The true source of America’s greatness is the diversity of our people. Almost 1 in 4 Americans is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, and with the upcoming vote on the budget, it’s time for Democrats and Republicans alike to finally pass the DREAM Act. As Congress takes up the spending bill, which may be voted on tonight or tomorrow, Demos urges the leadership of both parties to protect young immigrants whose status is on the line by including a clean DREAM Act in the bill—and to reject the bill if a clean DREAM Act is not included.
New York, NY – Today, Heather McGhee, President of Demos, issued the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate passed the GOP Tax Scam:
“Today, Congressional Republicans proved once again that they will stop at nothing to enrich the millionaire, billionaire and corporate donors to whom they are beholden—despite the severe cost that will now be paid by working- and middle-class families.
The increased economic anxiety among black and Hispanic workers is not surprising when considering the fact that working-class workers of color tend to be paid less on the job and, therefore, hold less wealth.
New York, NY – Today, the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted on strictly partisan lines to approve a new tax plan that will increase taxes on working- and middle-class Americans while lowering taxes on billionaires and wealthy corporations. In response, Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos released the following statement:
Employees would likely contribute less to IRA accounts
If the proposal passes, there is a strong indication that U.S. workers will either shift their savings to Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA) accounts, where contributions are taxed immediately or employees and employers will contribute less for retirement.
Another solution — though one that is often a struggle to achieve — is to unionize, which has worked before in industries like teaching, policing, and manufacturing. “If retail workers were able to organize strong unions across the country, there’s no reason retail jobs couldn’t be good jobs like manufacturing jobs,” Amy Traub, Associate Director for Policy and Research at public policy organizationDemos, tells Bustle.
Even before the Equifax breach, the integrity of credit reports was murky at best. A Federal Trade Commission report found that as many as one in five consumers had a credit error from one of the top reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). But the fundamental problem isn’t data integrity—it’s economic justice. According to a survey by the think tank Demos, declining credit was associated more with misfortunes and unforeseeable crises than with a lack of financial responsibility.
The Congressional Black Caucus budget should be implemented because it calls for racial equity in future infrastructure and investments; improving public transit infrastructure, noting that people of color are heavy users of it; and school infrastructure, saying that modernized buildings held reduce achievements gaps.
From the day he launched his campaign with dire warnings about border-crossing “bad hombres,” Donald Trump has preyed on some Americans’ worst biases around immigration. Trump has since exhorted Congress to allocate tens of billions of dollars for a border wall, stepped up arrests of immigrants, separated Latino children from their parents, and pushed to expedite deportations. [...]
On August 31, Federal District Judge Amos Mazzant of Texas issued a ruling striking down the U.S. Department of Labor’s update to federal rules on overtime pay. Demos Associate Director of Policy and Research Amy Traub released the following statement:
August 2, 2017 (New York, NY) – In response to reports today that the U.S. Department of Justice plans to investigate higher education institutions’ affirmative action policies, Heather McGhee, President of Demos and Demos Action, issued the following statement.
Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, lenders preying on communities of color would continue to pull in windfall gains, while widening the racial wealth gap and undermining the precarious financial stability of vulnerable households.
July 21, 2017 (New York, NY) – In honor of the sixth anniversary of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research, issued the following statement.
Methodology: Demos sponsored an online survey among 1,536 registered voters, conducted June 5 to June 14, 2017. The research included a base sample of registered voters and, for deeper analysis, oversamples of working-class African Americans, working-class Hispanics, working-class white Obama-to-Trump voters, and progressives, defined as people of all races who identify as extremely or somewhat liberal. The data in this survey is weighted by standard weights to make it fully representative.
In a recent study, I compared the damage from shoplifting with that from just one form of wage theft, the failure to pay workers the legal hourly minimum.
New York, NY - With the House of Representatives poised to vote on H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, Amy Traub, Associate Director, Policy and Research at Demos, issued the following statement: