BACKGROUND: Each year, approximately two million women are physically or sexually assaulted or stalked by an intimate partner in the United States. While survivors confront a number of obstacles to escaping abuse, economic insecurity is among the most formidable. Abusers retain control over survivors by ensuring their economic dependence or threatening their economic stability. Abusers often sabotage their victims' ability to work productively by threatening, attacking, stalking, or harassing their victims at work.
The Security and Financial Empowerment (S.A.F.E.) Act is scheduled to be introduced in the House and Senate this week by Representatives Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Maloney (D-NY) and Senators Murray (D-Wash.), Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.). This bipartisan bill promotes employment stability, economic security, and safety for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, as well as for their families and household members. We hope that you will help battered women and their families escape domestic violence by urging your congressional representative to become an original cosponsor of the S.A.F.E. Act (the bill's full name is the Victim's Economic Security and Safety Act "VESSA").
Representatives Roybal-Allard and Maloney are circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter to encourage their fellow Representatives to become original cosponsors of the legislation.
ACTION NEEDED: Please contact your members of Congress and ask them to be an original cosponsor of S.A.F.E. If you have a grassroots network please send out an alert urging them to call their members regarding this issue. Call 202-224-3121 to reach the Capitol switchboard.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Lisalyn Jacobs, ljacobs@nowldef.org, or Jennifer Grayson, jgrayson@nowldef.org at NOWLDEF's Public Policy Office, 202-326-0040.
BACKGROUND: As we've written before, the current federal extended benefits program will expire on December 31, 2003. Four million unemployed workers have reached the end of their federal extended benefits without finding work - and need additional weeks of benefits.
Congress is slated to go out of session sometime before Thanksgiving, and needs to take action by then to fix the federal extension of benefits. With the deadline coming fast, Members of Congress have already begun debating competing proposals:
* Democratic legislation in the House and Senate (H.R.3244/S.1708) would continue the program through December 2004, while also expanding the program to provide a minimum of 26 weeks of benefits (and seven more weeks of benefits in 18 "high unemployment" states).
* House Republican legislation (H.R. 3270) would continue the extension program through June 2004 as it currently operates, without adding additional weeks of federal extended benefits. This bill would help an estimated 2.4 million fewer workers than the Democratic proposals.
ACTION NEEDED: Thanks to you, we've gotten a great response to our sign-on letter from unemployed workers to President Bush. Reaching our goal - over 1,000 workers from 40 states have signed the letter! We'll be sending it to the President and releasing it to the media in another week or so. There's still time to add your name - or to get your friends and colleagues to sign. You can find the letter at: http://action.nelp.org/ctt.asp?u=194491&l=7061
The introduction of H.R. 3270 by Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn of Washington and other Representatives from several high unemployment states (like Michigan, Oregon, New York and Illinois) shows that the Republicans who control the majority in Congress are feeling the pressure to respond to the needs of jobless workers. Last year, in contrast, they let the program expire when they recessed for the holidays. So, the debate is now moving in the right direction.
We urgently need to keep the pressure on - so we can win additional weeks of benefits this time around. We've posted a new letter in the unemployedworkers.org action center
http://action.nelp.org/ctt.asp?u=194491&l=7062 and we encourage you to send them to your Congressional Representative today!
Thanks again for all your help!
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Maurice Emsellem, National Employment Law Project, emsellem@nelp.org.
BACKGROUND: As the conference committee continues to meet to work out differences between the House and Senate Medicare bills, details on the nature of the deliberations remain vague. Senate Democrats, with the exception of Senators John Breaux (D-LA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) have been barred from the negotiations. However, some proposed changes the bill would make to the Medicaid program have recently surfaced.
One proposed change would bar Medicaid from providing "wrap-around" coverage around the new Medicare drug benefit. Currently, Medicaid fills in the gaps in Medicare benefits, picking up cost-sharing and covering benefits more generously to the extent that the Medicaid benefit is greater than under Medicare. As a result, with a new Medicare drug benefit, to the extent Medicaid covers drugs and cost-sharing and Medicare does not, Medicaid provides essential supplemental coverage. The conferees may prohibit states from providing this wrap-around coverage. That means seniors and people with disabilities could be worse off - that they would face higher cost-sharing and have less access to medically necessary drugs - than they are now. Medicaid should be able to continue to fill this important role under the new drug benefit.
