CBO's wake-up call

Using every inch of his bully pulpit, President Obama forcefully framed his second-term agenda in Tuesday's State of the Union address, from combatting climate change to spending more on infrastructure to raising taxes on the rich. 

However, in a remarkable example of whistling past the graveyard, the president did little to substantively address the biggest crisis we face: the federal budget. 

The president needed only to look at last week’s report by the Congressional Budget Office to see the scale of the problem. 

In their budget and economic outlook for 2013-2023, CBO sees near trillion-dollar annual deficits, at least $7 trillion in new debt, and more spending on interest payments on the debt ($5.4 trillion) than on Medicaid ($4.3 trillion).

And that wasn’t even the worst news. CBO’s alternative scenario assumes that Congress and the president will avoid the pain of scheduled spending cuts, tax increases, and cuts to physician reimbursement in Medicare. Under this alternative – though far more realistic – scenario “deficits and debt would be significantly higher.”  

The key driver is the astonishing growth of federal healthcare spending. A relatively paltry $885 billion in 2013 will balloon to nearly $2 trillion a year within the decade. $14 trillion in total. 
Medicare and Medicaid spending will double. Future Medicare spending will accelerate even faster, as the number of seniors 85 years and older will double by 2025 and increase ?ve-fold by 2050, according to the Census.

By 2023 approximately 175 million Americans – more than half the population – will get their health insurance through Medicare (65 million), Medicaid (84 million), and ObamaCare subsidies (26 million). 

CBO also threw a bucket of cold water on ObamaCare. They estimated that the cost of the Affordable Care Act over the coming decade will increase to $1.3 trillion, even though three million fewer people will be insured. Spending on insurance subsidies, revenue from tax penalties on businesses, and the number of Americans who will lose their employer-sponsored insurance will all go up.

All the while healthcare costs will continue to grow unabated – by 40 percent over the coming decade, according to the latest report on health expenditures by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

In essence, government will borrow more money to insure more people at ever rising costs. 

If there was ever a need for wake-up call, it should be now. Congress must act to avoid the catastrophe that is coming. And all options should be on the table.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently published a phenomenally helpful menu of options that Congress could choose from. Every major proposal to restrain Medicare growth, both good and bad, is explored, including citations of cost estimates. 

Federal tort reform could save as much as $57 billion. A uniform deductible with benefit design changes could save $93 billion. Raising the eligibility age could save $113 billion.  Restricting first-dollar coverage in supplemental plans could save $53 billion. 

Premium support, with more consumer choice and competition, is explored. While there are few details on potential savings, we know that choice and competition can dramatically lower costs in Medicare.  Just look at the prescription drug benefit where costs are 40 percent below original estimates. 

There are a plethora of program integrity improvements to combat waste, fraud, and abuse, including many of the bipartisan solutions recently outlined by Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and other members of the Finance Committee.

The biggest untapped potential for Medicare savings and improvement is on the care delivery side. Preferred provider networks, outcomes-based payment, and promoting coordinated care models have demonstrated results in improving care and lowering costs. 

These are all big changes in Medicare, and many should be made in Medicaid as well. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf was correct when he said, “Small changes in budget policy will not be sufficient to put the budget on a sustainable path.”

Unfortunately, small change is typical of Washington. And judging by the president’s platitudes in last night’s speech, we may have to wait until 2017 for a new president working with a like-minded Congress to address them. 

That would be unacceptable. The president and members of Congress are in power to fix problems, not to create and then sidestep them. America should demand action now.  Lest we will all pay a very dear price in the future.

Merritt is a partner and managing director at Leavitt Partners, the healthcare intelligence firm led by former HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt.

View Comments

View the original article here

Senate Democrats Air Grievances With Rollout Of Healthcare Law

Democrats who supported President Obama’s healthcare law grilled a top Health and Human Services official Thursday over what they see as holes in the implementation effort and the White House’s political bargaining.

Gary Cohen, the director of the HHS office overseeing the bulk of the healthcare law’s implementation, fielded tough questions from several Democrats.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) hammered HHS for inviting Congress to cut funding for a new nonprofit insurance model. Funding for healthcare co-ops was eliminated in the year-end tax deal, and Nelson said officials offered up the program as a place Congress could cut.

“Why was that negotiated away at the 11th hour?” Nelson asked.

Cohen didn’t have an answer.

Nelson noted that the co-ops funding was axed while applications for new co-ops were still in the pipeline. HHS had already approved a few new of them.

