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Reports & Issue Briefs

This year has turned out to be a rough one for working Americans. In his first year in office, President Trump and Congressional Republicans hurt workers’ pay and benefits, rolled back consumer financial protections, targeted public lands for commercial development, and attempted to strip health care coverage from millions of Americans. Just one year into the Trump presidency and already the harm to people, communities, and the environment is considerable.
With equity market valuations at highs only seen right before the stock market crash of 1929 and the Dotcom crash of 2000, now is the time that policymakers should be focused on maintaining stability, protecting consumers, and promoting sustainable growth. Instead Republicans are pursuing an agenda that will feed bubbles, leave consumers and small investors vulnerable to fraud and abuse, and undermine financial stability.
Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients play a large role in rural communities, where their economic contributions are helping rural towns get back on their feet from years of slow eco-nomic growth. In rural America, these estimated tens of thousands of young people are part of the answer to building sustainable economies in small towns across the country.
Equipping Americans with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills ensures a more innovative and prosperous economy. STEM workers boost productivity and drive competitiveness, while generating a host of new ideas. These workers advance our nation by doing everything from building roads and bridges to conducting life-saving medical research.
Although the U.S. economy overall continues its expansion following the Great Recession and associated financial crisis, the recovery can look very different from state to state. The lion’s share of economic gains are not only concentrated at the top of the income and wealth distribution, but also in a small share of regions. While some parts of the country have surged ahead, millions of Americans in urban and rural communities are still waiting for their wages to start rising again and struggling to make ends meet.
While the transition back into civilian life can be difficult for some, the economic state of the veteran community is on an upward trend. Overall, the nation’s 20.5 million veterans earn more, experience lower unemployment, are more likely to have health insurance, and less likely to live in poverty than their non-veteran peers. In this fact sheet we will dive a little deeper into the current economic state of our veterans community.
The report highlights multiple approaches Congress can take to address the college affordability crisis in the United States, including alleviating the cost burden on students, changing the incentives that colleges face, and offering better guidance and information to students. Congress should expand low-cost, high-quality pathways and provide the support students who enroll in college need to complete their degrees.
The report, “The Need to Rebuild Smarter,” cites that the average cost of national disasters have more than tripled since 1980. Furthermore, climate change poses an increasing threat to communities in the United States, with populations at risk to hurricanes growing 22 percent faster than the overall population from 2001-2010.