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
  • Printer-friendly version
  • Send by email

My Take

Mulvaney Amendment Means (At Least) Five More Problems with Boehner’s Plan B

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: December 20, 2012 at 02:39 pm

Yesterday we reported that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had introduced a tax bill – referred to as “Plan B” – that protects most tax cuts for the richest two percent, ends improvements in tax credits for hardworking families, and does nothing to help two million jobless workers who are about to lose federal unemployment benefits. The House is scheduled to vote on this disastrous bill tonight.

But wait, there’s more! The House is now also scheduled to vote on an amendment introduced by Rep. Mulvaney (R-SC) that would make Plan B even more dangerous for women and their families by adding harmful spending cuts to the unfair tax policies in the bill. The Mulvaney amendment is nearly identical to a bill passed by the House passed in the spring, which would avoid the automatic cuts scheduled to begin in January for the remainder of FY 2013 – but only by replacing those across-the-board cuts with deep cuts targeted to many programs that women and their families especially depend on. So here are my top five reasons why the Mulvaney amendment makes a bad bill much, much worse:

  1. It slashes funding for health care. Among other cuts that would hamper implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the amendment would reduce access to affordable coverage by discouraging the use of premium tax credits designed to help people pay for health insurance. The amendment also allows states to restrict their eligibility standards for Medicaid, which could reduce eligibility or benefits for millions – especially women, who disproportionately rely on Medicaid for health care coverage.

  2. It cuts nutrition assistance for low-income families. Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/food stamps) in the amendment would reduce monthly benefits almost immediately for about 44 million people and deny benefits altogether for as many as 2 million more. In addition, about 280,000 low-income children would lose access to free meals at school.

Read more...
Tags: Family Support Programs, Federal Budget, Federal Tax Policy, Poverty & Income Support, Tax & Budget | Add new comment

Top Five Problems with Boehner's "Plan B"

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: December 19, 2012 at 04:15 pm

You may have heard that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has introduced a tax bill that is now being referred to as "Plan B" — that is, a backup plan of sorts if the negotiations with President Obama to resolve the "fiscal cliff" break down. The House is scheduled to vote on it tomorrow. But Plan B is a bad deal for women and their families. Here are the top five reasons why:

  1. Plan B raises taxes for 25 million low- and moderate-income families. By ending important improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), and eliminating the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) for college expenses, Plan B takes tax benefits away from the families who need them most. NWLC has calculated that ending the improvements to the EITC and CTC would take $12.6 billion in tax credits from hardworking families — and women would bear two-thirds of those losses.

  2. Plan B lets millionaires off easy. By keeping in place all of the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes up to $1 million and repealing tax expenditure limits for even the very highest earners, Plan B ensures that households with incomes over $1 million — the top 0.3 percent — still get tax cuts averaging $50,000 per year (compared with President Obama's proposal to end the Bush-era tax cuts on income above $200,000 for an individual or $250,000 for a couple).

Read more...
Tags: Federal Budget, Fiscal Cliff, Taxes, Federal Tax Policy, Tax & Budget | 1 comment

Home Care Workers Shouldn’t Have to Wait Any Longer for Basic Labor Protections

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: December 13, 2012 at 02:51 pm

One year ago, President Obama announced new regulations proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) that would grant minimum wage and overtime pay to home care workers, a workforce that has been unfairly denied these basic protections for decades. In his remarks last December, he described a day he spent with Pauline Beck, a home care worker from Oakland, California:

“When we met, she was getting up every day at 5:00 a.m. to go to work taking care of an 86-year-old amputee named ‘Mr. John.’ And each day, she’d dress Mr. John and help him into his wheelchair. She’d make him breakfast. She’d scrub his floors. She’d clean his bathroom. She was his connection to the outside world. And when the workday was done, she would go home to take care of a grandnephew and two foster children who didn’t have families of their own. Heroic work, and hard work. That’s what Pauline was all about.”

Pauline’s story is illustrative. Like Pauline, most home care workers are women. They take on the vitally important work of caring for our neighbors and family members who need help to stay in their homes – and like Pauline, many home care workers also have their own families to support. But for decades, their difficult and demanding jobs have come without the basic protections of the federal minimum wage and overtime laws.

Read more...
Tags: Employment, Equal Pay, Home Care Work, Minimum Wage, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Minimum Wage, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

New Jersey Senate Agrees: Minimum Wage Workers Deserve a Raise

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 30, 2012 at 05:22 pm

Big news from the Garden State yesterday: the New Jersey Senate voted to raise the minimum wage! Specifically, the Senate approved the bill passed by the Assembly in May, which would raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour and adjust it annually to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Once the Assembly approves a technical amendment to the bill to change the effective date (expected to occur in mid-December), it will be sent to Governor Christie.  

This is an important step forward for hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers in New Jersey, most of whom are women. Today, full-time minimum wage earnings of $14,500 a year leave a mom with two children thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line. Raising New Jersey’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would mean an extra $2,500 per year, which could make a real difference for women and families struggling to make ends meet.

 Read more...
Tags: Minimum Wage, New Jersey, Minimum Wage, Employment | Add new comment

Congress Returns to Face Exaggerated "Fiscal Cliff" - But the Unemployed Face a Real Cliff in December

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: November 14, 2012 at 04:40 pm

After an extended recess, Congress officially heads back to work this week — with a lengthy to-do list. Since the election, the attention of both Congress and the media turned to the so-called "fiscal cliff," which refers to the combination of tax cuts and numerous other provisions set to expire at the end of December and a series of automatic spending cuts scheduled to begin in January. You can read all about the decisions ahead in NWLC's latest roadmap to the federal budget debates, but in short: if Congress does not act to prevent the loss of jobs and services that deep spending cuts would produce and ensure that low- and moderate-income families do not face substantially higher taxes next year, the fragile economic recovery will suffer a significant setback.

Contrary to what some commentators might suggest, however, the economy will not immediately fall into a recession if Congress does not reach agreement on all of these issues by the end of 2012. Indeed, the "fiscal cliff" is better described as a "fiscal slope," as the economic impact of the changes is likely to be gradual. The hit to families' budgets from tax changes, and to federal program budgets from spending cuts, will be modest as long as Congress acts relatively early in 2013 to renew tax cuts for low- and moderate-income families and cancel automatic cuts.

Read more...
Tags: Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment, Poverty & Income Support | 1 comment