“I want somebody to be accountable for this, and if it was a mistake, for somebody to own up to it,” Nelson said.

Cohen also took hits from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who criticized the administration for delaying implementation of the Basic Health Program — an option for states to provide cost-efficient health coverage outside of Medicaid and the law’s new insurance exchanges.

HHS has said it will not have the Basic Health Program ready until 2015 — a year behind schedule. State officials have balked, and Cantwell echoed their criticisms Thursday during the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the status of the implementation effort.

“We’re very concerned about the approach by the agency in trying to thwart this effort,” she said. “Are you artificially raising the cost to all taxpayers by trying to lure them onto the exchange?”

Cantwell warned that many members of the Finance Committee are familiar with state-based cost-control efforts and would not look kindly on HHS subverting them. She said the department has sidelined the Basic Health Plan in order to focus on the exchanges — which will provide subsidies from the federal government.

“What I’m very concerned about is the agency seems to think the technology of the exchange is the holy grail, and you’re trying to lure states” into the exchanges, she said.

Cohen said the Basic Health Plan has simply had to take a backseat to other priorities.

“I don’t think we’re trying to lure people into the exchange,” he said.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was also skeptical about both the co-ops and HHS’ work on exchanges — specifically, integrating the complex and often outdated computer systems of the multiple federal agencies that will have a role in providing or assessing health coverage.

And Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized the administration for not extending the law’s definition of “affordable” coverage to family plans.

The health law makes subsidies available to people who cannot buy affordable coverage from an employer, and defines an affordable plan as one that costs less than 9.5 percent of the employee’s salary. But that standard only applies to an individual policy.

So if an employee could insure herself for less than 9.5 percent of her income, but couldn’t afford to cover her whole family through her employer’s plan, she wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies and healthcare would remain unaffordable.

View Comments

View the original article here

Why Undocumented Immigrants Are Terrified To Report Crimes, And How One City Is Fixing That

As leaders in some localities, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona are trying to make undocumented immigrants’ lives as inhospitable and miserable as possible, the city of Dayton, Ohio is trying to aid those immigrants if they become victims of crime.

This week, the Dayton City Commission approved $30,000 in funding to reach out to undocumented immigrants when they fall prey to crime. Because of their legal status, many migrants are understandably afraid to involve law enforcement if a crime is committed against them.

The Dayton Daily News has more:

“If individuals are undocumented, there is a significant deterrent for them potentially to report crime,” Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said. “As I’ve said many, many times, if you want crime to grow in a community, just have people too afraid to report it.”

Federal law provides “U-Visa” status for some undocumented immigrants who are victims of crime. If the victim helps law enforcement authorities investigate and prosecute the offender, they can apply for a U-Visa, which grants four years of lawful immigration status, plus the ability to apply for permanent residency. [...]

“We had an individual about a year or so ago brutally beaten and literally left for dead, who was undocumented,” Biehl said. “The reason this was reported is … the person literally had to crawl to the door of a house to call for help.”

U visas were created in the 2000 re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. However, not enough has been done to assuage immigrants’ fears and make them comfortable enough to report crimes. Between 2000 and early 2011, just 18,654 crime victims came forward and received U visas, a fraction of the crimes committed against the 14 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country. Federal law currently caps the number of U visas that can be issued annually at 10,000, but that limit has been debated in the current Violence Against Women Act re-authorization push. This week, the Senate voted to re-authorize the law, but it continues to face roadblocks in the Republican-led House.

The city of Dayton, led by Republican Mayor Gary Leitzell, has built a strong reputation in the past couple years as welcoming to immigrants, particularly those fleeing states with harsh new anti-immigrant laws. Immigrants, Leitzell said, bring “new ideas, new perspectives and new talent to our workforce. … To reverse the decades-long trend of economic decline in this city, we need to think globally.”

View the original article here

Walker Says No To Federal Medicaid Expansion

MADISON ? Gov. Scott Walker announced Wednesday that he won't propose expanding Medicaid services in Wisconsin, joining other Republican governors who have decided to reject federal money for covering more low-income residents under the health care overhaul law.

Instead, Walker outlined a hybrid approach that would allow more adults into the state health program, which he said would help cut the state's uninsured rate of 14 percent in half.

"I want to have fewer people in the state who are uninsured, but along with that I'd like to have fewer people in the state who are dependent on government," Walker said in describing his plan.

