Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security

Joan Entmacher

Joan Entmacher is Vice President for Family Economic Security at the National Women's Law Center, where she leads a team working to improve policies important to the economic security of low-income women and their families, including tax and budget, child care, child support, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and Social Security. Ms. Entmacher is a leading expert on issues affecting low-income women. She has been invited to testify before Congress on several occasions, written numerous analyses and reports on income support policies and their impact on poor women, and spoken frequently at conferences, briefings, and to the media. Prior to joining the National Women's Law Center, Ms. Entmacher served as Director of Legal and Public Policy at the National Partnership for Women & Families, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, Chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, and attorney in the U.S. Department of Labor Solicitor's Office. Ms. Entmacher is a graduate of Yale Law School and Wellesley College.

Expert in: Tax Credits Outreach, Federal Budget, Family Support Programs, Federal Tax Policy, Family Tax Credits, Data on Poverty & Income, Unemployment, Social Security & Retirement, Tax & Budget
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My Take

Surprise! Former Bush Economic Adviser Agrees Private Equity Billionaires Get Unfair Tax Break

Posted by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security | Posted on: July 20, 2007 at 12:33 pm

by Joan Entmacher

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Does Billionaire Steve Schwarzman Pay a Lower Tax Rate than You?

Posted by
NWLC, Intern
Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security
| Posted on: July 10, 2007 at 02:53 pm

(Think Congress should do something about it?)

by Rebecca Wilkins and Joan Entmacher

Tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing with the unbelievably boring title of “Carried Interest, Part I.” But before you yawn and ignore this hearing (or this post), consider this:  CEO Stephen Schwarzman reportedly will receive as much as $677 million from the “carried interest” he receives for managing The Blackstone Group, which went public last month. That’s an impressive amount of money—but the real kicker is that he’ll only pay 15% federal income tax on that income. That's the same tax bracket that a single worker is in if she earns between $16,575 and $40,600 (assuming she claims the personal exemption and standard deduction).  A single worker earning between $40,600 and $85,850 is in a 25% bracket.

And Schwarzman’s not alone in earning unimaginable sums of money—and paying taxes on those earnings at a lower rate than millions of middle-class workers. Top hedge fund managers, some earning over $1 billion a year, also manage to pay tax on most of their income at just 15%.

How is this possible?  Two words:  capital gains. 

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Tags: Tax & Budget | 2 comments

Governors Ask Congress to Reverse Restrictive Welfare Rules

Posted by
NWLC, Intern
Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security
| Posted on: July 06, 2007 at 02:22 pm

by Jessica Stone and Joan Entmacher

Over the past year, the Bush Administration has put additional barriers in the path of poor women struggling to provide for their children, and of states trying to provide assistance to them. Last week, the National Governors Association (NGA) asked Congress for help. The Chair and Vice Chair of the NGA Health and Human Services Committee wrote a letter to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees asking them to restore flexibility—and common sense—to the administration of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.

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Veto-Man Threatens Gains for Women and Families

Posted by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security | Posted on: June 08, 2007 at 07:42 pm

by Joan Entmacher

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Tags: Child Care, Child Care & Early Learning, Head Start, Poverty & Income Support, Tax & Budget | Add new comment

The Rise (and Fall) of the Bottom Fifth

Posted by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security | Posted on: June 01, 2007 at 01:00 pm

by Joan Entmacher

In an op-ed this week titled "The Rise of the Bottom Fifth," Ron Haskins points to a finding in a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office—that the lowest-income fifth of households with children experienced a larger percentage increase in average income between 1991 and 2005 than all other groups except the top fifth—as demonstrating the success of the 1996 welfare law.   

But he doesn’t mention another CBO finding:  that between 2000 and 2005, the bottom fifth experienced a far larger drop in income than any other income group.  (The second-to-the-bottom fifth experienced the next largest drop.)  Even with their “big increases in income,” families in the bottom fifth “enjoyed” an average income of just $16,800 in 2005—less than the poverty level for a family of four in 2005. And it’s strange that he claims that the study shows that income inequality in America is not increasing—when he acknowledges that the study finds that the biggest income gains in percentage terms (and, of course, in dollars) went to those already at the top.  (Their average income in 2005 was $175,800.)

To his credit, Haskins recognizes the importance to low-income families of government policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, child care, and health care, to improve living standards and make work pay.  But the “trend in federal policy to improve programs that help low-income workers” that Haskins mentions, like the trend toward increased income, largely ended after 2000. 

Since 2000, federal funding for child care assistance has stagnated.

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Tags: Child Care, Child Care & Early Learning, Poverty & Income Support, Tax & Budget | Add new comment