OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

Following the rare leak of a draft majority opinion in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the prospect of partial or wholesale rollback of Roe v. Wade—and with it, the bodily autonomy of women and people who can become pregnant—now looms larger than ever in the United States. So in the wake of the leak that has everyone shook up, Rebecca sat back down with Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox and Off-Kilter's favorite court watcher for the inside scoop on the leak, what happens if Roe goes down, and how the Supreme Court has become, in his words, "one of the chief architects of America's democratic decline." And in the second half of the show, Rebecca talks again with Dr. Jamila Taylor, senior fellow and director of health care reform at The Century Foundation, to unpack why rolling back Roe would be a huge setback for women's equality and economic justice; how out of step rolling back the clock on reproductive rights is with the will of the American people; what's on deck in the states if Roe does go down; and the road ahead to fighting back. For more: Dig into Ian's essay on how SCOTUS became "one of the chief architects of America's democratic decline" Read Jamila's statement responding to Justice Alito's leaked draft opinion Here are tips on how to donate to a local abortion fund (via The Cut) Note: This is a corrected version of the audio.

For more than two years, student loan repayment in the United States has been on pause, and interest on those debts has been frozen in light of the pandemic. In April, that pause was extended to August 31 of this year, offering another temporary reprieve for borrowers, many of whom were struggling to make often-crushing payments well before COVID-19 became a household name. Now, after years of calls to cancel some or all of the nation's $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, federal policymakers are seriously considering finally taking a step in that direction. To unpack how student debt became a $1.6 trillion crisis, what's being discussed in Washington, and why student debt cancellation must be just the beginning of the conversation on making higher education affordable, Rebecca sat down with two of The Century Foundation's experts on the subject: Tiara Moultrie, a fellow at TCF whose work focuses on higher education accountability, and Peter Granville, a senior policy associate studying federal and state policy efforts to improve college access and affordability. For more: Here are some helpful updates on where the push to cancel student debt stands: from Business Insider, CNBC, The Hill Check out more of TCF's higher education work

This week, we're taking a break from Off-Kilter's regularly scheduled programming to share a special virtual discussion hosted by The Century Foundation earlier this week with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, and other leaders to mark the official launch of the new Disability Economic Justice Collaborative. Off-Kilter previewed the collaborative's launch a few weeks ago in a special behind-the-scenes episode with TCF's new Disability Economic Justice team: it brings together two dozen leading disability groups, think tanks, and research organizations to learn from each other, work in partnership, and finally break the link between disability and poverty that continues to persist in the United States more than three decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law. For more: Here's the new TCF–CEPR study documenting the economic crisis facing the U.S. disability community (and if that's tl;dr, here's a fact sheet). Check out the new TCF–Data for Progress poll finding that just one in three disabled voters believe leaders in Washington care about people with disabilities. Here's the press release announcing the collaborative: you can find the full event and all the materials discussed during it at DEJC.org.

How would you feel if you found out your elected leaders had voted to hand out huge sums of public money to corporations, with some of them not even knowing who the recipient is, and the rest bound by contract not to divulge its identity or what its specific plans are? Now what if we told you this happens all over the country, all the time, in deals involving wealthy corporations such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and on and on? Unfortunately, thanks to a legal tool called a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), this kind of corrupt secret dealmaking has become the norm rather than the exception in economic development deals. These agreements—signed by governors, mayors, state legislators, and other local leaders—prevent public officials from disclosing anything about a corporate subsidy deal they're working on, including even the recipient, until it's finished, cutting many key stakeholders, and most importantly the public, out of the process. But a new coalition is seeking to change that. To learn more about the effort to "Ban Secret Deals"—and why it's critical to economic justice in the United States—Rebecca sat down with Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, author of the book Billionaire Boondoggle and the Boondoggle newsletter, which looks at how corporations are ripping off our states, cities, and communities; and Illinois State Senator Robert Peters, an organizer and economic justice activist who now represents the Thirteenth Legislative District in the Illinois General Assembly, and who recently introduced the first state legislation to ban secret deals. For more: Here's some of the recent coverage of how non-disclosure agreements are enabling corrupt secret dealmaking with wealthy corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and more For more from Pat, subscribe to the Boondoggle newsletter and check out his book Billionaire Boondoggle For more from Senator Peters, check out this interview with ABC7 Chicago—and his legislation to ensure transparency in government contracts Learn more about the campaign to ban secret deals at bansecretdeals.org

This week, Rebecca hands the mic to Ryan Prior for an Off-Kilter takeover episode. Ryan is a longtime journalist, former CNN reporter, and like Rebecca, someone who lives with invisible chronic illness. They first crossed paths when Rebecca was at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and more recently reconnected in the COVID era because of his forthcoming book The Long Haul—which looks at how COVID-19 pandemic as a mass disabling event has changed the face of disability and chronic illness in the United States. For this Off-Kilter takeover, Ryan sat down with another chronically ill journalist and author of a similarly timely book—Meghan O'Rourke, author of the New York Times bestseller Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, which Esquire called "at once a remarkable work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy." For more: Dig into The Invisible Kingdom and follow Meghan on Twitter @meghanor Check out Ryan's documentary Forgotten Plague, get involved with ME Action, and follow him on Twitter @r_prior

This week, Rebecca took a break from Off-Kilter's regularly scheduled programming for a sit-down with the newest members of The Century Foundation's brand-new Disability Economic Justice Team, which officially launched last month. Kim Knackstedt comes to TCF from the Biden administration, in which she served as the first-ever director of disability policy on the White House Domestic Policy Council, after many years as a staffer on Capitol Hill and before that, as a special ed teacher. Vilissa Thompson is the founder of Ramp Your Voice!, a former licensed social worker, and a long-time thought leader in the disability community at the intersection of race, gender, and disability. For more on TCF's new Disability Economic Justice Team: Read more about the team in the press release announcing its launch and follow The Century Foundation on Twitter at @TCFdotorg Here's more on Kim, more on her prior role at the White House, and follow her on Twitter @kiknack And here's more on Vilissa, more on Ramp Your Voice!, and follow her on Twitter @VilissaThompson

