Savings for Working Families Act

Despite my sweeping knowledge of the American legislative process through Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” (come on, you know you wanna listen to it), I’m still pretty clueless about what actually has to happen for an important bill like the Savings for Working Families Act of 2007 to make it out of committee and get voted on by the full House and Senate.

I know it helps for a bill to have lots of co-Sponsors, which is why CFED has been urging people to contact their members of congress to ask them to become co-Sponsors. The bill now has 68 co-Sponsors in the House and 20 co-Sponsors in the Senate. What I don’t know is whether those are respectable numbers, enough to give the sad little bill hope, and what it takes to convert co-Sponsorship support into committee support.

I remain disappointed that my two Vermont Senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, have not signed on as co-Sponsors (their House colleague, Vermont’s freshman representative Peter Welch, did sign on as a co-Sponsor, as I mentioned a few weeks ago).

As for Massachusetts, where I’ve been helping get IDAs off the ground in Berkshire County, none of the 10 House members from Massachusetts have signed on as Co-Sponsors, and neither has Edward Kennedy in the Senate. Representative Richard E. Neal of Springfield, Massachusetts, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, could be an especially important voice for this bill, since it has been sent for review to a committee he serves on, so he’s one I’d particularly love to see become a co-Sponsor.

On the Senate side, the bill is in the Senate Finance Committee, where Massachusetts Senator John Kerry serves. Kerry has already signed on as a Co-Sponsor, but I would still urge my friends and colleagues across Massachusetts to contact Senator Kerry about this bill and urge him to push his fellow Massachusetts congressmembers to co-Sponsor it, while also doing his best to help it gain more supporters from both parties in the Senate Finance Committee.

CFED has some great tools for letting your voice be heard on this bill. Please use them and urge your congressmembers to help this bill become law.  The 50,000 current IDA savers are a start, but just not enough.  900,000 IDA savers would help get our country moving in the right direction.

Berkshire County IDA Savers

The day before yesterday I sat in on the final class of a 6-week financial education course for five women who have opened individual development accounts (IDAs) at Hoosac Bank through Berkshire Community Action Council (BCAC).

It was nice to meet the people who are benefitting from this first pilot phase of the asset development initiative I’ve been pushing (with many other people in the community) for over a year now. The participants clearly seemed motivated, and they had developed a nice rapport with Linda Greenbush, the program manager at BCAC.

And now the hard work begins for them: sticking to a savings plan for the next several years in order to access the 3:1 match (made possible by a generous grant from the state of Massachusetts and private fundraising), which must be used to purchase a first home.

Although they have completed their general financial education course, the participants will continue meeting monthly with Linda and various community experts to get support in sticking to their savings goals and to receive more in-depth preparation for home ownership, including participation in a certified first time home buyer class with the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center.

Best of luck to them.

Roosevelt Institution Policy Expo

I was glad to see that young think tankers at the Roosevelt Institution’s recent Policy Expo were talking about individual development accounts and other asset development tools.

Newish blogger Niko Karvounis, a Senior Fellow at Roosevelt, addresses one of the big questions people ask about IDAs: if you’re poor, doesn’t it mean you don’t have any money to save? I like the way he answers it.

Karvounis looks like an excellent addition to the social policy blogosphere.  You’ll be hearing more from him.

Thank You Peter Welch

The Center for Enterprise Development (CFED) sent out another email today urging people to lobby congress for “The Savings for Working Families Act (SWFA) of 2007, H.R. 1514 & S. 871,” which currently has 75 co-sponsors.

Contact your Member of Congress now to increase support for matched savings to help low-income working families build wealth.

Click here to send an e-mail to your Representative, urging them to support H.R. 1514.

Click here to send an e-mail to your Senator, urging them to support S. 871.

I was pleased to see that the expanded list of co-sponsors includes Representative Peter Welch of Vermont, whom I chided back in April for a tepid response to my last email urging him to support this legislation.

Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I’m going to claim that it was my disappointed blog entry that got Welch’s attention, spurred him to look harder at the SWFA bill, and finally persuaded him to back it as a co-sponsor. Another victory for citizen activism!

Today I sent follow-up emails to Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy, so if either of them join as co-sponsors, you can be sure I’ll claim credit.