Another proposed change is to take away state flexibility and force states to use uniform income and asset tests for determining eligibility for all Medicaid services for the elderly and disabled. Currently, states can count income and assets in ways that are more generous than under federal rules for SSI. This proposal would force states to revert to the current SSI income and asset limits, which are often much lower than the current income and asset limits for Medicaid in the states. This would re-set the qualifying asset limit to $3,000 for a couple with nearly all assets counted, and effectively lower the income limit to SSI levels of about 74% of poverty, by counting nearly all income. As a result, many beneficiaries who are elderly and disabled and who are currently covered under Medicaid could lose their coverage.
ACTION NEEDED: Call the members of the conference committee for the Medicare bill (listed below) and urge them not to balance the Medicare prescription drug budget on the back of low-income and disabled Medicare beneficiaries by cutting off their current access to the Medicaid program.
Conferees who are actively involved in shaping the emerging legislation are marked with an asterisk.
"I urge you oppose changes to the Medicare bill that would block access for low-income elderly and disabled people to state Medicaid programs. Many of these beneficiaries rely on Medicaid for help when their monthly prescription drug costs are too high. For these people, Medicaid is the vital insurer of last resort that makes sure they get the medical treatment they need."
MATERIALS AVAILABLE: For more general information on Medicaid, visit the National Health Law Program website http://www.healthlaw.org/medicaid.shtml
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Steve Hitov, National Health Law Program, hitov@healthlaw.org, or Stephanie Zawistowski, 202-339-9337 or szawistowski@communitychange.org
BACKGROUND: In a stunning turn of events, the Senate Agriculture Committee has decided to postpone mark up of their child nutrition reauthorization legislation until early next year. Earlier reports indicated that Committee staff were expecting to make public proposed legislative language in late October with committee action occurring soon thereafter. Reasons for the delay were attributed to the House bill (HR 3232) introduced by House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Michael Castle (R-DE), which would extend Child Nutrition Program Reauthorization through FY 2004.
With House action on HR 3232 expected to occur prior to the expiration of the current "continuing resolution" (CR) which expired on October 30th, the Committee decided there was no rush to get out a bill that would not be signed into law prior to passage of the CR. There is wide speculation that an amendment to limit the extension to 6 months has support in the House and Senate, which would push reauthorization to the beginning of the year. While no details were released on the contents of any "overcertification" proposal, advocates remained concerned that increases in verification for children receiving free and reduced price meals were probably contained in the draft Senate package.
ACTION NEEDED: Continue to press Senators (and their staff) on the Senate Agriculture Committee to use this period prior to a House and Senate mark up to: 1) do no harm to the child nutrition programs; and 2) enact positive improvements to the programs. Click here
http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/cnreauthor/AGRICU-108.PDF for Hill office contact information and click here
http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/cnreauthor/overcert.htm for background on "overcertification." For specific messages, as well as details of the package of bills introduced by Senator Herb Kohl (S. 1020, S. 1021, S. 1022), go to the "What's New" section of the FRAC web site:
www.frac.org.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: FRAC, 202-986-2200
BACKGROUND: To date, only three of the thirteen appropriations bills have been enacted into law for FY04. The last continuing resolution (CR) expired on October 30, and both the House and Senate passed a CR late Thursday extending funding through Friday, November 7. Since it is unlikely that Congress will be able to wrap up all remaining appropriations by the end of next week, there continues to be speculation about a longer-term CR. Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) planned on quickly passing the remaining spending bills individually, but now it is likely that a "minibus" bill containing the remaining must-pass appropriations bills will be crafted.
There are currently four appropriations bills in conference: Military Construction, Energy and Water, Labor-HHS-Education and Transportation-Treasury. Conferees for three of the four appropriations bills have been mired down in debate for weeks over specific details and projects. Specifically, conferees for the massive Labor-HHS-Education spending bill remain deadlocked on the issue of overtime pay. The Senate-passed bill included an amendment to block a Department of Labor rule change on overtime eligibility, but the House version did not.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Stephanie Zawistowski, 202-339-9337 or szawistowski@communitychange.org
To view a Word document of Policy Alert #310, click on the link below:
Community Center for Change Policy Alerts are delivered weekly when Congress is in session. If you would like to subscribe or unsubscribe to CCC Policy Alerts, please email Stephanie Zawistowski at szawistowski@communitychange.org. Please include in the email your name, your organization, your address, telephone, and fax number. Thank you.