"We believe that it is possible to create an economy where all Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander people thrive—in one generation. To accomplish this we must fight to dismantle what we call the Oppression Economy. Today, elite institutions use racism as a tool to expand their wealth and power and suppress the wealth of people of color through theft, exploitation, and exclusion. Suppressing economic power leads to suppression of political power to influence policies that oversee resources. The elite institutions that control resources use that control to change the rules of our economy in their favor, which continues the cycle of profit." This is the vision of Liberation in a Generation, a national movement support organization building the power of people of color to totally transform the economy—who controls it, how it works, and most importantly, for whom. Formed in 2018 by cofounders Jeremie Greer and Solana Rice, LibGen as it's come to be called, brings together advocates, community organizers, economists, and other proven and emerging leaders of color across the country to build a Liberation Economy within, as the name suggests, one generation. So as Off-Kilter continues this ongoing series of conversations with economic justice leaders working to turn the traditional think tank model on its head—for this week's show, Rebecca sat down with Jeremie and Solana for a look at the story behind LibGen and how it's working to dismantle what they have termed the "oppression economy" by putting people of color at the center of policy change. We also take a sneak peek at their new podcast, called Racism Is Profitable. For more: Learn more about Liberation in a Generation and get involved at liberationinageneration.org. Subscribe to their new podcast, "Racism Is Profitable" and find all of the episodes we talked about here Follow them on Twitter @solanarice and @jeremiegreer

Sixty-one million Americans, or roughly one in four, live with disabilities. Yet people with disabilities have at best only been an afterthought when it comes to housing policy in the United States, without a seat at the metaphorical table to inform how it gets made. Now, a new organization called The Kelsey is working to change that. So, after a great set of conversations with some of the folks behind Next100 about how they're working to turn the traditional think tank model on its head—we at Off-Kilter have decided to keep the conversation going about what it looks like to put directly impacted communities at the center of policy change. For this week's show, Rebecca sat down with three of the powerhouse disability leaders behind The Kelsey—Micaela Connery, Allie Cannington, and Fatimah Aure—for a look at the story behind the organization and how it's working to change how housing policy gets made… by centering the perspectives of disabled people. You can learn more about The Kelsey and get involved with their work at TheKelsey.org.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Rebecca's been having a series of conversations with some of the folks behind Next100—a think tank that's turning the traditional think tank model on its head, to create a public policy sector where those with the most at stake are driving the change they and their communities want to see. We at Off-Kilter enjoyed what started as a single episode conversation so much, we decided to turn it into a three-part series. So, to wrap up that series of conversations with Next100 leaders about what it looks like to put people at the center of policy change in the areas of antipoverty policy and climate policy… for this week's show, Rebecca sat down with a set of current and former Next100 policy entrepreneurs—Michael "Zaki" Smith, Isabel Coronado, and Vidal Guzman—all of whom are working to transform different facets of America's Jim Crow criminal legal system, and to ensure directly impacted folks are leading the way. And ICYMI: Don't miss the first and second episodes in this ongoing series. For more: For more from Zaki, check out his piece on collateral consequences, "A Silent Life Sentence"; his testimony before the New York state legislature on why "New York State Must Pass Automatic Expungement 'Clean Slate' Legislation"; the #EndPerpetualPunishment Campaign; his Brooklyn mural campaign; and follow him on Twitter @zakithebarber. For more from Isabel, check out her report: ​​"We Are Not Collateral Consequences: Policy Solutions for Children of Incarcerated Parents, From Arrest to Reentry"; her piece "The Resilient Children of Incarcerated Parents: Interviews"; and more on her idea for a Flourishing Children of Incarcerated Parents federal grant program; and follow her on Twitter @graduateisabel. For more from Vidal, check out his essay explaining why "Slavery Hasn't Been Abolished. It's Been Reformed"; read more on the Fix the 13th NY campaign to raise wages for incarcerated folks; and follow him on Twitter @iamvidalguzman.

Last week, Rebecca sat down with some of the folks behind Next100—a think tank that's turning the traditional think tank model on its head, to create a public policy sector where those with the most at stake are driving the change they and their communities want to see. We at Off-Kilter enjoyed that conversation so much, we decided to turn it into a three-part series. So, continuing last week's conversation about what it looks like to put people at the center of policy change in the area of antipoverty policy… for this week's pod, Rebecca sat down with two more Next 100 policy entrepreneurs—Dan Mathis and Diana Martinez Quintana—who are working to change how climate policy is made in the United States, at the intersections of housing policy, immigration, and racial justice. And ICYMI: don't miss last week's episode, which kicked off Off-Kilter's series with The Next 100. For more: For more from Diana, read her recent essay, "Climate Displacement Gives America the Opportunity to Improve the Record on Immigration" and follow her on Twitter @DianaYMartinezQ For more from Dan, check out his recent article, "Climate disasters are inevitable. Their disparate impacts—and our disparate responses to them—are not" and follow him on Twitter @dmathis_ And learn more about Next100 in this video on how the organization is working to change how public policy is made by building a more inclusive policy sector

Last month, the newly launched Congressional Progressive Staff Association published a survey of more than five hundred Congressional staff. The results were damning. Half of Capitol Hill staffers who weren't in management reported their pay was so low they were struggling to make ends meet. Roughly one in four of those who weren't managers said they didn't have the equivalent of even one month's rent in the bank in the case of an emergency. And this despite routinely working twelve-hour days and weekends. The survey's troubling findings come as a viral Instagram account called "Dear White Staffers" has been drawing new levels of national attention to the low pay, poor working conditions, and toxic workplace environment that is often even more pervasive for staffers of color on the Hill. But a critical point that this growing national conversation demands is that the problem isn't limited to Capitol Hill. Low starting salaries at many of the think tanks and policy organizations that shape public policy only serve to compound an existing lack of pipelines into public policy jobs for the communities most impacted. Another major contributing factor is a hiring culture that continues a cycle of exclusion—including the unstated but incredibly pervasive limiting belief that people with lived experience of societal problems like poverty and rampant inequality couldn't possibly have anything to offer when it comes to shaping the policies and programs that directly impact their communities. Meanwhile, a new organization called The Next 100—housed within The Century Foundation—is turning the exclusionary nature of Washington policymaking on its head. Now in its second cohort, the Next 100 has created a model for what recruiting, hiring, and supporting diverse talent in the policy space can look like—and more generally for breaking down deeply embedded barriers to inclusion of diverse perspectives in policymaking, with broad applicability for think tanks and policy organizations across sectors, as well as Capitol Hill. So for a look at how we create a policy sector where those with the most at stake are driving the change they and their communities want to see, for this week's Off-Kilter—now that we're back up and running for 2022—Rebecca sat down with Emma Vadehra, executive director of Next 100, and two of the members of the organization's current cohort—Lindsey Cazessus and Chantal Hinds—for the first in a series of conversations with the organization's Policy Entrepreneurs. For more: Learn more about The Next 100 in this video featuring executive director Emma Vadehra and several of the organization's past and present policy entrepreneurs For more from Lindsey, read her recent essay, "The Myth of the Undeserving Poor Should End with the Pandemic" and follow her on Twitter @lindseycazessus For more from Chantal, check out her recent article, "A Feature, Not a Bug: The Foster System's History of Othering" and follow her on Twitter @c_hinds_ For more from Emma Vadehra, read her recent piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on reimagining think tanks and follow her on Twitter @emmavadehra

