By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Since our founding in 1899, the National Consumers League has worked hard to advocate for the better health of women and children. Florence Kelley, the League’s first leader, grew up in a family in which five of her mother’s eight children died from infection or disease. Babies during that time – the period right after the Civil War – were relatively safe while breastfeeding. Once weaned, they were exposed to illness from unsanitary food, water, and milk. Today, though we pasteurize milk and have access to safe drinking water, breastfeeding remains the best option for babies and their mothers, at least for the first 6 months of a child’s life.

That is why NCL was disturbed to read about an Internal Revenue Service decision that denies nursing mothers the ability to use their tax-sheltered health care accounts to pay for breast pumps and other breastfeeding supplies. NCL has written to the IRS to ask that the agency reverse its decision.

According to IRS Publication 502, reimbursable items include those that aid in the “prevention of disease.” The IRS apparently has determined that breast-feeding does not help in the prevention of disease. NCL could not disagree more. Medical evidence that far more widespread breastfeeding would not only “prevent disease” in the United States, but would save our health care system billions of dollars is overwhelming.

Consider the following evidence about the myriad health benefits to both breastfeeding mother and child:

• According to a Harvard study published in April of this year, if 90 percent of American families would comply with medical recommendationsto breastfeed exclusively for 6 months, the United States wouldsave $13 billion per year and prevent an excess 911 deaths,nearly all of which would be among infants ($10.5 billion and 741deaths at 80 percent compliance).

• The risk of infant death due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is lowered, and respiratory infections such as pneumonia, and necrotizing enterocolitis is nearly eliminated if mothers breastfeed their infants until at least six months after birth.

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has found that breastfed infants have a lower risk of contracting ear infections, stomach viruses, atopic dermatitis, type 1 and 2 diabetes, childhood leukemia, and other health problems.

• Mothers also benefit from breastfeeding because of lower risk of contracting type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and postpartum depression (PPD).

• Breastfed infants typically need fewer sick care visits; Congress recently acknowledged the importance of breastfeeding in landmark health care reform legislation by requiring that workplaces provide women with a private place to nurse or use a breast pump.

As Dr. Robert W. Block, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) noted in the New York Times this week, “The old adage that breast-feeding is a child’s first immunization really is true … So we need to do everything we can to remove the barriers that make it difficult.”

We agree with Dr. Block. And NCL reached out to our friends at AAP to share our letter and join forces with those who work to protect and improve the health of babies.

NCL strongly believes we need to encourage, not discourage, barriers to widespread breastfeeding. As in Florence Kelley’s day and ours, breast-fed babies get the best of all protections. Unfortunately, the IRS determination NOT to allow parents to use their tax-sheltered flex accounts to cover the cost of breast pumps has the impact of further discouraging women from breastfeeding and directly undermines what is by every measure a critical practice for improved public health. We believe the cost of breast pumps should and must be covered cost in these flex plans. We hope that NCL’s voice, along with the voices of AAP and so many others, will help to press the IRS Commissioner to reverse his decision.

By Terry Kush, NCL Senior Director of Operations and Finance

Two weeks ago today, I stood waiting in the Cairo airport anxious to return to Washington, DC. While in Egypt, I participated in two workshops (one in Luxor and another in Cairo) on behalf of the National Consumers League. The workshops, titled “Regional NGO Capacity Building Workshops,” was sponsored and coordinated by the United States Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) in cooperation with the Egyptian Consumer Protection Agency (ECPA), and funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). I was joined by our colleagues from Consumers Union, Consumers Federation of America, and Consumers International.

According to CLDP, the purpose of the workshops was to “strengthen management skills, build confidence of NGOs’ staff to use management tools operationally in implementing their activities, and promote public awareness and spread the culture of consumer protection.” However, I believe it is the exchange of “best practices” and shared experiences along with the various strategic planning, market surveillance and capacity building tools that made these workshops very participatory in nature, and; therefore, beneficial to everyone. In Luxor, we hosted roughly 20-25 NGOs from 7 surrounding districts. These organizations represented those new to the consumer movement and those in operation for 1 – 2+ years. In Cairo, an even bigger turn out, we had close to 30-35 NGOs representing 7-8 outposts.

