Remarks at Life of Learning Ceremony

Thank you, Jack, and Bill Treanor, and congratulations to all of you being honored this evening.  It is a special occasion. I am so proud to be part of this Law Center and University.  As much or more than any other law school in the country, we stand for and work for...

Structurally Unsound: The Impact of Using Block Grants to Fund Economic Security Programs

This analysis finds that block grants (characterized by capped amounts of federal funding to states and other entities paired with expansive flexibility for how the funds are spent) are fundamentally ill-equipped to support basic living standards compared to other structures, especially those that meaningfully guarantee access to adequate benefits or services. Specifically, block grants struggle to respond to need, can be less accountable to program goals and to the people who participate in the program, and can exacerbate inequities–especially racial inequities.

It’s Time to Make Sure Nobody is Paid Less Than the Minimum Wage

Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt called for a national floor on wages to ensure “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a core part of the New Deal, the federal minimum wage falls far short of that goal.

Budget Cuts Would Leave Many Americans Hungry

Their bellies were swollen and their fragile limbs covered with sores that would not heal. Clothed in rags, these children of the Mississippi Delta huddled in crumbling shacks with empty iceboxes, not a morsel of food to be found. It was a level of human suffering and despair that brought a New York Senator to tears. Walking, stunned, from one hovel to the next, Senator Robert F. Kennedy saw conditions that rivaled what he’d seen in third-world countries.