With the Senate announcing they're heading into recess without passing the Build Back Better Act, we figured why not get out of the news cycle for Off-Kilter's last episode of the year and instead have a far more good-news conversation that Rebecca Vallas has been meaning to have for a while with her dear friend Rebecca Cokley about what she's got underway at the Ford Foundation, in her history-making new role as the first program officer to head a U.S. disability rights portfolio at a major U.S. foundation. For more: Learn more about Rebecca Cokley's newly launched disability rights program at the Ford Foundation Here's more on what the Rebeccas mean when they say "disability is a cause and consequence of poverty" Follow Rebecca Cokley on Twitter: @rebeccacokley

With the clock ticking on Democrats' "Build Back Better" legislation, which passed the House last month and now awaits Senate action, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has cited yet another in a never ending string of "new" reasons for withholding his support for the bill. This time? Inflation. On Tuesday, during a Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit, Mr. Manchin said of inflation to a roomful of corporate CEOs: "The unknown we're facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we're looking at and we've got to make sure we get this right." Sen. Manchin, of course, isn't alone in singing that tune, with Republicans already testing out their attack ads for the 2022 midterms and conservative media outlets blanketing their airwaves for months with baseless claims that rising inflation is due to pandemic recovery spending. So, to help separate fact from fiction in the inflation debate, Rebecca sat down with two of the leading progressive economic voices working to tell the story about what's really going on with inflation—and the policies we need to bring down prices, address our failing supply chains, and more. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, which is dedicated to advancing a coherent, persuasive progressive economic worldview and narrative. And Matt Stoller is the research director of the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), which fights to realize economic liberty for all, in support of a secure, inclusive democratic society. He's also the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly and Democracy, and writes the newsletter BIG, which focuses on the history and politics of monopoly power. For more on all this: Here's a fact sheet from Groundwork and AELP on how unchecked corporate power is driving rising prices—plus a handy roundup of recent press that's gotten it right on inflation For lots more from Matt, check out his newsletter BIG—including his recent article on how the FTC is finally taking on big business by cracking down on shortage profiteering Check out this Bloomberg article breaking down how corporate CEOs have spun the narrative on inflation And here's a helpful explainer from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities unpacking why Build Back Better is "unlikely to have any noticeable effect on inflation"

​​With the biggest threat to abortion rights in fifty years reaching the Supreme Court this week, in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—which centers around Mississippi's fifteen-week abortion ban—Rebecca sat down with two of The Century Foundation's top experts on reproductive rights and health: Dr. Jamila Taylor, director of health care reform and senior fellow at TCF, and Anna Bernstein, a health care policy fellow at TCF. They unpack what overturning Roe v. Wade would mean for women and people who can become pregnant in the United States; why reproductive justice is critical to economic justice and gender equality; and why low-income folks and people of color are likely to face the most devastating consequences. But first, Rebecca sat down with Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox, author of The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America, and Off-Kilter's resident longtime court-watcher, for a recap of this week's oral argument in Dobbs. For more: Read SCOTUSblog's explainer on what's at stake in Dobbs: "Roe v. Wade hangs in balance as reshaped court prepares to hear biggest abortion case in decades" Check out "5 Things to Know about Abortion Access as Supreme Court Hears Dobbs v. JWHO" by Jamila Taylor and Anna Bernstein And here's a powerful read from the National Women's Law Center's Fatima Goss Graves for SCOTUSblog: "Our equality and liberty are on the line"

Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed President Biden's Build Back Better economic recovery legislation—which includes historic and long-overdue investments in child care, pre-K, home care for people with disabilities and seniors, an extension of the monthly expanded child tax credit, and more. But Democratic leaders caution that the bill still faces immense hurdles in the Senate: namely, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Senator Manchin—who has been wielding outsized influence throughout the entirety of the year's Build Back Better debate by withholding the critical fiftieth vote Democrats need for the package to pass in the Senate—told CNN as recently as Thursday of this week that he still has not decided whether to even support a vote to proceed with the legislation, a critical first step for the Senate to take up the measure once the House passes the bill. So for this week's Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with two of the West Virginia moms and organizers behind a movement they call Rattle the Windows for a look at what West Virginia families really want from their leaders in Washington in this critical moment—as something of an open letter to Senator Manchin. Amy Jo Hutchison is a West Virginia-born-and-raised grassroots organizer for economic justice who organizes poor families, primarily single moms. She's also the founder of Rattle the Windows. And Megan Hullinger is a West Virginia mother of four, former AmeriCorps member, and community outreach specialist who describes herself as an "accidental activist" after getting involved with Rattle the Windows. Learn more about and get involved with Rattle the Windows at: RattleTheWindows.com Facebook.com/rattlethewindows Twitter: @RattleWindows

