New Hampshire. What we also hear is that too often individuals who are underemployed or who have fallen out of the labor market entirely are not able to get the training they need for the jobs that are open. But also, that they face barriers such as transportation and child care. So, either to get that training, theyre having trouble finding child care or transportation to it. So ive introduced something called its a bipartisan bill. Called the great way, and through your work and advocacy should we do more to help families access the services they may already be eligible for and strengthen career Training Programs to be responsive to individuals outside of the porkplace . Workpl . And how families spend their eict suggests to me families are facing high transportation and child care costs so i think weve always thought that the eict would be good for durable goods or addressing the housing situation, maybe a better apartment. Unfortunately, families seem to be using it to pay back bills or work expenses, primarily transportation and child care. Anything you can do on that front would be fabulous. And ms. Wilson. I agree, thank you for putting forward that bill. We really see three things that need to happen. We need better, fairer wages. We need to update our outfitted policies and they need to be comprehensive. When we talk about family medical leaves. We need to foyer flmo. But overcoming serious illness and the serious illness of a Family Member. So we want to make sure that thats happening and as we update the policies we dont want to rob one program to pay another program. Families are already stretched. One thing that hasnt come up in this hearing so far is wealth inequality and ive mentioned weve had a 70 increase in productivity, but over the last 30 years, the wages remained stagnant and thats putting us in a situation that is leading us to a third world model which is going to implode the middle class and we, to your point and your bill, need basic necessities, including transportation, more affordable for families. We dont have a single one solution whats happening in the United States of america right now, but we know that america is in crisis and we know that families want to do best for their children and im thankful you today are looking at solutions from different angles as well. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for allowing me to go over. And we especially appreciate you coming in especially with the volt. Happy to have bipartisan participation from both ends. Capitol. Were going to do a second round for any who are interested in it and well start with this now. Mr. Bourne, i want to start with you. In your testimony you excomplained that some child care regulations, some regulations in place that affect the child care industry, and the supply of child care centers, especially in poor areas, driving up prices and reducing the rate of formal care options for families. For example, a new law in washington d. C. Will, when it becomes fully implemented, over the next few years, start to require child care providers to earn degrees, in some cases, a twoyear postsecondary degree. In some cases, a Fouryear College degree, in other cases a certification. This, of course, will inevitably have an impact on supply which ends up having an impact on price. And expensive marketbased child care appears to be a pretty widely recognized financial burden for working families, as i alluded to earlier in a New York Times surveys, 64 and said they expected to have fewer children, its said that they expected to have fewer children, in part because they believe that child care is too expensive. To what rate do you think that higher child care is there are good reasons to think that child care, even in a market economy might become more expensive over time as people get richer. Formal child care is labor intensive. You cant automate like in the other structure. Theres an increasing demand for formal child care over time and people tend to value their kids pretty highly. So they want a safe, loving environment for them and for many, particularly upper income families, they want very, very high quality child care. If you look across states, areas with the lowest costs of child care tend to be some of the richest states which kind of feeds into the economy, the price is strongly elastic. Yes, theres a lot of economic evidence as i suggested that regulations are child care workers, in particular the number of Staff Required per number of children and also occupational licensing requirements as you alluded to in temperatures of cost. Do you rate substantially . Theres been some economic work that if you relaxed across all age group, just by one child and by 10 . These are particularly regressive. The best studies have been done and what they did, they looked at comprehensive data and ran this ecoeconometrically. And what they found there was no effect quality, but drove up the cost of care, was in poorer areas it led to closure of formal centers and the lack of ability of much greater use of home health care. Theres a massoff and it may have what exists within the state, but if it means that poorer families have no way to access child care. We have no idea what it is in terms of the care. And the parents wants and desires for the regulations anyway, what the regulations do is strip away the choice for lower income families to select a different price regulation price quality bundle and that can have severely regressive effects in terms of access for those people to the labor market. Other than child care reforms, what are your other favorite policy reforms that you think could significantly lower the cost of giving for low income families . Well, the biggest expenditure is evidently housing costs and as ive outlined, i think a key driver of housing costs in many major cities, particularically where Economic Opportunities are greatest, tend to be associated with overly restrictive zoning and Land Use Planning laws. I dont think that we can really get to the knob of the supportability issue without tackling in that problem. Now evidently thats primarily and state and local issue. That said the background does dish out federal subsidies to states and localities and to the extent those come without the condition and supply environment, they can subsidize bad policy. I know hud has been looking at this and trying to work out a way of making sure that states and localities have plans to liberalize their planning laws. I think thats a positive step forward. And i also think, you know, with this rise of rent control as a potential situation being advocated. Id like to see federal policy come with conditions that precludes those sorts of policies which would damage supply further. All right. After a while i suppose one does have to be careful how far to intrude. I mean, we create one set of problems for the federal government, theres a response locally, and then we try to treat that remedy with yet another federal remedy. My time for this round expired. Mr. Heck, youre up next. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for getting to the better wages, especially in light of the context of 30 years of stagnant wages, because it seems to be underlying its foundational to all of these issues that were dealing with. For purposes of discussion im thinking about kind of three different buckets in way the federal government could take action to affect peoples standard of living and im asking to ask you each what is the thing that you think that we ought to do, the thing, if it were, but one thing. First as a predicate, let me describe this. We can either through the proegs or the tax extend tur eyed i am fact the things that are pinching people. Higher ed. Child care, housing, etc and the like. Bucket one. Bucket two, we can adopt those policies which need to higher wages for at least some. Increased minimum wage, the federal level hasnt been increased in 10 years and nowhere near the purchasing power. And more robust collective bargaining laws to favor the rights of workers, thats bucket two. Bucket three is the broader issue of just overall wages. Spirit of disclosure. This is my favorite. I believe that the Federal Reserve is pursued a policy which has suppressed wage growth. In fact, in the last ten years, i believe, there have only been two, counts them, two months in which our labor supply increased by less than the replacement number and that month. And two months in ten years. So, we really havent had an approach to the cost of money which truly gets us to full employment. Indeed, they keep changing their definition of what full employment is and keep lowering it, as a consequence weve had very slow wage growth. So im also reminded that what one of the chairs of the Federal Reserve once said, that is my favorite observation in this regard. Which is recoveries dont usually die of natural causes, theyre murdered by the fed. So we have these three buckets. And im interested in knowing from each of you, quickly, beginning with you, kristin, if i may, by the way were as an organization with a million members, headquartered in my home state, let me say were all so proud of the work you do, thank you. But if we were to do one thing, go right down the line, one thing to make a difference. What would it be . Thats a tough question. I know, we did ask tough questions. We have to answer tough questions all the time. Im sharing the pain. Thank you for sharing the pain. I would actually do all three and that is because i know that we can do more than one thing at a time. I believe we can do it. I know what we shouldnt do is cut quality because we think that will cut costs. Because i just want to make sure that we look at the fact that the return on environment on all of these programs go up when we have increased quality. We were talking about Early Learning and child care, so, were looking at the roi going up if you have increased quality so we really need to get into making sure were not cutting quality, not cutting care and that were moving forward wages. So if i had to pick one, you know, im all three. Im going to see how dr. Waldfogle handles this one. Of course im going to say all three as well because we should have full employment and higher minimum wages and more stronger bargaining rights and buff im bu buff what if you could only choose one. The universal child allowance. With these forces sweeping our economy. Children should not be suffering because of this. We havent talked about the instabilities in the economy and unstability, peoples hours change from week to week and their earnings change from week to week. How do you pay for housing and child care when your earnings are changing week to week . What are you doing as a parent . What youre doing as a parent, youre worrying about money all the time. What impact is that having on your family life and on your children . So, i think that children ought to be protected from these kinds of forces that are swirling around in our economy, while we try to sort this all out, and so, you know, i think the Child Tax Credit is a Fabulous Program in, you know, in moving towards that goal and i just think that anything you can do to expand it, to make it more reach more families and become more universal, i think thats what we ought to be doing. When were thinking of helping families with kids and helping people and making it more affordable to raise a family. Thank you. Im glad youre tackling the big challenges. Well, im going to be more controversial and reject the premise of your question, which i think theres actually a full approach which is to look at why are the costs a certain necessity goods and services so expensive in the first place and on the supply side make those goods inherently cheaper and negating more in the way of federal borrowing, subsidies and price and waste controls. And i think that a lot of the programs that weve mentioned no doubt could alleviate poverty. Given the fiscal conditions that you guys find yourselves in. And given the limits of what you can achieve through a tight labor market and given the risks associated with wage and price controls, i think the principal of first do no harm, examine what policies are on the books that currently raise the cost of living for families and poor families in particular, i think thats a much better and fruitful approach. Fair enough, thank you, mr. Bourne. So, im going