News & Stories

At a time when people are increasingly worried about retirement – both their own and the retirement of their parents and grandparents – a new poll shows the vast majority of Americans support higher taxes to increase Social Security benefits. As we (and others) have been saying for years, Social Security’s problem is small and very […]

State Senate Leader Rodney Tom and other state legislators are mulling an end to Washington’s popular Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program. Their contention: GET doesn’t operate in the black. The real problem: their own higher ed budget cuts have jacked up college tuition. Tom says GET has put the state $631 million in the hole. That’s […]

Many of our state lawmakers got where they are today thanks to the affordable education they received at Washington State’s public universities. So how does the opportunity they enjoyed compare to what they are offering this year’s freshman class? The chart above graphs total tuition and fees—adjusted for inflation—paid by a range of lawmakers for […]

When you work, you get paid. That’s just common sense. Indeed, if you don’t get paid for your work, you are little better than an indentured servant. And we got rid of that practice, along with slavery, over a 100 years ago. Our laws are quite clear: workers must be paid at least the minimum […]

Today the Senate Labor & Workforce Development Committee is holding a work session on teen unemployment, at which they are discussing Senate Bill 5275. SB 5275 would “allow employers to pay a training wage for a specified period of time,” giving employers the to authority to pay workers of any age and skill level less than the minimum wage […]

A new study confirms that Washington’s poorest pay a bigger percentage of their incomes in taxes than the state’s wealthiest residents. The state’s poorest 20 percent pay 9 percent of their personal incomes in state and local taxes, compared to payments of just 2 percent for the richest 20 percent — 4.5 times greater percentage-wise, […]

A double whammy hit Democrats Monday on the Family Medical Leave Act and on workers compensation. At least Democrats say so. At the beginning of a Monday session, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee moved a public hearing on a controversial bill to repeal the Family Medical Leave Act from the beginning […]

A new report released by two Cornell labor professors shows that over the past 20 years, the percentage of U.S. females working has remained relatively stagnant, while many other OECD countries have seen moderate to rapid growth. In 1990, 74% of American women participated in the workforce. By 2010, that number had risen just over […]

This is no “Chicken Little” or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” situation: Washington families, and families-to-be, need your help today. What’s going on? In 2007, we came together to pass a paid family leave law so that parents could spend 5 weeks at home after the birth or arrival of a new child. In the […]

The most recent fiscal cliff deal extended provisions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit for five more years – a move that will continue reducing poverty in the U.S. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal income tax credit generally used by working people with low to moderate […]

Do you have questions about the long-term health of our Social Security system? Are you worried about how politicians talk about it in the same breath as the debt and deficit, while ignoring ten years of war and tax cuts for the wealthy, as well as a pandemic of Wall Street greed that nearly sunk […]

By EOI Board Member Stan Sorscher, from the Huffington Post My career is invested in the aerospace industry, so it was very sobering to me when the FAA ordered that 787 airplanes be grounded. Friends ask me to explain the situation — what lessons can we draw from the 787? Invariably, we start with “outsourcing.” True, […]

From the Washington Work and Family Coalition State Senate Republicans – joined by conservative Democrats Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon – are working to repeal Washington’s landmark Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FMLI) Act, passed in 2007 to ensure working moms and dads up to five weeks of partially paid leave to care for a newborn or […]

While it’s heartening to see the discussion over paid sick days reach a national outlet like NBC Today – even if it takes a flu epidemic to make it happen – it’s worth remembering the United States is the only developed nation that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days or paid sick leave to workers. Under […]

Healthcare professionals have long touted the benefits of breastfeeding for the health and development of new babies. Research shows infants who are breastfed have lower incidence of respiratory infections, asthma, eczema, childhood leukemia, Type 2 diabetes, childhood obesity, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). They also have better development outcomes as they age. The American […]

Dr. James Heckman, Nobel Laureate and a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is an expert on human development. His work in economics, sociology, and psychology has given scientific weight to what many of us know to be anecdotally true – helping kids develop skills at an early age leads to great economic and social […]

The case for universal pre-K ought to be closed. In Oklahoma, it is. Even as enthusiasm for the Tea Party has swept the state, the program has gained in popularity. Oklahomans on both sides of the aisle take pride in being recognized as a national leader in early education. Many rural school administrators regard the […]

For decades, the U.S. policy solution to lowering family poverty has been to promote parental – and in particular, maternal – employment. Yet as it stands, the sectors with the fastest-growing jobs do not provide a pathway out of poverty. Why? Because they often do not provide working parents the pay, benefits, or flexibility necessary […]

I like to consider myself a sensible guy – someone who can set aside my own self-interest to recognize other people’s need, concerns and desires – particularly when it comes to politics and public policy. But in this case, I’m really struggling to identify with America’s leading CEOs. The Business Roundtable represents 200 of our […]

“I wanted my son to learn,” explains Maria Mauricio, who lives in the low-income Tulsa neighborhood of Kendall-Whittier. Her four-year-old son, Gabriel, attends pre-K through Educare, another local Head Start provider. A stay-at-home mom of five, Mauricio could have kept Gabriel with her during the day. When she was growing up in Mexico, Mauricio went […]

Income inequality is still on the rise as the nation struggles to recover from Wall Street’s recession In 2007, just 28% of U.S. working families were considered “working poor”, but by 2011 nearly one-third of families fit that bill (two parents and two children, with household income less than $45,000 per year). Low-income working families […]

Interested in watching a good documentary to this week? Check out We’re Not Broke, now streaming free on Hulu! Here’s a short description: America is in the grip of a societal economic panic. Lawmakers cry “We’re Broke!” as they slash budgets, lay off schoolteachers, police, and firefighters, crumbling our country’s social fabric and leaving many […]

How did Oklahoma—a poor state, and one of the “reddest” in the country—become a preschooling pioneer? It wouldn’t have happened if ardent children’s advocates hadn’t been in the right positions at the right times. Ramona Paul, who retired last year as the state’s assistant superintendent of public education, was the first to get pre-K rolling […]

They may be millionaires, but they’re just like you and me. Millionaires don’t seem to move around much, even if their taxes go up. When a pair of researchers examined “outmigration” rates in California before and after an income tax increase, they found: Outmigration among millionaires actually declined after the tax increase took effect, and it […]

A friend of mine ordered a sandwich two weeks ago and by the following Saturday was down with the flu. How did that happen? The worker at the cash register was feeling lousy, sneezing and coughing. And contagious. So my friend was down with the flu for a week. Thanks to the flu shot she […]

While Oklahoma has a model statewide pre-K system, the city of Tulsa illustrates the public-private partnerships that can grow within that model. The state’s second-largest city, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, Tulsa has great economic extremes. Some 84 percent of children in Tulsa public schools qualify for free or reduced lunch, meaning they […]