Supporting America’s lower-middle-class families

More than half of American families earn $60,000 or less a year — outside of poverty but with limited economic security. Indeed, many of these families rely on government programs for support and one major setback could throw their lives into chaos. On December 4th, The Hamilton Project at Brookings hosted a forum to highlight two new proposals for aiding America’s lower-middle class.

The forum kicked off with introductory remarks by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.

Joel Berg, Executive Director of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger; James Ziliak, Director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky; and Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, joined a panel with Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern University to discuss her proposal to strengthen the food stamp (SNAP) program. Roger Altman, Founder and Executive Chairman of Evercore moderated the panel.

In a second panel, Kevin Hassett, Senior Fellow and Director of Economic Policy Studies at AEI, and Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management & Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, joined Melissa Kearney and Lesley Turner of the University of Maryland to discuss their proposal for a secondary earner tax deduction to help “make work pay” for both spouses in low income families. Glenn Hutchins, Co-Founder of Silver Lake, moderated the panel.

The forum concluded with a discussion between Jason Furman, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and David Leonhardt, Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times, on the challenges facing America’s lower-middle-class families.