The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include the Supreme Court decisions, SNAP, and financial services.
Supreme Court Decisions
The big news this week was the Supreme Court’s handing down of its final rulings for the term. Rulings on affirmative action, employment discrimination, marriage benefits, and voting rights all have implications for the asset-building field. Certain decisions that have the effect of benefiting employers would make it harder for employees to file claims alleging discrimination in the workplace and in hiring practices. Another on affirmative action, responded to by Bill Fletcher Jr. for the website Classism Exposed, has the effect of limiting the ability of schools of higher education to use race-based admission standards, though it doesn’t go as far as fully prohibiting race as a factor in admission decisions. A third struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, making it harder for the federal government to ensure racial equality in voting standards, even as evidence of voting discrimination against black and Latino Americans persists. And finally, another of the Court’s rulings would have the effect of opening up 1,138 statutory provisions in the federal code to apply to same-sex couples. The most immediate and prominent impacts would be in relation to Social Security and retirement benefits, which led the Pension Rights Center to equate “marriage equality and retirement equality” because of what the Fiscal Times called the “evaporat[ion]” “of many financial disadvantages.”
SNAP
The Asset Building Program’s Justin King served on a panel of experts for the Marc Steiner Show discussing the fateful implosion of the House’s Farm Bill and the future of policies affecting SNAP (food stamps). Among federal proposals to modify SNAP rules, one, identified by The Atlantic, would “add a ‘work requirement’ amendment that would let states to cut off food stamp benefits to anyone without a job or in job training without providing any funding for jobs or job training.” “In other words,” the article by Matthew O'Brien continues, “if you're unemployed, you're out of luck -- and out of food stamps.”
In delivering those SNAP benefits, some states are much worse than others. Our Aleta Sprague discussed why Pennsylvania is among the slowest states in processing essential claims for food support. At least one of those reasons could be easily dealt with: eliminate asset tests.
Financial Services
Though interest rates are down and borrowed money comes cheaply for many, Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman explained why the benefits of low interest rates don’t extend to the poor. One reason, identified by Sandra Suarez, a financial counselor who helps low-income families climb out of poverty, is given in the truism she repeated to the Boston Globe: “It’s expensive to be poor.”
“Despite improvement in the economy, more than a fourth of Americans have no emergency savings,” according to Ann Carrns for the New York Times. “The main culprit appears to be stagnating wages,” she explained, though one suggestion outside raising wages is to “to arrange for automatic transfers from a checking account into a savings account.”
Quick Hits
The debt relief industry is now “taking aim” at college graduates mired in school debt, expanding from its main target of adults with credit card debt.
Aleta Sprague gave an update on California’s decision to raise its TANF asset limit to include a modest vehicle.
Finally, Asset Building News Week will be on hiatus for the 4th of July holiday, we look forward to seeing you on July 12th, and hope everyone has a safe and festive celebration.
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