to take the question in the spirit in which it was different and propose one legislative fix, however, in the spirit of congress, it would be a legislative fix with riders attached. So we should take the eitc and we should repeal it and replace it with a wage subsidy that did not discriminate based on family structure. They currently have a baked in benefit for children. We dont want to lose that, so we should roll back into the Child Tax Credit which we should then expand and because we have to have a pay for, we should pay for it with nominal gdp with the fed which will increase Economic Growth. There you go. Thank you. Thank you for your indulgen indulgence. Anytime. I wanted to follow up on a couple of additional questions. Mr. Stone, in your testimony you submitted to the committee, you state that the declining marriage rate accounts for at least half of the increase in the fertility gap for the last decade. And for basically all of the increase since 2000. Is that right . Thats correct. Can you explain to us why it is you believe that marriage rates are declining and what, if anything, can be done find the right words here, i dont necessarily want to live in a country where weve got a brooding omnipresence of a nanny state and tell people when they are to get married, but i dont want the government to disincentivize people or an environment where people dont want to get married. Any thoughts on what we might be doing there . So this idea of the fertility gap, its rising and its not because people are wanting more and more kids. The amount they want is about stable and fertility is falling, but when we look at how fertility is falling, and by fertility, i just mean birth rates, in fact, for a woman who gets married at a given age, her odds of having children and how many she ends up having are pretty similar to 30 years ago so its almost entirely about marriage choices. And marriage is being postponed and for working class, people are getting married about the same as they always did. This is ent pr presented as a class program, a shift in different groups of people. Maybe, but maybe people without a College Degree are far more likely to be exposed to extensive marriage penalties and their inconnell income is impacted by that. The and worries about a nanny state or a grandma state lecturing you about getting married. A grandma state, a new term to come out. There you go. So nobody wants this, nobody is saying, i wish, i wish that the irs would give me some advice about whether to marry my girlfriend, right . Nobody wants this. Luckily, this isnt what we need. If the problem is the marriage penalty and i think it is, then what we really need is, we need probably the first step is the most popular thing in congress to create a commission of some kind to study where are there marriage penalties, can we identify exactly where these are and if we identify them. Come up with an agreeable way in a spending and neutral fashion, essentially rewrite the benefit and eligibility rules so were still spending the same amount of money on essentially the same income range of people, but were doing it in a way that doesnt discourage family formation. This doesnt discourage anybody from getting married or pressuring anyone what they dont want to. But we made a mistake how we wrote some of these in the past. They werent designed for a modern world where men and women are probably both working and when the threshold doesnt double, you have a serious problem. After weve done that study we probably need a rule, whenever we score a bill, we really need that scoring process to include does this just a little check box, does this create a marriage penalty . Yea, nay, if it does it would be nice to know and not a hard thing to calculate. Having a Forward Guidance on this, as we go forward whenever we have a new bill that would benefit new individuals and taxes, it should be scored, does it create a marriage penalty . When you explain it that way, it becomes easier to understand how that could happen because it may be that in nominal terms, the size of the penalty might seem smaller with regard to some of those wouldbe couples than elsewhere in the economy, but in relative terms when you think about what that does to the marginal bottom line of families right in this, in this sweet spot where it really makes a difference, that can have a big impact on behavior. Doctor waldfogel, i wanted to follow up on something you mentioned, you coauthored a 2016 study in which you show that the motherhood wage gap has declined and that even in some cases its been replaced with something of a wage premium for some groups of moms, am i stating that correctly . In light of that, could you sort of discuss that finding and then tell us, does that in light of that evidence, is it fair to conclude that the affordability crisis is necessarily driven by a mere hood wage gap or indicate other factors at play here . Yeah, ive been working on the motherhood wage gap for a long time, it was part of my ph. D. At the kennedy school, you know, more than 25 years agoments when you were 12 . Yeah, when i was 12, i appreciate that. Protege. Thank you, i appreciate that. And what i learned doing that work is women who didnt have the opportunity to take a paid job protected Maternity Leave often then were faced with an impossible choice so theyd have a child and face impossible choice and didnt have enough time to stay off when they needed to with their baby so they would leave their job and come back a few years later and start at the bottom of the labor market and it took 10 or 15 years to get back on a par with the women who hadnt had children and were in similar jobs with similar training. So, thats that motherhood wage penalty and it lasts for a long time. Fortunately, we live in a world where we still dont have paid family leave and child care in all employer settings, we have it in a lot more than we used to back in those days when i was doing that research. So, it doesnt surprise me that the motherhood wage penalty has narrowed over time. So we have a problem in terms of womens earnings, but not as bad as it used to be. Of course, at the same time other things have happened in the labor market