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By Sean Luechtefeld on 10/07/2011 @ 12:30 PM

Tags: Events, Economic Inclusion, Federal Policy

Ida Rademacher, Vice President, Policy & Reseach

On Tuesday, CFED Vice President for Policy & Research Ida Rademacher testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The hearing during which Ida testified, titled “Consumer Protection and Middle Class Wealth Building in an Age of Growing Household Debt,” took place in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protections. Click here to download the full text (PDF) of Ida's testimony.

During her testimony, Ida illustrated for members of the subcommittee the current landscape facing middle- and low-income American households for their ability to generate wealth and presented to the Subcommittee CFED’s household financial security framework. Then, Ida described a range of policy proposals that members of Congress could pursue to change the upside down nature of America’s federal asset-building agenda.

Despite spending $400 billion a year to encourage Americans to save for retirement, go to college or buy a house, Ida argues, these subsidies are primarily accessible only to those Americans who find themselves in the highest tax brackets. Whereas this population already enjoys the means to pursue these opportunities, low- and moderate-income families who need these subsidies the most typically find themselves unable to access them. In crafting this argument, Ida cited the data highlighted in CFED’s Upside Down report, co-authored with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and available for download here.

To be sure, Ida’s role in the testimony was not to criticize these spending programs for the sake of pointing out the imperfections in current assets spending. Rather, these criticisms point to an important opportunity facing the federal government: by spending only a fraction of what is currently being spent, the federal assets agenda can more effectively extend programs that help low- and moderate-income Americans build wealth by making subsidies accessible to the populations who need them the most.

For more information about what these policy priorities look like, download Upside Down. Also, be sure to use the comments section below to leave and questions or thoughts for Ida or the rest of the team here at CFED.

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