Some twenty months into the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates suggest that between 3 million and 10 million Americans may have "long COVID," which can bring long-term and, in some cases, debilitating symptoms ranging from chronic pain and fatigue to brain fog, respiratory problems, organ damage, and more. While experts may still be fuzzy on the exact number of so-called COVID "long-haulers," two things are clear: this population represents the largest influx of new entrants to the U.S. disability community in modern history, and their ranks continue to grow by the day. But is America's public policy infrastructure prepared to handle the coming tidal wave? And how was it faring for the 1 in 4 Americans already living with disabilities before the pandemic? Following last week's deep dive into America's house-of-cards child care system, for this week's Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with three dear friends and leaders from the disability community for a look at America's frayed caring economy from the disability perspective; the policies we need to ensure COVID long-haulers aren't left out in the cold; and how Democrats' Build Back Better legislation could begin to make transformational change. This week's guests include: Matthew Cortland, senior fellow at Data for Progress and cofounder of the #DemolishDisabledPoverty campaign; Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Elena Hung, co-founder and executive director of Little Lobbyists, a family-led group advocating for children with complex medical needs and disabilities (and Xiomara's mom). For more on all this: Learn more about the home and community-based services (HCBS) provisions in Build Back Better, via NBC News. Here's a good overview of long-haulers' challenges accessing disability benefits, via the New York Times. Read more from Matthew and Data for Progress: "The Reconciliation Bill is a Disability Justice Issue;" "The safety net program Congress forgot" Read more from Kathleen and CBPP: "After Years of Underinvestment, It's Time to Rebuild the Social Security Administration;" "After Decades of Neglect, It's Time to Rebuild SSI" Learn more about Elena's work and get involved with the Little Lobbyists. Follow #CareCantWait for real-time updates on home and community-based services (HCBS) in the Build Back Better legislation.

A major contributor to poverty among U.S. families with children today is the incredibly high cost of child care. Statistics abound, underscoring how unaffordable child care in America has become, left to the whims of the private market: In more than half of states, care for an infant in a child care center costs more than in-state college tuition. For low-income families, child care expenses for children under five often amount to 35 percent of their income. A recent New York Times article by Jason DeParle on the subject was aptly titled, "When childcare costs twice as much as the mortgage." Meanwhile, America's broken child care system has a become a major driver of poverty and racial inequality on the worker side of the equation, as well, with many (disproportionately Black and Brown) child care teachers getting paid as if they were fast food workers despite the fact that their work is complex and specialized, not to mention incredibly valuable. Making a bad situation far, far worse—as with so many pre-existing gaps in America's public policy infrastructure—the COVID-19 pandemic has only thrown gasoline on the fire, laying bare and deepening the inequities of a house-of-cards child care system reliant on families shelling out unaffordable amounts, teachers being paid poverty wages, and communities across the United States lacking a sufficient child care workforce to meet demand. Indeed, nationally, the early education workforce has declined by roughly 12 percent compared with prepandemic levels. These are among the longstanding policy problems Democrats are seeking to solve with the Build Back Better legislation moving through the House of Representatives this week—which includes an historic $400 billion investment in America's child care and pre-K system that seeks to finally make high-quality child care and early learning affordable and accessible for all families with young children, while creating good jobs and boosting wages for a woefully undervalued and underpaid workforce largely made up of women of color. To unpack what's in Democrats' child care and pre-K plan as the Build Back Better bill inches closer to passage, Rebecca sat down with two of the advocates behind the push to put child care and early learning within reach for all families: Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and director of women's economic justice at The Century Foundation and board member of the Vote Mama Action Fund; and Amanda Perez, senior advocacy manager at Zero to Three, which works to ensure all babies and toddlers get a strong start in life. For more: "The Case for Child Care and Early Learning for All: Economic Prosperity" by Julie Kashen "The Case for Child Care and Early Learning for All: Healthy Child Development and School Readiness" by Julie Kashen and Halley Potter "Biden's Child Care and Early Learning Proposal Could Serve 8.27 Million More Children" by Julie Kashen, Melissa Boteach, Stephanie Schmit, and Jessica Milli "The Build Back Better Plan Would Reduce the Motherhood Penalty" by Julie Kashen and Jessica Milli "Care Matters: A Report Card on Care Policies in the States" by Julie Kashen and Amanda Novello "When Child Care Costs More than the Mortgage" by Jason DeParle (New York Times) To get involved with the ongoing push for comprehensive child care and early learning reform as part of Build Back Better, visit thinkbabies.org and follow #CareCantWait

In recent months, a wave of champions of the "tough on crime" approach to criminal justice have been trumpeting a spike in U.S. homicides in 2020 as fodder for rolling back critical reforms to America's broken criminal legal system, and for scaremongering about the so-called defund the police movement. Meanwhile, criminal justice experts caution that efforts to blame the uptick in homicides on criminal justice reform aren't just unfounded but are in fact directly contradicted by the very crime data the tough-on-crimers are trying to spin. As Fordham Law professor John Pfaff has put it: the rise in homicides last year actually "by and large took place on the status quo's watch." So, for a look at what we know and what we don't know about the 2020 crime data—and the shifting politics around criminal justice reform—Rebecca sat down with Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center and Josh Hoe, the policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan and the host of the Decarceration Nation podcast. For more: Here's an incredibly data-rich rebuttal to tough-on-crimers' efforts to pin the uptick in homicides on reform—from John Pfaff in The New Republic Read more on the Office of Legal Counsel memo that will send thousands of people back to prison if Biden doesn't withdraw it Dig into Ames's analysis on how criminal justice involvement deepens inequality Here's more on the momentum for "clean slate" automatic record-clearing programs in the states—and a new bill introduced in Congress to create a federal grant program to help states cover the costs of implementing them

The Federal Reserve, better known as "the Fed," has been in the spotlight quite a bit in recent weeks, following an apparent insider trading scandal embroiling several high-level officials at America's central bank. And in the latest shoe to drop, disclosure documents made public in recent weeks reveal that the scandal of stock trading during the pandemic extends all the way up to the chair of the Fed himself—Jerome "Jay" Powell. With Chairman Powell's term ending in January 2022, a growing chorus of progressives, climate activists, advocates for racial justice, and economic heavyweights from Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren are calling on President Biden not to renominate Powell and instead to use what could be as many as four open seats on the Fed's all-white, seven-member governing board to reshape the agency into an institutional force for racial, gender, climate, and economic progress—and bring some long-overdue racial and gender diversity to a critical institution that's been run nearly exclusively by white men. "Is the Biden administration going to fulfill what is at the heart of its agenda? Then it should not be Powell," said Stiglitz in an interview with Reuters last month. The Biden White House has not yet announced what they plan to do when Powell's term ends, though a decision is expected any day now. With an historic debate brewing over what to do with the Federal Reserve, we at Off-Kilter thought it would be useful to pull together something of an explainer on the nation's central bank, how it operates, and why it's so important to economic and antipoverty policy—and to go inside the push to remake the Fed in the wake of the wave of recent scandals. So Rebecca sat down with Saqib Bhatti, co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, better known as ACRE—and one of the groups leading the charge—to break it all down. For lots more on this: Read more from Saqib and his ACRE colleagues Brittany Alston and Vasudha Desikan in "President Biden Must Appoint a New Fed Chair Who Is Serious About Racial Equity." Read Vasudha Desikan and Liberation in a Generation's Solana Rice in Ms. Magazine: "We Need More Women in Leadership at the Fed: Personnel Is Policy." Here's more on the pandemic stock trading scandals, from The American Prospect's Bob Kuttner. Here's why Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz says Powell should go. And here's Senator Elizabeth Warren's speech making the case for new leadership at the Fed.

Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau put out its annual snapshot of income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States—which serves as something of an annual report card on the economic well-being of America's families. One of the most significant takeaways was the effectiveness of government relief at keeping people above the federal poverty line last year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 53 million more Americans would have been officially poor in 2020 if not for a critical assembly of pandemic-related economic relief measures, from stimulus payments to boosts in jobless benefits, food assistance, medical coverage, and more. But while it's always good news to see the enactment of public policies that measurably move the needle on poverty and hardship, a growing number of antipoverty researchers and advocates are raising a fundamental question: What good are these kinds of data if the way the United States defines poverty doesn't bear any resemblance to the cost of a basic standard of living in the nation today? Likewise, when policymakers and elected officials commit to cutting poverty—or better, ending poverty—what are our leaders accountable to if the nation's official definition of poverty amounts to just a fraction of what human dignity and economic stability require? So, to pull back the curtain on how the United States measures poverty, the problems with the official poverty measure, and the push to reform U.S. poverty measurement, Rebecca sat down with three colleagues and friends who know a ton about measuring poverty to talk about how we can do better and why it matters so much: Shawn Fremstad, senior fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, CEPR, and author of a recent report for TCF, "The Defining Down of Economic Deprivation: Why We Need to Reset the Poverty Line"; Shailly Gupta Barnes, policy director for the Poor People's Campaign and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, which is committed to building a movement to end poverty, led by the poor; and David Brady, professor, School of Public Policy, University of California-Riverside and a research professor at the WZB Berlin Sociadmvl Science Center—and author of another report in the same TCF series, "American Poverty Should Be Measured Relative to the Prevailing Standards of Our Time." For more on all this: Dig into Shawn's report on why the U.S. poverty line is too damn low: "The Defining Down of Economic Deprivation: Why We Need to Reset the Poverty Line." For more on the case for shifting to a relative poverty measure, check out David's report: "American Poverty Should Be Measured Relative to the Prevailing Standards of Our Time." And here's lots more about the Poor People's Campaign's demands and why they're challenging the OPM.

As the debate over President Biden's sweeping "build back better" agenda continues in Washington, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin hasn't been shy about laying out his demands, as Democratic leadership in the House and Senate and the White House bend over backwards to garner his and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema's votes for reconciliation bill that's been moving through Congress. High on Senator Manchin's list: adding so-called work requirements to the newly expanded Child Tax Credit. In a September appearance on CNN's State of the Union, he derided parents who don't work outside the home, asking: "Don't you think, if we're going to help the children, that people should make some effort?" Asked what he thought of the West Virginia Senator's remarks, Child Tax Credit champion and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown responded as aptly as he did succinctly, declaring: "I think raising children is work." Of course, so-called "work requirements"—the policy of using survival benefits as a tool to compel paid work outside the home—is not a new idea. Indeed they were the centerpiece of Donald Trump's agenda to dismantle the safety net for the better part of his one-term presidency. But the notion of so-called work requirements dates back a lot farther than Trump—and even a lot farther back than Ronald Reagan's racist myth of the welfare queen. Indeed, as a recent report from the Center of the Study of Social Policy documents in painstaking depth, the long and sordid history of work requirements in U.S. income policy has roots that trace back centuries to the slave trade. So given the Senator from West Virginia's continued interest in keeping work requirements alive, instead of turning the page on this kind of policymaking-by-dog-whistle and ensuring that all families have what they need to thrive—we at Off-Kilter thought it might be helpful to take a deep dive into the racist roots of work requirements. Joining Rebecca for this week's show: Aisha Nyandoro, chief executive officer of Springboard to Opportunity and architect of the Magnolia Mother's Trust; Jeremie Greer, cofounder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation; and Elisa Minoff, senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the author of "The Racist Roots of Work Requirements." Dig into Elisa Minoff's full report, "The Racist Roots of Work Requirements" For more on the history and consequences of the 1996 welfare law, check out "TANF Policies Reflect Racist Legacy of Cash Assistance" by Ife Floyd Read "Work Requirements Would Undermine the CTC's Impacts on Racial and Economic Justice" by the Children's Defense Fund's Emma Mehrabi

This week in Washington has featured no shortage of drama, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saddling Democrats with the threat of both a government shutdown and default on the nation's debts by withholding Republican votes for keeping the government funded or raising the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, despite months of forward momentum in Congress to craft sweeping "build back better" legislation encompassing much of President Biden's American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan—austerity politics (or more precisely Sinemanchin intransigence—to borrow a timely term from The American Prospect's David Dayen) has threatened to derail the president's economic agenda. Thankfully, late on Thursday night, House progressives came to the rescue, making good on their promise to withhold their votes for the first part of "build back better"—the bipartisan infrastructure package—until there's a commitment from the Senate (well, really Senators Manchin and Sinema) on a clear path forward for the second part of the package, the so-called reconciliation bill. That reconciliation bill of course is the piece of legislation that includes the bulk of Democrats' priorities, from paid family and medical leave to child care to home and community based services, climate, and much, much more. The theory of the case for House progressives? Hold the line to ensure the reconciliation package—the centerpiece of the president's economic agenda—isn't hung out to dry. To pull back the curtain on what's been going on in Washington this week, the politics driving the drama around build back better, government shutdown, potential default, and more—and a deep dive on why it's so important that Congress pass both parts of the president's economic agenda—Rebecca sat down with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and Data for Progress. Learn more about the Groundwork Collaborative's work at GroundworkCollaborative.org Register for "Econ Con," Groundwork's annual conference, at EconCon.com