and the education system. Women now are getting more education than men so if theres a group that were worried about in the labor market, you know, its the less educated men who are really taking a hit. So, yeah, things have changed over time. Thats helpful. Yes, do you have something you wanted to add . Yes, i just want to follow up on what dr. Waldfogel said, its know the gone. When we talked about the wage gap lowered, the 2018 numbers built on u. S. Census data is that moms are making 71 cents to a dads dollar. Women overall are making 80 cents to a mans dollar, women of all races for yeararound fulltime work. The motherhood gap is still very significant and very, very strong. When we look at whats happening with solutions in our country, we need to address the fact that its not just married or unmarried or type of family that youre living in thats impacting the affordability of raising a family in america, its also wage discrimination and that wage discrimination is compounded by Structural Racism so moms of color are experiencing the most wage discrimination and i think isle moms actually experienced compounded wage discrimination, according to 2018 data. And single moms are earning to a single dad. When we look at solutions we need to look at pay parity, and look at according to Johns Hopkins 67 of births las year to the millennial population were to unmarried women and we need to acknowledge 82 of women do have children by the time were 44 years old. The solutions fee we focus on, the solutions that we create we create for all of working america, not just some and that we dont replicate the structural inequities of the past. Did you have your hand up . Were you wanting to respond . Go ahead. I think its worth emphasizing this motherhood pay penalty is not gone. Its really, theres Extensive Research on this with really rigorous data from sweden, denmark, germany, austria, the u. K. , the u. S. , it shows in all of these countries theres an enormous motherhood penalty. It almost has no for child bearing and motherhood, and driven below social norms. And suggesting policies that we want to advance for families and we should justify them in terms of what we believe is right for families and good for families, we should not convince ourselves by giving paid leave, i think we should have paid leave, but shouldnt eliminate a pay gap that exist even in countries that have programs far more generous than anything that were talking about, that these differentials are much harder to correct than what we convince ourselves of in political discussion, so they may be worth doing and worth doing because theyre good for kids and may be worth doing because theyre a good communication what we value in parents. They dont actually address the pay gap. Thats a problem that actually almost no country has found a solution to. So we should keep in mind what is possible to achieve and make sure that we dont make promises that are going to end up being lies to people that were trying to help. She tells a compelling story about family, young men and women feeling like they need to attain certain foothold before they can get married. They have to have completed their education, they have to have a decent job. They get married until they are stable on their feet. I been thinking about the conversation weve been having about high housing costs and young People Living upstairs in the bedroom of their families house, and difficulties in the labor market and the uncertain work schedules. Im all in favor of getting rid of marriage penalties in Public Policies. We shouldnt have marriage penalties but we should think about the other things that are holding young people back from marriage. Student debt, we have been talking about. Its no wonder that young people are delaying getting married, given that they do not have a stable place to live, they are in debt from school, and they dont have a stable job. In some ways we wouldnt want them to be rushing in the marriage in those circumstances. Its one of those three bucket things thats pretty complex to improve prospects for young adults. But boy, i think its the most pressing challenge we face today is to improve prospects for young adults, because they are the parents of the future. Indeed. Mr. Bourne, were going to let you speak and then mr. Heck is up. This is the one area where i demur from mr. Stone actually. Im skeptical of the idea that the tax policy affects this type of behavior to a significant degree or also that changing tax policy would lead to any significant change in fertility rates. I say that for two main reasons. First, if you look across countries that have very different tax and benefit systems, theres been a similar kind of secular decline in fertility rates which suggests theres something bigger going on about peoples expectations and preferences as we get richer. Secondly, the mean age of first marriage for women is already much lower in the u. S. Than in countries such as france and sweden. But those countries have higher fertility rates. So this is one area where i just kind of question how much of an effect tax and benefit policy really has on this issue. That is an interesting point. Mr. Heck. One last question, mr. Stone. Our fertility rate is, last i checked, just under 1. 8, nowhere near replacement. That obviously doesnt take into account immigration and, therefore, the overall population growth. But there is no question that we been for a while below replacement. When i think about the kinds of programs we have like Social Security which depend on the number of active workers in the workforce supporting the program that supports those who are retired, it begs the question about what are some of the longterm consequences of having a a fertility rate which is below replacement, again, depending on immigration policy. I suspect there are some potentially serious implications. Would you care to briefly enumerate some of them, please . It would be easier to enumerate them if any of our longterm planning agencies like cdl, omb, the Social Security trustees, if any of these agencies bothered to do a simulation that simulated a fertility rate below 1. 