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This statement can be attributed to Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) 

Washington, D.C. February 20, 2025 – Last night, the Trump Administration issued another baseless and misguided executive order on immigration. This latest order is yet another attempt to scare immigrant families from accessing the essential services they need to thrive. 

The reality, which the order itself acknowledges, is that undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for the vast majority of federal programs. States and localities receive federal funding for essential services that benefit all residents, regardless of their immigration status. These programs support our economy and promote public health and healthy child development. Cutting funding will hurt everyone who benefits from those programs and create a chilling effect, especially for U.S. citizen children living in a mixed-status family.

This executive order is just the administration’s latest effort to try to perpetuate misinformation about immigrant families and bully states into implementing its mass deportation agenda, which threatens to upend state and local budgets. The need for families to provide for their children doesn’t go away just because the Trump Administration and Elon Musk say so. If the federal government withholds funding, states and localities will need to determine how to support their residents.

CLASP remains committed to supporting immigrants and their families, and we call on our anti-poverty partners to push back against the Trump Administration’s continued efforts to scapegoat and harm our immigrant community.

By Teon Hayes

Budget numbers can feel distant, as if they’re just abstract figures debated by those with privilege in the halls of power. But behind those numbers are people, families, and entire communities that will bear the brunt of decisions made in Washington. The House Budget Resolution proposes sweeping cuts that would affect the amount of groceries people can buy, the education of our children, and access to life-saving health care. The real-world consequences of these reductions will be devastating for millions of Americans.

Food on the Table: The Impact of Agriculture Cuts

For many families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the difference between having food on the table and going hungry. The proposed $230 billion in cuts to agriculture would likely mean deep reductions to SNAP, hitting families with low incomes, seniors, and children the hardest. These cuts could lead to stricter eligibility requirements, reduced benefits, and rising rates of food insecurity.

For example, a single mother in North Carolina has a full-time job but still struggles to afford groceries for her children. SNAP helps her bridge the gap, ensuring that her family has nutritious meals. If these proposed cuts go through, her family could see their food assistance slashed or eliminated, forcing this mother to make impossible choices between paying rent and feeding her kids.

The Cost of Cutting Education: A Blow to Future Generations

Education is often hailed as the great equalizer but slashing at least $330 billion from education funding threatens to widen disparities and limit opportunities for the next generation of leaders. This isn’t just about numbers; it’s about lost opportunities for millions of students.

Imagine a high school senior in rural Pennsylvania who dreams of becoming a nurse. He plans to attend a public college, relying on federal grants and affordable tuition to make his education possible. However, if these cuts become reality, the public college he wants to attend may be forced to raise tuition, reduce financial aid, and cut essential student support services. A reduction in education funding could mean fewer grants and higher student loan burdens, discouraging this student from pursuing the education he needs to thrive in the workforce. As a result, the cycle of poverty continues.

Decrease in Public Higher Education Appropriations per Full-Time Equivalent Student by State, FYI 2001-2023

Source: “Threats to the Department of Education: Private Equity Replacing Public Funding”

The Human Cost of Health Care Cuts

The proposed draft directs the committee that handles Medicaid to cut at least $880 billion, which will likely affect Medicaid most directly. This would have catastrophic consequences for millions of individuals who rely on the program for health care. These cuts could result in reducing coverage for essential services, increasing the number of uninsured Americans, and possibly closing hospitals and nursing homes.

Picture a diabetic patient unable to afford insulin, a child missing critical treatments, or a senior losing access to home health care. Stripping away Medicaid funding doesn’t just take away health care. It endangers lives.

Beyond the Numbers: Why This Matters

These proposed cuts represent real consequences for real people. While policymakers may see this as a fiscal decision, for millions of Americans, it’s a question of survival.

As these discussions unfold, we must ask: who benefits from these cuts, and who suffers? A budget is a moral document that reflects our priorities as a nation. What kind of country do we want to be: one that invests in its people, or one that turns its back on them?

This budget doesn’t just reduce spending; it threatens the stability of millions of families. Single mothers, high school seniors, people with chronic illnesses – they are just some of the real people who will feel the impact of these choices. The United States should be investing in policies that lift people up—ensuring that children have enough to eat, that schools have the resources to educate, and that communities have the support they need to be healthy and thrive.

This brief, part of the TANF 101 series, explains the fixed block grant awarded to states under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

By Suzanne Wikle and Juliana Zhou

Medicaid is a cornerstone of our health care system but Republicans in Congress are talking about large Medicaid cuts. Cutting Medicaid and taking away people’s health care will harm millions of Americans, worsen our maternal health crisis, increase child poverty, and further jeopardize rural hospitals and other providers.

