PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts

34
2008 Milestones
Each year, we join with excellent organizations to produce work that
exemplifies exactly what we mean in stating that Pew serves the
public interest. On these pages, we highlight the results of Pewsupported
work that made a difference in 2008.
Economic Policy
The Economic Mobility Project releases
reports exploring the roles of federal
government investment, family
structure and other social influences,
such as education, health and access
to financial resources, in determining
economic mobility, or the ability
to improve one’s economic standing.
One of the reports finds that intragenerational
mobility rates—those within
one’s lifetime—have changed little
since the 1980s, and that educational
attainment continues to be a key driver
in advancing people who are on the
lower rungs of the economic ladder.
With support from Pew, US Budget
Watch elevates the debate on fiscal
responsibility and the federal budget
during the campaign season. Its “Fiscal
Voter’s Guide” analyzes the impact
on the deficit of the two major presidential
candidates’ proposed policies
on health care, an economic stimulus
package, taxes and Social Security.
Data from US Budget Watch are widely
cited by the media, including CBS
News anchor Bob Schieffer while moderating
the third presidential debate.
Pew partners with the Peter G. Peterson
Foundation and the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget to build
bipartisan consensus for a core set of
reforms to an outdated congressional
budget process. The Peterson-Pew
Commission on Budget Reform
will convene the nation’s preeminent
experts to make recommendations for
how best to strengthen the budget
process used by federal lawmakers.
Pew launches Subsidyscope, a new
initiative designed to make government
subsidies more transparent to the
public and policy makers through the
development of a comprehensive online
database of all federal subsidies. By
aggregating information across sectors
of the economy, Subsidyscope, in
a nonpartisan manner, seeks to inform
the debate over the creation of new subsidies
and the efficacy of existing ones.
Health and Human
Services Policy
The most sweeping reform of the
U.S. foster care system in more than
a decade is signed into law. The
legislation, called the Fostering
Connections to Success and Increasing
Adoptions Act of 2008, includes
core recommendations of the Pew
Commission on Children in Foster
Care, making it easier for relatives to
become guardians of children and also
facilitating adoptions of children—especially
those who are older and those
with special needs—from foster care.
The Pew Campaign on Human Health
and Industrial Farming achieves an
early objective in its effort to ban the
nontherapeutic use of antibiotics
when President George W. Bush signs
into law new reporting requirements for
drug manufacturers marketing antibiotics
to the animal-agriculture industry.
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination
Act, which prohibits
health insurers and employers from
asking or requiring a person to take a
genetic test, becomes law. The Pewsupported
Genetics & Public Policy
Center at Johns Hopkins University
has urged the passage of this landmark
piece of consumer protection.
Hailed by Senator Edward Kennedy,
chair of the Health, Education, Labor
and Pensions Committee, as “the first
civil rights bill of the new century of