New America Foundation

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Jacob Hacker, and I am a professor of political science at Yale University. I thank the committee for the honor of speaking today about the economic condition of the American middle class.

Without mincing words, that condition can be described as "serious and unstable." Increasingly, middle-class Americans find themselves on a shaky financial tightrope, without an adequate safety net if they lose their footing.

In recent decades there has been a massive transfer of economic risk from shared institutional arrangements, such as unemployment insurance and basic benefit coverage provided by employers, onto the fragile balance sheets of families. Yet public programs have largely failed to respond.

On Jan. 10, 2007, Dr. Flynt Leverett, Senior Fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation, testified before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

In his opening remarks, Leverett declared:

Health insurance is the primary method Californians use to access and pay for health care. However, millions of Californians have inadequate health insurance or lack coverage entirely. When care is needed, the first inclination for these families is to delay treatment that is too costly and then hope for the best. And when hope is not enough, these families are forced to seek treatment that they often cannot afford. When medical bills go unpaid, many health care providers shift the cost onto those who can pay -- the those with health insurance...

A survey commissioned by the New America Foundation finds that nearly three-quarters of California voters would like to see the creation of a citizen's panel to explore ideas for making the state's election process more fair and competitive.

More than three out of four voters also said the system favors Democrat and Republican candidates and is unfair to independents or minor party candidates. And nearly 60% said the system needs improvement and that government would perform better if a wider variety of candidates were elected.

Is children’s development, and children’s cognitive development in particular, affected by the marital status of their parents? On the face of it, this seems to be a simple question to which there is an intuitively simple answer: yes. Yet the answer to this question is anything but simple. The complexity of this question, the policy context that has helped shape a growing body of related research, and the implications of findings for policy and practice are discussed below.

Frustrated by the lack of action or even attention at the federal level, states and local governments are looking for creative ways to expand programs to reach the 47 million Americans without health insurance. There have already been a number of creative initiatives by states and localities over the last five years to cover more of the uninsured, which deserve our review.