In 2006, the Egyptian government instituted a consumer protection law, which resulted in the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency. Their role is “to protect consumers by implementing the consumer protection law in coordination with other governmental entities concerned with its implementation.” Sounds familiar?! Well, of course it does. They used the framework established in the 1960’s by a speech given by President Kennedy, in front of Congress (March 15, 1962), pointing out “Consumers, by definition, include us all,” and outlined his vision for consumer rights. These governing principals include eight consumer rights:

• The right to satisfaction of basic needs
• The right to safety
• The right to be informed
• The right to choose
• The right to be heard
• The right to redress
• The right to consumer education
• The right to a healthy environment

What I found astonishing is that Egypt has a consumer protection agency at all; and, while the United States works through — maybe — the kinks of re-establishing the consumer protection agency in the White House, consumers remain, as President Kennedy noted, “… the only important group… whose views are often not heard.”

What I also found interesting is some of the similarities that my own organization shares with the umbrella organization ECPA. Like ECPA, the National Consumers League houses a fraud center that consumers can use to file complaints. ECPA, as do we, receives complaints electronically, via fax and in writing. They track unfair practices in the marketplace such as durable goods, car safety and Internet fraud. Many of the smaller NGOs work to educate the consumer about his/her rights as a consumer. Like America, product safety is a never-ending battle. Egyptians would argue that their cases of unsafe products are much higher and a bigger problem than in the United States, since many of the products that come into the country do not have restrictions or guidelines that must be adhered to. At the end of the day, there was a common theme among consumer organizations, “How do we deal with inappropriate and false advertising?” to “How do we create consumer awareness and corporate social responsibility?”

These workshops speak to the ever-growing need for collaboration among consumer NGOs, as the issues increase due to the global marketplace and access to services and goods via the Internet. What we will find is that if consumer awareness is a part of both institutional agendas and government mandate we, as consumer organizations, can have a bigger impact on product safety, corporate social responsibility, fair prices in the global marketplace and fair treatment of not only consumers but workers’ rights around the world.

It is my hope that we take this message around the world as we look to create and expand consumer NGOs nationally and abroad.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Should it be possible to use food stamps to buy sugar-sweetened beverages? This very issue is causing people and groups that are often allies to line up on opposing sides.

In recent weeks, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked the United States Department of Agriculture for permission to temporarily bar New York City’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from buying sugary drinks with their benefits, commonly known as food stamps. The proposed two-year change to the program would allow researchers to study the potential impact of such a ban on public health. But a number of anti-hunger advocates – including Ellen Vollinger, the legal director of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), and Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger – are opposing the Mayor’s request.

These individuals and organizations dedicated to fighting hunger in America, especially among children, think Bloomberg’s action would perpetuate the myth that people who need government assistance make bad choices at the supermarket. The food stamp program serves 41.8 million individuals, about half of them children.

Though I strongly support the work of FRAC and other anti-hunger organizations – in fact, NCL directed funds to FRAC from a legal settlement we reached recently – and, of course, believe that we should be respectful of those who rely on food stamps to eat each month, I think I come down on the side of Mayor Bloomberg on this one. He’s not saying that people on food stamps can’t buy sugary drinks – they just can’t use these benefits meant as “supplemental nutrition assistance” dollars for products that have no nutritional value, and sugary drinks give new meaning to the term “no nutritional value.” Check the label sometime to try to find anything that is good for you and you’ll come up short.

As the name implies, the food stamp program is intended to supplement the nutritional needs of struggling Americans. You can’t use them to buy alcohol or cigarettes; I would put sugary drinks in the same category.

Another argument in the Mayor’s favor is the alarming number of Americans who are now considered overweight – 2/3 of all of us fall into that category. Sugary drinks contribute mightily to that problem, adding nutritionally bereft calories to the diets of far too many Americans, especially kids. The findings from numerous studies demonstrate a link between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and weight gain, overweight, and obesity.

Noting one of anti-hunger advocates’ central arguments against the proposal, Joel Berg stated, “It’s sending the message to low-income people that they are uniquely the only people in America who don’t know how to take care of their family.” I get that, but in this case, I think Mayor Bloomberg has the stronger argument.

Caveat: we have active dissent from my position among our staff – and they make some compelling arguments. So, in this case I’m stating my opinion and not all of NCL’s. I’d welcome others’ thoughts and ideas.