For all the talk about what's in "Build Back Better" recovery legislation that Democrats are trying to move through Congress, one thing that's not currently in the bill, in what many workers' advocates say is a glaring omission, is anything to do with Unemployment Insurance—which was badly in need of a refresh long before the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that when workers lose a job, they have the protection they need. In fact, workers' advocates and progressive think tanks have been ringing the alarm bells for years about how few jobless workers were protected by our UI system. The pre-pandemic share of jobless workers actually helped by UI in their time of need? Just 1 in 4, a record low. One of the most important lessons from the pandemic is without question the structural failings in America's Unemployment Insurance system—gaps that were in many cases briefly filled by temporary expansions of jobless protections that have since been allowed to expire, leaving millions of still-jobless workers with less than they need to get by, or worse, nothing at all to keep them and their families afloat. For a look at the state of Unemployment Insurance now that recent expansions have been allowed to run out, what jobless workers are facing right now, and the long-needed UI fixes that workers' advocates are hoping might still be included in upcoming recovery legislation… for this week's Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with a panel of UI experts and advocates who have been leading the charge: Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project; Andy Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation; and Stephanie Freed, a freelancer turned UI organizer who founded and serves as the executive director of Extend PUA, which has organized tens of thousands of jobless workers in the fight to extend federal UI expansions during the pandemic. Read Rebecca Dixon's statement on why UI reforms must be included in "Build Back Better" recovery legislation Read more from Andy Stettner on the 7.5 million jobless workers who went over a UI benefits cliff on Labor Day Learn more about the story behind ExtendPUA.org—and how Stephanie Freed went from being a freelancer to organizing tens of thousands of jobless workers Jobless benefits protected 4.7 million people from poverty in 2020, according to NELP analysis Here's a deep dive into how workers' advocates say UI needs to be fixed (by NELP and allies) And here's an op-ed Rebecca (Vallas) wrote early in the pandemic about Florida's broken-by-design UI system

This week, millions of families across the United States are receiving their third monthly child allowance payment as implementation of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act earlier this year continues. Meanwhile, as "Build Back Better" legislation continues to come together in Congress, with key House committees marking up their portions of the legislation this week, the future of America's first guaranteed minimum income for families with children—a policy estimated to cut child poverty in half in the United States—is at the heart of the ongoing debate. While not the permanent extension community advocates are calling for, the version of the bill currently moving through the House would extend the life of America's first-ever child allowance by four years to give the expanded CTC time to take root—while making at least one key feature permanent: the credit's so-called "full refundability" (read: full availability for the lowest-income families). So, for this week's Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with two dear friends and colleagues who have been leading the way on the fight to extend the child allowance beyond its first year—while also working to ensure the program's full implementation: Indi Dutta Gupta, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, and Dorian Warren, co-president of Community Change and one of the co-chairs of the Economic Security Project. But first: Rebecca talks with Representative Rosa DeLauro—the Connecticut Congresswoman who's spent the past nearly two decades in Congress leading the crusade for what she calls a "Social Security for children"—for a look at how we got here and why she set out to expand the CTC all the way back in 2003, long before the CTC became cool. Find out how much your family is eligible for with Community Change's Child Tax Credit calculator: https://communitychange.org/ctccalculator/. Here's the link to the CTC easy sign-up tool for non-filers: https://www.whitehouse.gov/child-tax-credit/sign-up/. And for lots more on the expanded CTC, check out the Economic Security Project's handy resource page: https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/emergencymoney/resources/.

Thirty-one years ago, the fabric of America's legal and policy landscape changed dramatically for people with disabilities in the United States when the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, on July 26, 1990. But, as far we've come these past thirty-plus years, we still have incredibly far to go. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, disabled people in the United States—who make up one in four Americans—were roughly twice as likely to live in poverty and two to three times more likely to be unemployed. Now, as federal policymakers work to "build back better," the United States has the opportunity to take another set of historic steps towards achieving the ADA's promise of equal opportunity, community integration, and participation in American life for people with disabilities—a promise that remains as-yet unfulfilled. For this special relaunch episode of Off-Kilter, Rebecca talks with four of the disabled women leaders who've been making history on the front-lines of the ongoing fight for disability economic justice: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-7); Judy Heumann, whose historic activism jumpstarted the disability rights movement over forty years ago; Rebecca Cokley, a lifelong disability advocate and program officer at the Ford Foundation, where she heads the first U.S. disability rights program at any major foundation in the country; and Mia Ives-Rublee, the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. To take action on home and community-based services and SSI: Text SIGN PXPBNX to 50409 Check out Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution for more on Judy Heumann's activism and the origins of the disability rights movement at cripcamp.com

This week, Off-Kilter's bringing you a conversation Rebecca moderated at The Century Foundation earlier this week, on the historic opportunity to make long overdue improvements to Supplemental Security Income as part of #BuildBackBetter—featuring Sen Sherrod Brown, Rep. Raul Grijalva, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, as well as a panel of disability and seniors' advocates. Guests: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH); Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY); Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-CA); Nancy Altman, president, Social Security Works; Matthew Cortland, chronically ill, disabled lawyer and senior fellow, Data for Progress; Kristen Dama, managing attorney for SSI, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia; Tracey Gronniger, directing attorney, economic security, Justice in Aging; Mia Ives-Rublee, director, Center for American Progress Disability Justice Initiative; and Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Show notes: Event video: https://tcf.org/content/event/strengthening-ssi-must-part-building-back-better/ Polling: bit.ly/SSIpolling Follow #DemolishDisabledPoverty More on SSI: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/550027-the-safety-net-program-congress-forgot?rl=1

Nearly 40 million people in the U.S. live below the official poverty line—which in 2021 is just $26,000 for a family of four. But while poverty is all too often portrayed as a personal failure, it's actually the result of bad public policy choices. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped in poverty—not because we as a nation lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to. This is the premise of a new book called Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, which looks at many of the policy choices conspiring to keep people poor and offers a roadmap of solutions that would eradicate poverty in the U.S. Rebecca sat down with the authors, Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, for this week's pod. Get the book: https://benbellabooks.com/shop/brokeinamerica/ National Diaper Bank Network: nationaldiaperbanknetwork.org Alliance for Period Supplies: https://www.allianceforperiodsupplies.org/