>> View the fact sheet here

By Suzanne Wikle

The 119th Congress has begun debating legislation to renew the first Trump Administration’s tax package from 2017 that many are framing as a discussion about tax cuts. However, the debate is really about whether making billionaires and large corporations wealthier is more important than health care and food for millions of Americans. That’s because Republicans have clearly stated they want to cut Medicaid and food assistance so they can make the super-rich even richer.

Medicaid provides health insurance to 79 million Americans, primarily children, seniors, people with disabilities, and pregnant women. Republicans have proposed several changes to Medicaid as a way to “pay for” tax cuts, totaling one-third of all federal Medicaid spending over the next decade.

Any change to Medicaid that offsets or “pays for” tax cuts is a cut to Medicaid, and cutting Medicaid will set off a cascade of negative effects. Millions of people will lose their health insurance, which means worse health outcomes that could have been prevented, premature death, and increased medical debt and bankruptcies. As Medicaid is the largest payer of mental health and substance use services, many individuals’ mental health concerns will go untreated or become more severe. For hospitals and other health care providers, cuts to Medicaid directly translate to more uncompensated care, as well as the likely closure of rural hospitals and nursing homes. The proposed cuts will also create a major budget hole for state budgets. On average, federal Medicaid dollars account for 57 percent of total federal funds spent by states. Federal cuts to Medicaid will force states to kick people off Medicaid and likely cut other parts of their budgets.

Congress has also proposed slashing nutrition assistance as part of the package to provide wealthy Americans with more tax cuts. By reversing recent policies that increased nutrition benefits to account for higher food costs that all Americans are facing and creating more red tape and eligibility limitations, policymakers would ultimately take food off the table of families, people with disabilities, and seniors, while also draining money out of local economies.

An honest debate about taxes would not suggest wholesale and disastrous changes to people’s health care and nutrition access as a means of making billionaires like Elon Musk even wealthier.

Our tax system should help families and children, not the wealthy and powerful. Tax policy can have a huge role in decreasing poverty, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic when the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) slashed childhood poverty in half. Congress should make these changes to the CTC permanent. In addition, lawmakers should establish a renter’s tax credit to support Americans priced out of homeownership. Finally, policymakers should expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to invest in workers of all ages without dependent children. These tax policies have the potential to affect the lives of millions of Americans in a positive way, rather than just a few at the wealthiest end of the economic spectrum.

As advocates, we’ll continue to voice the truth: the proposals by Republican members of Congress will make billionaires wealthier by taking away health care and nutrition support from millions of Americans, including constituents in their districts. There is no middle ground if it includes cuts to people’s basic human rights of health care and food.

By Ashley Burnside

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal tax credit for workers with low and moderate incomes. The EITC helps to bolster their incomes and offset taxes owed; it is effective at reducing poverty and has traditionally received bipartisan support. But the EITC available to workers without dependent children in the household is small and not available to younger and older workers without children. Lawmakers should permanently expand the EITC available to this population of workers.

Workers Without Children Are Largely Left Out of the EITC

Workers without dependent children in the household are only eligible for a meager credit, and this results in some workers being taxed deeper into poverty when they file their taxes.[1] A worker making $18,000 in annual income would only be eligible for an EITC of about $44 in tax year 2024.[2] The maximum income to be eligible for the EITC for this population of workers is also low, meaning that workers become ineligible for the credit at lower incomes. For example, in tax year 2024, a single, childless worker would become ineligible for the EITC if they made more than $18,600 in income.[3]

Figure 1:

Younger and older workers are ineligible for the EITC if they don’t have children. This is especially detrimental because younger workers are likelier to start their careers working in jobs that pay a lower wage and may not have as much savings built up due to their age. For these populations, getting an EITC is especially important. One study found that the expanded EITC decreased the share of young workers with difficulty affording their rent and mortgage payments.[4] Young workers are also often ineligible for support through federal anti-poverty programs, or are only eligible for meager benefits, and face higher poverty rates than other age demographics. According to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, 17.7 percent of young adults (ages 18-24) experienced poverty in 2022, and the rate increased to 22.5 percent for young people of color (See: Figure 1).[5]

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) temporarily changed this by expanding the EITC available to workers without dependent children. The EITC nearly tripled for this group of workers, the income eligibility amount increased, the credit phase-in rate increased, and the bill made younger and older workers without children eligible.[6] Lawmakers should make these changes permanent.