By Brandi Williams, LifeSmarts Program Assistant

On October 7, the National Consumers League held our 2010 Trumpeter Awards in Washington, DC, honoring Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Kenneth Feinberg and Jean Ann Fox. Amongst these notables was LifeSmarts alum Tony Aronica of Washington state, who was invited by NCL to speak to the audience about how his experience in LifeSmarts helped prepare him for life after high school. Check out the LifeSmarts Facebook page for photos.

Tony’s remarks served as yet another reminder to me of the importance of consumer education and personal financial literacy for young adults. Personal finance is one of the core topics we cover in LifeSmarts, and it was exciting to hear from a past participant that those lessons had an impact on his future decisions. While policymakers and religious leaders debate topics like sex education and school prayer in the public arena, more and more young people are entering the realm of adulthood ill-equipped to deal with realities like understanding financial terms, choosing credit cards, workplace safety, and setting financial goals, because these topics aren’t flashy enough for public debate. In the meantime, parents making poor financial decisions continue to pass on bad habits to their children.

“Learning to be a steward of one’s personal finances, setting personal goals and preparing steps to achieve established goals is not intuitive, but a collection of learned skills,” Tony said passionately, receiving nods and murmurs of agreement from the audience as he summed up the necessity for programs like LifeSmarts that teach kids to be smart consumers able to advocate for themselves in the marketplace.

And he’s right.  Personal financial literacy is important for people of all ages, especially the 13 to 19-year-olds who are estimated to spend $200 billion annually. According to the National Council on Economic Education, in 2009 only 13 states required students to take a personal finance course in order to graduate.

This is why programs like LifeSmarts are so important to young people in helping to bridge the gap between economics lessons in class and making personal financial choices outside of the classroom. “Combining consumer awareness tips, household budgeting, personal fitness and nutritional information within a competitive team format meant that we were receiving knowledge that was largely unavailable in a standard academic experience,” Tony told the Trumpeter audience, adding “we were absorbing it in a way that was extremely helpful.”

It is so exciting to have the opportunity to interact with the young people who have benefitted from LifeSmarts.  And when I do, it is truly a pleasure. These young people are so enthusiastic, excited, and eager to soak up what LifeSmarts is teaching them, to master the skills to think independently and interact with the marketplace as informed consumers able to advocate for themselves and others.

When I have the chance to visit state LifeSmarts competitions in the winter, the comment I hear most often from adults is: “I wish this program was around when I was a kid.”

Well, it’s here now for our kids.

 

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

With the economy stagnant, unemployment continuing to hover near 10 percent, a depressing mid-term election a few weeks away, Americans are angry, frustrated, frightened about their economic future and looking for someone to blame.

In terms of cause and effect, I think it’s impossible for economists – and the rest of us – to ignore any longer the staggering gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us.

Columnist Robert Frank in the New York Times cites some sobering statistics. During the three decades after WWII, incomes rose in the United States at almost 3 percent a year for people at all income levels. America, Frank says, had an economically vibrant middle class. Roads and bridges were well maintained and people were optimistic. The contrast between today and 1976 is stark. The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which was 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent.

Frank says economists are reluctant to confront rising income inequality and they by and large refuse to take a position on whether the growing income inequality is a good or bad trend.

Worker productivity has grown over the past two decades. Workers are now earning only 83 cents of every dollar they earned more than 35 years ago, while their productivity has increased a dramatic 80 percent. This is the central explanation for the *explosion in corporate profits and the growing income gap in America.

But the gains from that increased productivity have not gone to workers; they have been scooped up by management — good manufacturing jobs, including union jobs with good benefits that provided a solid middle class income to working Americans, have disappeared. The percentage of private sector union jobs has shrunk to 7 percent.

But, for reasons I don’t understand, outsize pay packages – including probably the most outrageous case – $1 billion in total compensation claimed by the former head of United Health Care – (who felt he was entitled to take those kind of profits from the health care system when we have 50 million Americans with no health insurance) haven’t generated all that much anger and outrage.

The widening gap between the super rich in America and the amount of income they have taken out of the economy – at the expense of the vast majority of hard working Americans who struggle to make ends meet every day– may just be far more destructive than any of us understand.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.