The April jobs data released by the Department of Labor last week spurred an avalanche of hysteria and conservative hand-wringing about supposedly widespread labor shortages, with many on the right pointing to pandemic jobless benefits as the bogeyman. In a particularly troubling move, on Wednesday of this week, 12 Republican governors announced they'd be ending access to pandemic unemployment benefits in their states. To help unpack the state of the labor market as the COVID-19 economic recovery continues—and the role of pandemic unemployment insurance in the recovery—Rebecca sat down with Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, for a reality check on the jobs data and what they really tell us about the kind of policies we need at this point in the ongoing recovery. More from Heidi on all this: https://twitter.com/hshierholz/status/1392272908618145796 https://www.epi.org/blog/restaurant-labor-shortages-show-little-sign-of-going-economywide-policymakers-must-not-rein-in-stimulus-or-unemployment-benefits/

As leaders at all levels of government work to "build back better"—and to address the nation's legacy of racial injustice and persistent racial inequality—removing barriers to employment for workers with records is more urgently needed than ever amid the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and downturn, to ensure not only a full but an equitable recovery that does not leave tens of millions of system-impacted individuals and families behind. As Off-Kilter closes out our #SecondChanceMonth series for the month of April, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca had earlier this week with a group of state leaders who've been advancing transformative "clean slate" and fair chance licensing reforms in recent years: Michigan Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II Sharon Dietrich, litigation director at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia Representative Jordan Harris, Minority Whip of the Pennsylvania Assembly Josh Hoe, policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan Whitley Carpenter, criminal justice staff attorney at Forward Justice in North Carolina Jael Myrick, interim director of the Clean Slate practice at the East Bay Community Law Center in California Video: https://www.americanprogress.org/events/2021/04/20/498350/growing-momentum-clean-slate-fair-chance-licensing-states/

"The War on Drugs has disproportionately harmed communities of color. People have lost jobs, education, housing, their liberty, their families, and their lives to this War. Now they deserve equity, justice, and repair: ownership of cannabis businesses, full and automatic expungement, and community reinvestment of tax revenue and corporate philanthropy." This is the vision of a marijuana justice organization called Cage Free Cannabis and its sister organization Cage Free Repair. As Off-Kilter continues #SecondChanceMonth, to mark 4/20, Rebecca sat down with Adam Vine, cofounder of Cage Free Cannabis & Cage Free Repair, and Felicia Carbajal, interim director of programming with National Expungement Week and a member of Cage Free Cannabis's advisory board. Learn more about Cage Free's work at CageFreeCannabis.com NationalExpungementWeek.org Follow their work: @CageFreeRepair @ExpungementWeek

Off-Kilter continues our Second Chance Month series with two of the directly impacted leaders driving transformational change on second chance policies and rights restoration in the states, who also happen to be a powerhouse husband-wife team: Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, best known for the visionary Amendment 4 campaign that restored the right to vote for 1.4 million people with felony convictions in Florida—and Sheena Meade, one of the leaders in the Amendment 4 campaign and now the managing director of the Clean Slate Initiative, a bipartisan national movement to expand record-clearing and make it automatic to put second chances within reach for everyone, not just folks who can afford a lawyer. Learn more about FRRC's work: floridarrc.com Learn more about the Clean Slate Initiative: cleanslateinitiative.org

In recognition that a criminal record shouldn't be a life sentence to poverty, there's been a whirlwind of momentum in the states in recent years to expand eligibility for criminal record-clearing—with over half the states expanding laws for expungement, sealing, and other tools for enabling people to wipe their records clean so they can have a fair shot at jobs, housing, education and more. There's just one tiny problem. The expungement systems that states have been building are leaving behind the vast majority of the folks they're supposed to help. To kick off a series of conversations with leaders in the field of reentry and criminal records reform for April as Second Chance Month, Rebecca talks to two of the leading academics behind a critical new line of research on what's now being called the "second chance gap"—JJ Prescott, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Paper Prisons Project—whose research on who's getting left behind by hard to navigate expungement systems has been fueling state momentum to make criminal record-clearing automatic for everyone who's eligible, instead of just the lucky few who can afford to hire a lawyer.

Poverty researchers estimate that the income-boosting provisions in the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law last month, will cut child poverty in half, and that overall poverty in the U.S. will fall by one-third over the next year. But should we expect those promised reductions in poverty to transfer from spreadsheets to real life? A lot of the answer to this question hinges on whether federal policymakers take the steps needed to ensure we don't just make folks ELIGIBLE for historic income security protections like the new child allowance, the EITC expansion for workers not caring for kids in their own homes, and $1,400 relief checks—but whether we make sure low-income individuals and families can actually ACCESS these benefits. So for this week's pod, Rebecca sat down with two of the advocates working on the access part of the equation: Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, who served from 2001 until 2019 as the IRS's internal watchdog known as the national taxpayer advocate; and Jen Burdick, a lawyer in the public benefits unit at Community Legal Services.

Amid a global pandemic that has killed people of color at dramatically higher rates, and forced so-called 'essential workers'--again, disproportionately people of color--to risk illness and death to keep the a struggling economy churning... the outlook for predominantly white corporate monopolists has never been brighter. According to a new report from Liberation in a Generation, from March - November 2020, 644 U.S. billionaires saw their combined wealth increase by $931 billion (from $2.95 trillion to $3.88 trillion)--a jump of 31.6 percent. All the while, U.S. poverty worsened, and the unemployment rate was hovering at roughly double its pre-pandemic low. Rebecca talks to one of the report's authors, Jeremie Greer--who's also one of Liberation in a Generation's co-founders and co-executive directors--about the case for centering grassroots leaders of color within the anti-monopoly movement, and reimagining the antitrust movement's work through a racial justice lens.

