Protect safety net programs that benefit the needs of low ...

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Protecting safety net programs--which make up the very first rungs of the ladder of opportunity--is key to helping low-income households thrive and achieve financial security. Our work helps households all over the United States, including immigrant households, advance towards achieving the American Dream: buying a home, pursuing higher education, starting a business, building financial capability and saving for the future. We are particularly focused on communities of color who have been left even further behind by a growing racial wealth divide.

Below is our financial security policy agenda for 2019. By signing up for Prosperity Now's Financial Security Advocacy Campaign, you will receive valuable information about how you can advocate to build the financial security of working families, such as actions you can take to support or oppose legislation that affects the communities where you live and work.

Protect safety net programs that benefit the needs of low- and moderate-income families. Important government programs like SNAP, TANF, Medicare, Medicaid, LIHEAP and others help protect vulnerable families from falling deep into poverty. Cuts to these programs have been proposed in the past few years that would leave families without critical assistance. Work requirements, block grants and other draconian measures make it harder for working families to survive. Following the 2018 success in passing a Farm Bill that protects those receiving nutritional benefits from SNAP, Prosperity Now will continue working to stop any further threats to these valuable programs.

Help working families have a fair shot at long-term prosperity through higher education, homeownership and entrepreneurship. By using twenty years of research and data from AFI (the Assets for Independence program) showing the best ways to encourage working families to save, Congress should create Fair Shot Accounts: a flexible, scalable program that allows more families to save, acquire the financial skills needed to build wealth and develop the resilience to keep wealth over the long term. Through the financial, structural and financial capability supports envisioned by Fair Shot Accounts, families would have the tools needed to get them closer to whatever dreams are within their sights--whether it be a home for their family to grow in, a car to get back and forth to work, the costs necessary to become an American citizen or the ability to graduate from a university.

Support emergency savings in the workplace. Strengthening Financial Security Through ShortTerm Savings Plans Act (S. 3218 in the 115th Congress) would make it easier for workplaces to offer emergency savings accounts alongside their retirement plans or as separate accounts for employers that do not offer a retirement plan. Proposed by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tom Cotton (R-AR),

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Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Todd Young (R-IN), these accounts would help workers build shortterm savings through automatic contributions, allowing families to prepare for the unexpected.

Remove savings penalties for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), LIHEAP (Low Income Housing Assistance Program), SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); and reform SSI (Supplemental Security Income). By eliminating or increasing savings penalties in public benefits programs, families will be able to increase their self-sufficiency without fear. In some states, even as little as $1,000 saved disqualifies families from accessing nutrition, energy assistance and cash benefits. But savings help families get ahead and even small amounts can help families weather income volatility and financial shocks. Savings penalties get in the way of helping working families reach self-sufficiency. Increasing savings penalties on SSI would allow our most vulnerable households the ability to save more for emergencies and for their futures. Congress should eliminate savings penalties for TANF, LIHEAP and SNAP and increase SSI limits to $10,000 indexed to inflation.

Reform and enhance the Saver's Credit. In its current form, the Saver's Credit is too constrained to help many working families. Changes to the Saver's Credit, as proposed in Senator Ron Wyden's (DOR) Encouraging Americans to Save Act (S. 3636 in the 115th Congress), would better help American families by making the credit fully refundable, allowing lower-income households to receive a larger tax refund. Additionally, the credit should be extended to incentivize emergency savings, as well as retirement savings. Finally, Congress should tie the maximum credit to inflation so that the benefits of the Saver's Credit increase with the economy and prices. By passing legislation to reform the Saver's Credit, Congress would help more low-income families benefit from the program and encourage saving. Because higher-income households are disproportionately White and lowincome workers are more likely to be Black and Latino, extending this credit to low-income workers can also help reduce the racial wealth divide.

Enact a nationwide Auto-IRA program. Proposed congressional legislation, Automatic Retirement Plan Act of 2017, (H.R. 4523; S. 1861 in the 115th Congress) would give low- and moderate-income workers who are ineligible to participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans an easy way to save at work by automatically enrolling them in payroll deduction Roth IRAs (Individual Retirement Accounts). Led by Representative Richard Neal (D-MA-1) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), this proposal would require employers that have more than 10 employees and have been in business more than two years without offering a qualified retirement plan to enroll employees automatically into Roth IRAs. A number of states are leading the way with statebased automatic IRA programs. Congress should encourage these efforts by finally enacting a national Auto-IRA program that builds on the state pilots: providing nationwide uniformity, achieving greater economies of scale and giving tens of millions of working households that are ineligible for employer-sponsored plans a safe and convenient way to save in the workplace.

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