Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

Julie Vogtman is Senior Counsel for the Family Economic Security Program at the National Women’s Law Center. She works on a range of issues involving economic support for low-income women and their families, including minimum wage policies, unemployment benefits, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). She also contributes to the Center’s work on federal budget and tax policies, including implementation of the tax credit components of the Affordable Care Act.  Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Vogtman was an associate with Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Furman University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Expert in: Family Support Programs, Federal Budget, Federal Tax Policy, Minimum Wage, Unemployment, Poverty & Income Support
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My Take

Good News on the Balanced Budget Amendment

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 18, 2011 at 04:13 pm

As expected, the House voted this afternoon on a balanced budget constitutional amendment, H.J. Res. 2. The good news: it failed, 261 to 165. (A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority to pass.) If you’re wondering why it’s so great that the House rejected an amendment that would require a balanced budget, check out my recent blog post with the top five reasons why the BBA is such a terrible idea. In short, approval of a BBA in the House would have brought us one big step closer to longer and deeper recessions, with major cuts to programs that women and their families depend on.

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Tags: Balanced Budget Amendment, Budget, Constitution, Federal Budget, House of Representatives | Add new comment

House Set to Vote on BBA, the Bad Idea That Just Won’t Go Away

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 16, 2011 at 03:48 pm

The House plans to vote tomorrow or Friday on H.J. Res. 2, a balanced budget constitutional amendment (BBA) sponsored by Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA).  The amendment is not new – it nearly came to the House floor over the summer, and similar amendments have been proposed many times over the years, especially in the 1990s.  But amending the Constitution to require the federal government to balance its budget every year was a terrible idea then, and it’s a terrible idea today. 

So terrible that a group of more than 1,000 economists, including 11 Nobel laureates, issued a joint statement in 1997 that said, “We condemn the proposed ‘balanced-budget’ amendment to the federal Constitution.  It is unsound and unnecessary…[and] mandates perverse actions in the fact of recessions.”

So terrible that five winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics issued a statement  in July opposing a BBA because of the negative effect it would have on an already troubled economy.

So terrible that Macroeconomic Advisers, a private economic forecasting firm, recently concluded that if a BBA had been ratified and were now being enforced for fiscal year 2012, “the effect on the economy would be catastrophic” and “recessions would be deeper and longer.”  According to the report, if the budget were balanced through spending cuts in 2012, about 15 million more people would lose their jobs and the unemployment rate would double (from 9 percent to a staggering 18 percent).  

Still not convinced?  Here’s a recap of my top five reasons why the House should reject the BBA: 

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Tags: Balanced Budget Amendment, Budget, Federal Budget, House of Representatives, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security | 1 comment

Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act is a Must-Pass Bill for Women

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 11, 2011 at 04:42 pm

It’s only been a week since the latest dismal jobs numbers came out, yet with super-committee conflict and the gaffes and misdeeds of presidential hopefuls dominating the headlines, unemployment hardly seems to be the most pressing issue in Washington. But it should be. Though last week’s news wasn’t entirely bad for women, who gained 66,000 of the 80,000 jobs added to the economy last month, such anemic growth is not nearly enough to make a serious dent in unemployment for women or men. Women have actually lost 117,000 jobs since the recovery officially began in June 2009, and their unemployment rate is higher now (8.0 percent) than it was then (7.7 percent). Nationwide, the unemployment rate is an abysmal 9.0 percent.

With the employment outlook still daunting for nearly 14 million jobless women and men, the number of long-term unemployed — those who have been seeking employment for more than 26 weeks — remains at historic levels. As of last month, close to half of all jobless workers had been unemployed for more than six months. Since most state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits expire after 26 weeks (or even earlier in some states), millions of the long-term unemployed depend on federal extended benefit programs that support workers who have exhausted their state benefits.

As we explain in our recent fact sheet, federal UI benefits have been a vital lifeline for millions of women, men and families during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Due in large part to federally funded benefits, UI kept over 3.2 million people (including nearly 900,000 children and over 1.0 million women) from falling out of the middle class and into poverty last year. UI benefits have also supported the fragile economic recovery; because recipients generally spend UI benefits quickly to meet basic needs, the benefits generate approximately two dollars in GDP growth for every federal dollar invested. Nationwide, UI benefits increased employment by an average 1.6 million jobs each quarter between mid-2008 and mid-2010.

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Tags: Federal Budget, Federal Tax Policy, Unemployment, Poverty & Income Support, Tax & Budget | 1 comment

ACA Helps DV Survivors Get Health Care, but ACA Rules Need to Ensure Access to Tax Credits

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 01, 2011 at 09:40 am

Yesterday marked the last day of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. So it seems appropriate that yesterday the Center filed comments in response to proposed regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that could make a crucial difference for women struggling to survive domestic abuse.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four women in the United States will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime. Historically, survivors of domestic violence have often been charged higher rates for health insurance or denied coverage outright – but the ACA helps provide domestic violence survivors with the care they need by prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage based on “conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence.”

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Domestic Violence, Health Insurance, Tax Credits, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | Add new comment

CBO Agrees: The Super-Committee Can Reduce Poverty, Not Just the Deficit

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: September 15, 2011 at 01:48 pm

On Wednesday morning – just as the Census Bureau released sobering new statistics on poverty in the U.S. in 2010 – the congressional “super-committee” charged with coming up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years held a public hearing on “The History and Drivers of Our Nation’s Debt and Its Threats.”

To me, learning that more than 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010 (with record numbers living in extreme poverty) only emphasized that the super-committee’s plan must reduce debt and the deficit by creating jobs, growing the economy, and making millionaires and corporations pay their fair share – not by cutting spending on programs that struggling women and families depend on every day. In his testimony at yesterday’s hearing, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf affirmed that a responsible deficit reduction plan can include spending measures to spur the economy:

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Tags: Unemployment, Employment, Poverty & Income Support, Tax & Budget | Add new comment