8. The lowest scenario that Social Security trustees consider as possible in in a most recent ue on the actuarial soundness of the fund is 1. 8, or 1. 72 right now and folly. We have got the. Were going to worstcase note of what any of your longterm plants are prepared for. You see the same thing incenses forecast. They overestimate the first two of the forecast, overestimate population growth by 350,000 people in one year. That was a big mess. The first step is we should probably force are forecasting agencies to make sure that at least the first year of numbers is correct, let alone try to get a little more accurate on the out years. Given that we are not prepared for the demographic shift that is coming in terms of very low population growth, there would be significant consequences. We talked about housing wealth earlier. Theres an article in the wall street journal a few weeks ago about lots of Older Americans who have bought sizable houses in nice exurban neighborhoods, and they were planning to sell them for the retirement and no one is buying them right now. Let me interrupt and interject something thats really important. A lot of those people want to downsize, and there is not a sufficient housing supply stock that they can get into, even if they could sell their home. Right. You have a problem on both sides that one, they cant sell the home because theres just not that much of a marketer to bite. Second of all, the house they want to move into doesnt exist. The truth is we think that Social Security as an intergenerational transfer. The entire economy is an inner generational transfer. You own stock in a company that makes hot dogs. There needs to be the kid whos going to eat a hot dog for you to sell it, to have any value when you so. We get a a bit of a free pass because our stock market is open to foreign investments. We get this nice thing where we buy goods from a foreign country, they take that money invested into our securities which is a nice hand up for americans they grow older. On some level that does need to be a next generation to consume those things to protect the value of the asset. The longterm consequence of low fertility is permanent secular stagnation. It is a permanent slowdown in economic demand. We heard a lot about wage stagnation and how productivity has been growing the wages have not. Its been better than has been in japan, which one reason for that is because theres been no population growth. Theres been no growth in demand in the market size. Theres no plausible story were investing in japan is wise, because theres not growth. Once the Growth Market here . What you get these to get less entrepreneurship, less innovation. You get less Economic Growth generally, less Sustainable Public finances. What we call an economic demography, aging with dignity, is very difficult. Very few countries achieve it. In the United States especially with increasingly unhealthy aging through depths of despair and things like that, is not will set up to handle this. Were facing a very serious issue down the road. So when we think about low birthrate, replacement rate is not what motivates me. I care about peoples individual desires and lies. I am not trying to get anybody to 2. 1. If you want three, i would love you too have three. If you want one, have one. But on some level you do need a society that continue to have some growth in the market. Now that can be through immigration. It can be. However, fertility rates are falling and our traditional immigrant sending countries. They are below replacement and most of the world. Beyond that, more countries like japan are aging and saying, hey, we need immigrants. So theres more competition for those workers as well. Net migration rate in the u. S. Have been falling for three decades. They are going to keep falling, regardless of what happens with policy. So we cant count the immigration this is always going to lift our fiscal boat. It wont, not always. Thank you, sir. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank each of you for being here today. The testament to provide has been outstanding and very thoughtful. I thank all all of the membersr comment and participate in the hearing as well. We think we have had an outstanding exchange. We are going to adjourn here in the moment. As we do, i will note our members that we will keep the record open for a period of three days, should there be a need to supplement the record in writing. And we stand adjourned. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] former speech writer for president clinton, obama and george w. Bush discussed their work and share behindthescenes stories from the white house. You can see that discussion from the university of chicago today on cspan at 6 45 p. M. Eastern. My name is adam cook and 2010 cspans studentcam winter. Im here to encourage you to continue to wrap up this competition as the deadline is getting pretty close but dont worry you will start time. This is the time i started filming my documentary the first try entered. Im in the d. C. Offices now and im going to tell you cspan studentcam was an Incredible Opportunity for me to express my thoughts and my views about Political Climate in the current the astros connect with some local and state leaders and political office. Im extremely excited you are interested in this and are pursuing this because its a onceinalifetime opportunity. Im so excited you all are taking it. Theres still time to enter the competition. You have until january 20 to create a five the six minute documentary that explores an issue at the president ial candidates to address during camping 2020. 2020. Were giving away a total of 100,000 in cash prizes with a grand prize of 5000. For more information go to our website studentcam. Org. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Now Kelly Shackelford who represented the American Legion in a recent Supreme Court religious freedom case, and former united chair church of christ general counsel don clark discussed religious liberty and the law. From august this is just over one hour 20 minutes. [applause] good evening. Now, i thought religion in america for more than 35 years, and i believe that the First Amendment has played a vital role in the vitality of