Workers who are paid low wages and who work in critical sectors of our economy, including child care and as home health workers, would benefit from this EITC expansion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) projects that about 737,000 cashiers, 506,000 cooks, 478,000 janitors, 312,000 personal care aides, and 229,000 child care workers would benefit.[7] The number of workers without dependent children who claimed the EITC nearly doubled when comparing tax year 2019 to tax year 2021 (when the ARPA expansions were in effect.) Approximately 15.1 million taxpayers claimed it in 2021, compared to 7.6 million in 2019.[8] A total of about 14 million workers would benefit from permanent expansion of the EITC in tax year 2024 (See: Figure 2). According to estimates from the CBPP, about 4 million young workers and 1.5 million older workers would be newly eligible for the credit in 2024 if these expansions were put in place.[9]

Figure 2:

Policy Recommendations: Permanently Expand the EITC Available to Workers Without Children

Lawmakers should permanently expand the EITC for workers without dependent children in the following ways, using ARPA as a model:

In addition, lawmakers should explore making the EITC available to families periodically, as has been done in pilots and as is included in the EITC Modernization Act, so that the credit can be used to help workers afford month-to-month costs such as rent and bills.

Conclusion

The EITC is a critical tax credit, and lawmakers should permanently expand it for workers without dependent children. Expanding the EITC would reduce the number of workers being taxed deeper into poverty, help to bolster wages for younger and older workers, and make our tax code fairer.

Endnotes

1 “Policy Basics: The Earned Income Tax Credit,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated April 28, 2023, https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-the-earned-income-tax-credit.

2 This estimate was calculated using the IRS Earned Income Tax Credit Assistant tool. The hypothetical filer is between the ages of 25 and 64, files as single, and has $18,000 in annual wage/salary income. “Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Assistant,” Internal Revenue Service, last updated/reviewed December 5, 2024, https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/use-the-eitc-assistant.

3 “Earned income and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) tables,” Internal Revenue Service, last updated/reviewed January 27, 2025, https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/earned-income-and-earned-income-tax-credit-eitc-tables.

4 Margot Crandall-Hollick, Nikhita Airi, and Richard Auxier, “How the American Rescue Plan’s Temporary EITC Expansion Impacted Workers Without Children,” Urban Institute and Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, September 6, 2024, https://taxpolicycenter.org/publications/how-american-rescue-plans-temporary-eitc-expansion-impacted-workers-without-children.

5 “Why We Still Can’t Wait: Youth Data Update 2023,” CLASP, https://www.clasp.org/new-deal-4- youth/youth-data-economic-justice-2023/.

6 The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 expanded the EITC available to workers without dependent children by increasing the credit phase-in and phase-out rates from 7.65 percent to 15.3 percent, increasing the maximum credit from $543 to $1,502, and increasing the income where the credit begins to phase out from $8,880 to $11,610 (and from $14,820 to $17,550 for married couples). The bill also made workers eligible beginning at age 19, and at age 18 for former foster youth and homeless youth. The maximum age cap was also removed, making workers aged 65 and older newly eligible. These changes were all temporary and in place for 2021. For more information about the changes made under the American Rescue Plan Act: “The ‘Childless’ EITC: Temporary Expansion for 2021 Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021,” Congressional Research Service, updated May 3, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11610.

7 Kiran Rachamallu, “About 14 Million Low-Income Adults Not Raising Children at Home Would Benefit From Permanently Expanded EITC,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 19, 2024, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/about-14-million-low-income-adults-not-raising-children-at-home-would-benefit-from-permanently.

8 Crandall-Hollick, et. al., “How the American Rescue Plan’s Temporary EITC.”

9 Rachamallu, “About 14 Million Low-Income Adults.”

10 Carl Davis, Marco Guzman, and Emma Sifre, “Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants,” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, July 30 2024, https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

>>Read the full fact sheet.

 

This statement can be attributed to Cemeré James, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)

Washington, D.C., January 28, 2025 – Last night, President Trump announced unprecedented funding freezes for programs that serve people in every congressional district. By cutting off agency grant and loan programs without any notice, the Trump Administration is harming families, children, workers, and communities across the country—and imperiling our nation’s economy.

We are glad to see that numerous state attorneys general and others are challenging the legality of this attempt to override the will of Congress, which has already authorized and appropriated these funds. Congress, not the President, is empowered by the Constitution to determine how the federal government spends its funds. Even so, the harm and chaos that these freezes are already causing and will continue to inflict on popular, impactful programs like community health centers, child care subsidies, and Meals on Wheels cannot be overstated. Moreover, the administration is planning to permanently defund some programs based on arbitrary assessments of whether they meet an ideological purity test.

