New America Foundation

NAF, et al. vigorously oppose adoption of the Notice as proposed. The proposed rules virtually replicate the 2002 Petition by Progeny LMS, LLC (Progeny Petition), which attracted considerable opposition from a broad cross-section of industry groups. Other than the continued failure of the L-LMS Band -- a risk reflected in the absurdly low prices the licenses brought at auction -- the NPRM offers no justification for adopting the proposal.

Maya MacGuineas, Director of New America's Fiscal Policy Program and President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security on May 25, 2006. The full text of her prepared remarks is available below in PDF format.

Everyone interested in solutions to our health system's problems (and who isn't?) is looking to Massachusetts in the wake of its recent landmark legislation. Like the Rorschach ink blot test, many commentators see what they want to see, not what is actually there. Pessimists emphasize the uniqueness of Massachusetts and rush to proclaim that it can never happen anywhere else in America. Pragmatists see a bipartisan agreement to cover all people and celebrate, regardless of the type or coverage or the cost implications.

The purpose of this issue brief is to summarize a federal public policy agenda to broaden savings and asset ownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income Americans. It reflects our latest and best thinking, and draws heavily on the work of many experts focusing on various facets of savings and asset-building policy. The menu includes calls for new structures and policies, as well as changes to existing tax systems, government programs and financial products.

Savings bonds have always served multiple objectives: funding the U.S. government, democratizing national financing, and enabling families to save. Increasingly, that last goal has been ignored. A series of efficiency measures introduced in 2003 make these bonds less attractive and less accessible to savers. Public policy should go in the opposite direction: U.S. savings bonds should be reinvigorated to help low- and moderate-income (LMI) families build assets. More and more, those families’ saving needs are ignored by private-sector asset managers and marketers.

From the fire fighters who died on 9/11 to the rescue workers struggling to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, recent crises have demonstrated that the absence of reliable and interoperable voice and data communications among public safety agencies is an urgent national dilemma.

April 6, 2006

The Honorable Marsha Blackburn
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C 20515

The Honorable Jay Inslee
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C 20515

The Honorable Tammy Baldwin
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C 20515

Dear Representatives Blackburn, Inslee and Baldwin:

In the wake of terrorist threats, gas price spikes, hurricanes, and a run-up in housing prices in certain markets, there has been broad discussion recently about the value to the U.S. of encouraging greater development in the nation’s interior. Population growth along America’s coasts is crowding more people into ever smaller areas, while the interior of the country remains relatively open. As the U.S population is projected to grow to 400 million in the next half century, America has an incentive to encourage people on the coasts to settle inland.

Why isn’t more attention paid to the need for a public and private sector revolution in job training? In the past few years, there has been much attention paid to improving America’s education system. By tradition and even by law, education is a state and local responsibility. However, education has seen a critical change over the past five years in terms of the federal role. The Republican Party has transformed from calling for a decreased federal role in education (many in 1994 wanted to abolish the Department of Education) to being a party of a new increased federal role.

Qualified Tuition Plans, commonly called “529 plans” after the applicable section of the federal tax code, were implemented in their present form in 2001. These state-sponsored plans can help families save for their children’s college education, or an adult can open an account to use for their own post-secondary expenses. Under current law, earnings and qualified withdrawals are exempt from federal income tax liability.