New America Foundation

The following prepared testimony was submitted on May 1, 2008 to the Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures. In it, Cramer explains that 529 College savings plans can be effective savings platforms, but urges reforms to make them more inclusive.

The full text is available below as a PDF download.

Len Nichols recently presented at the American Health Insurance Plans' (AHIP) 2008 National Policy Forum. To view his PowerPoint presentation, please click the PDF link below.

The first premise of the New America Foundation’s initiative on the Next Social Contract is that the structures that help American workers and their families balance economic security and opportunity involve much more than a set of government programs. What we call the social contract is a set of formal and informal systems and assumptions, involving individuals, employers and government, that provide, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. put it, “security in the context of freedom and freedom in the context of security.” These assumptions have evolved through the course… more

New America's Health Policy Program today issued the following statement on the paper, "Rethinking Social Insurance," by Maya MacGuineas and Stuart M. Butler:

The opinions and policies presented in "Rethinking Social Insurance" do not represent the views of the Health Policy Program or its staff. The Health Policy Program works to create a sustainable system of health coverage for all Americans and believes strongly in protecting the solvency and integrity of the Medicare program within a reformed… more

By way of introduction, I spent most of the last seventeen years working as an investment banker and private equity investor based primarily in London, England. This experience, I believe, gives me a somewhat different perspective on Sovereign Wealth Funds and the role that they play in today’s international capital markets. Currently, I co-direct the Global Strategic Finance Initiative at the New America Foundation. The New America Foundation is a non-profit, post-partisan public policy institute in Washington D.C.

Over the past several months, few issues in international finance have generated… more

In 1977, concerned about the denial of credit to lower income communities—both minority and white—Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). CRA states that “regulated financial institutions have [a] continuing and affirmative obligation to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered.” The statute goes on to require that federal bank regulators both “assess the institution’s record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent… more

1) The administration proposes increasing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Title I grants to school districts by 2.9 percent, essentially an increase matching inflation. It also proposes redirecting a greater proportion of Title I funds to high schools. Does this mean that school districts will have to cut Title I funding for K-8 schools, since districts will effectively receive the same level of funding as in the previous year? How will this affect the student achievement in grades 3… more