This power grab will affect not just the individuals and families who rely on these programs and funds but also workers in sectors all over the country. Even if funding is eventually restored, programs may not be able to meet payroll or pay their rent, and the uncertainty has significant, immediate impacts inflicting fear, confusion, and challenges. The hardworking people who look out for others in their communities are at risk of losing their livelihoods because the Trump Administration has put more focus on cutting taxes for its billionaire allies than protecting children, seniors, veterans, and millions of other Americans.

We urge the administration to reverse course and ensure that funds already appropriated by law are allocated to programs relying on them.

Updated Feb 14, 2025 by Priya Pandey

Originally published in 2019 by Rebecca Ullrich and updated in February 2022 by Alejandra Londono Gomez

Early childhood programs play an important role in the lives of young children and their families. But in our current political climate, families across the country are questioning whether it’s safe to attend or enroll.

In January 2025, the Trump Administration rescinded the Biden Administration’s guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection enforcement actions in certain “protected areas.” Immigration enforcement actions had previously been restricted at or near these locations, which include early childhood programs such as licensed child care, preschool, pre-kindergarten, and Head Start programs.

In response, we have updated “A Guide to Creating ‘Safe Space’ Policies for Early Childhood Programs,” which gives practitioners, advocates, and policymakers information and resources to design and implement “safe space” policies that safeguard early childhood programs against immigration enforcement, as well as protect families’ safety and privacy. The guide also includes sample policy text that early childhood providers can adapt for their programs.

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By Ashley Burnside

On January 14, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee held a hearing about the 2017 Trump tax law. The hearing was significant given the upcoming expiration of key provisions from the 2017 law without further action from Congress. The Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans have identified passing a tax package that extends these provisions as a top priority. Below are five key takeaways from the hearing:

1. The upcoming tax package should include a fully refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC).

Congress should make the CTC fully refundable permanently in the upcoming tax package. This would allow families with the lowest incomes to receive the full credit, including 19 million children whose families currently don’t earn enough to qualify for the full amount.

In 2021, under the American Rescue Plan Act, Congress temporarily expanded the CTC by increasing the size of the credit, making it available monthly, and making it fully refundable. These changes helped the child poverty rate decline by nearly half in the year the expansions were in effect.

Multiple lawmakers and witnesses uplifted the importance of expanding the CTC in the upcoming tax package, and the financial relief that this would bring to families. For example, Representative DelBene (D-WA-1) explained that 1 in 3 children are currently left out of the CTC due to how the credit is structured and advocated for a permanent expansion.

2. The tax package should include an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) that adequately reaches workers without kids.

Under current law, the EITC does not benefit all workers with low and moderate incomes equally. Specifically, those without dependent children in the household get a much smaller credit than other workers, resulting in some workers being taxed deeper into poverty. Younger and older workers without dependent kids are ineligible for the EITC.

Representative Sewell (D-AL-7) brought up the importance of implementing an expanded EITC during the hearing, explaining that it is “a rising tide lifting all boats.” Congress should permanently expand the EITC available for workers without dependent children, and make younger and older workers eligible, like was done temporarily under the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021.

3. We need to make investments in the care economy outside of the tax code.

Rather than spend over $4 trillion on a package that cuts taxes for billionaires, lawmakers should invest in the care economy. During the hearing, Representative Danny Davis (D-IL-7) highlighted that the 2017 tax law “does nothing to help parents afford child care.” Congress should invest in affordable child care, home- and community-based services, and a national paid and family medical leave policy.

4. How we pay for the tax package matters, and health care and food shouldn’t be cut to pay for it.

Lawmakers are threatening to pay for the tax package with cuts to critical public benefit programs, including Medicaid and SNAP food benefits. Representative DelBene brought up the harm this cut would have since Medicaid and Medicare “provide basic health care to low-income families, people with disabilities, and seniors.” Taking away health care and food benefits to pay for tax breaks for billionaires will widen inequality and hurt the economic prosperity for families throughout the nation.

5. We need a tax package that promotes equity and prosperity for all people.

During the hearing, Representative Sanchez (D-CA-38) emphasized that the 2017 Trump tax law exacerbated racial and income inequality. She cited that nearly 80 percent of the tax cuts provided to individuals in the 2017 tax law went toward white households, who only represent 67 percent of American taxpayers, and that the wealth of billionaires has nearly doubled since the enactment of the 2017 bill. In the upcoming tax package, we should focus on policy solutions that promote equity and prosperity for all rather than ones that continue to widen racial inequality.

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(EXCERPT)

“We are disappointed that the proposed TANF rule did not become law, but are hopeful that lawmakers will continue promoting policies to help TANF cash assistance reach the families who need it,” said Ashley Burnside, senior policy analyst with the Public Benefits Justice Team at the Center for Law and Social Policy.

>> Read the full article here