Results are in from the first year of a universal basic income experiment in Stockton, California, which gave randomly selected residents $500 per month with no strings attached—and they're striking. The income boost improved recipients' employment prospects, economic stability, physical and mental health, overall well-being, and more, according to an independent study released last week. The pilot's striking results only add to a growing body of evidence making the case for guaranteed income policies that provide recipients unconditional cash. They come on the heels of another groundbreaking guaranteed income experiment called the Magnolia Mother's Trust, which provides low-income African-American mothers living in affordable housing with $1000 in unrestricted cash per month, for 12 months straight. The mounting evidence in support of guaranteed income as a strategy for dramatically increasing economic security comes as the U.S. begins a guaranteed income experiment of its own, in the form of a 1-year child allowance authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act — which we've talked lots about on this show in recent weeks. All of which seems to beg the question… is the page finally turning when it comes to U.S. income security policy? And, even if it took a global pandemic, might now finally be the moment when we finally file the 1990s-era work requirements debate in the history books in favor of a meaningful debate around guaranteed income? To dig into the results from the Stockton and Magnolia Mother's Trust pilots — and talk about what it would take to leave the 1990s in the rearview mirror where they belong, Rebecca sat down with Dorian Warren, co-president of Community Change, co-host of the System Check podcast, and one of the co-chairs of the Economic Security Project; and Aisha Nyandoro, Chief Executive Officer of Springboard To Opportunities, which takes a "radically resident-driven" approach to supporting residents of affordable housing, and is home to the Magnolia Mother's Trust guaranteed income initiative. Show notes: * Learn more about the Stockton universal basic income experiment, and dig into the year 1 results * Learn more on the Magnolia Mother's Trust guaranteed income initiative

With President Joe Biden's signature, the American Rescue Plan Act became law on Thursday of this week. This wide-ranging package of relief measures—which despite garnering widespread bipartisan support among voters, passed both chambers of Congress without a single Republican vote—authorizes a set of landmark expansions of existing income security policies and programs—including an historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit, that for the next year at least, turns the CTC into a fully available child allowance that's estimated to cut child poverty in half by establishing a guaranteed minimum income for families with children. To break down the major income-boosting elements in the American Rescue Plan Act, now that help is on the way—and for a look at what families can expect to receive in the way of economic relief—Rebecca sat down with Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former advisor to President Obama for tax policy.

For this week's pod, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca moderated at this week's National Academy of Social Insurance conference on "Pathways to Economic Security" about how America's social insurance and public assistance system is falling short for disabled people and care workers who provide home and community based care services; the human consequences of how hard we've made it to access Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI); outdated program rules that trap disabled people in poverty and keep them from marrying; the "care crisis" that's resulted from underpaying and undervaluing direct care providers; and more. Guests: Matthew Cortland, policy director of Be A Hero and a former SSI recipient; Bethany Lilly, director of income policy at The Arc of the United States; and Beverly Yu, state government affairs director of United Domestic Workers/AFSCME Local 3930.

Earlier this week, in a hearing on the state of America's economic recovery, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified before the Senate Banking Committee that the employment rate for low-wage workers—those hit hardest by the pandemic—is "probably above 20 percent." With President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package on the move in Congress, and with the first glimmers of what a $3 to $4 trillion infrastructure and jobs package might look like on the horizon to follow, Rebecca talks to Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former economist at the Federal Reserve, about the economic debate over Biden's COVID relief package, why we shouldn't be worried about inflation right now, what concerns about "runaway inflation" have to do with the toxic culture of economics, and more.

Rebecca joined Greg Duncan and Sam Hammond for a panel discussion about the prospects for a U.S. child allowance -- and why it's needed now more than ever -- hosted by the American Constitution Society's New York Chapter. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes. show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/the-case-for-a-u-s-child-allowance-1bb04067c3d3

Rebecca talks to Brookings Fellow Lauren Bauer about the steps the Biden administration is taking to increase too-low federal food assistance benefits, starting with updating an archaic policy called the "Thrifty Food Plan" -- and the larger agenda to expand SNAP. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/how-biden-is-expanding-snap-c9c64b8013ce

Rebecca sits down with Be A Hero's Matthew Cortland for a look at the challenges with the vaccine rollout so far, and what it would take to get to the vaccination rates we need in the U.S. and globally to bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/when-will-the-pandemic-end-45d6d69250c2

Rebecca sits down with the Economic Policy Institute's David Cooper for a deep dive into Democrats' Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025. show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/inside-the-raise-the-wage-act-with-epis-david-cooper-2d6ee58ab1f6

Rebecca talks to Vox's Ian Millhiser about the ongoing debate over what to do with the filibuster -- and why it isn't just standing in the way of much of the Biden-Harris agenda, but key democracy reform measures the GOP wants to stop at all costs. show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/voxs-ian-millhiser-on-why-we-need-to-nuke-the-filibuster-to-save-democracy-c6d432e5fadb

Vox's Dylan Matthews breaks down everything you need to know about "budget reconciliation" -- a tool that if used strategically in the Senate could mean Dems' fragile majority could be enough to create a pathway for powerful policy change at a critical time. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/how-president-elect-biden-could-cut-poverty-in-half-without-the-gop-f647a0452e0e

Sherrod Brown on the COVID relief workers & families urgently need Mini-pod: With poverty on the rise, Rebecca talks to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown about the debate in Congress around COVID economic relief -- and the stakes for the tens of millions of workers and families struggling to stay afloat right now. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/sherrod-brown-on-the-covid-relief-workers-families-urgently-need-c7df53e6dcae

Rebecca talks to the Brennan Center's Ames Grawert & Terry Ann Craigie about their research finding that people who spend time in prison see their lifetime earnings cut in half, further entrenching poverty and the racial divide -- the annual earnings loss by Americans with criminal conviction records now totals $372 billion per year. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/how-mass-incarceration-became-a-poverty-trap-6211e6712380

Rebecca talks to Dorian Warren & Angela Hanks about the work ahead now that the Biden/Harris transition team has been formed; some of the most exciting new members of Congress to watch; why Jan 5 matters so much; how Democrats can avoid falling into another austerity trap, and more. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/transition-talk-with-dorian-warren-angela-hanks-e986b94f43f7

Rebecca talks to Daniel Nichanian, founder of The Appeal's Political Report, for a deep dive into some of the most important down-ballot stories from the 2020 election -- from ballot measures to state and local races that will shape policymaking in 2021 and beyond. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/down-ballot-deep-dive-with-daniel-nichanian-c000fcf09b04

Rebecca talks to disability lawyer Matthew Cortland about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the disability community so far, the ageism and ableism underpinning claims that "we need to learn to live with it," and more. Show notes: https://offkiltershow.medium.com/the-purge-2020-edition-32c38a059666