The decision came as a disappointment for the Obama administration and health care advocacy organizations, including Wisconsin hospitals, who had urged Walker to accept a broader expansion of the Medicaid program and take the billions of dollars in federal money that would come with it. Walker's proposal would not add to spending for low-income residents, but he was increasing overall spending on Medicaid programs by about $650 million over two years.

"I'm not certain what Gov. Walker is trying to prove," said Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach. "If we do not take this money, it's going to go to other states."

Walker became the 14th Republican governor to reject the Medicaid expansion as too costly in the long term. Six other Republican governors have decided to go along with the expansion. Overall, 19 states plus the District of Columbia appear to be on track to expand their Medicaid programs, with 17 still uncommitted.

The split indicates that the ranks of the uninsured may vary considerably between states after the new health overhaul goes into effect in 2014, despite health care reformers' efforts to make coverage almost uniform. The federal plan was designed to achieve blanket coverage by requiring those who can afford insurance to buy it, by providing subsidies to those who need financial help and by getting states to expand Medicaid to include more working poor residents.

Walker has been an outspoken opponent of the health care overhaul law as an unjustified expansion of government.

Democratic Assembly Leader Peter Barca said Walker bowed to "right-wing extremists."

"He's trying to muddy the waters of his bad decision by laying out a convoluted, uncertain plan and labeling it a 'hybrid' when he is actually taking an extreme path rejected by many conservative Republican governors," Barca said.

Republican leaders were quick to praise the plan although Walker provided few details. With Republicans controlling both houses of the Legislature, passage is all but certain.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos called it a "good hybrid" that reaffirms Medicaid as a program that takes care of the state's poorest residents, while allowing others to buy private insurance through a new government-sponsored online marketplace, called an exchange. Republican Sen. Alberta Darling, co-chair of the Legislature's budget committee, called the proposal "sensible and responsible."

Under Walker's plan, income eligibility for non-elderly adults would be cut in half from 200 percent of federal poverty level to just 100 percent. But more childless adults who are now excluded from the program would be admitted. Although the full expansion would add 175,000 more adults than Walker's proposal would, many of these people would become eligible for government subsidized coverage when the new federal exchanges go into operation, state officials said.

No one would be forced off Medicaid until the new federally run exchange begins offering subsidized insurance plans, Walker said.

Dennis Smith, secretary of Walker's Department of Health Services, said the plan would need federal approval, but that he expected to receive it based on earlier guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Judy Solomon of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, said that Wisconsin officials may be able to negotiate with HHS over receiving some federal money.

Had Walker accepted the expansion, the federal government would have paid all the additional costs for expanded Medicaid for the first three years, and at least 90 percent afterward. But Walker and other Republicans raised concerns that the state's share would escalate over time.

Under a full expansion, the state would have received $4.4 billion in federal money through 2020, according to Wisconsin's nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau said. But over four years, starting in 2016, new costs to the state would have totaled about $133 million.

Earlier this month, facing a similar choice, Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder announced he would propose accepting the federal terms. But the more conservative Republican governors in the region, including Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, have balked. Fallin and Iowa's Republican governor, Terry Branstad, have said they are exploring ways of providing more health care coverage with lower costs and greater flexibility.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind said he didn't foresee Wisconsin getting a better financial deal for providing health care coverage "in our lifetime."

"We need to get those who lack quality affordable health care in the system so our hospitals do not have to shift the costs of uncompensated care and emergency room visits onto our businesses and families," Kind said.

About 1.2 million people are covered by one of the state's Medicaid programs, such as BadgerCare Plus and SeniorCare.

View the original article here

Pharmacyclics jumps on drug approval plans

NEW YORK -- Shares of Pharmacyclics Inc. climbed to an all-time high Friday after the company said it expects to file for marketing approval of its cancer drug ibrutinib this year. If approved, it would be Pharmacyclics first drug for sale.

Pharmacyclics announced earlier this week that the Food and Drug Administration has deemed ibrutinib a breakthrough therapy as a treatment for mantle cell lymphoma. The FDA created the breakthrough therapy program in 2012 as a way to speed up the approval process for drugs that could be significant improvements in the treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases from what's currently on the market.

Through a partnership with Johnson & Johnson, Pharmacyclics is studying ibrutinib as a treatment for several types of lymphoma and leukemia, including mantle cell lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Shares of Pharmacyclics rose $6.79, or 8.5 percent, to close at $87 on Friday and set an all-time high of $87.82 during the session. The stock has surged nearly 24 percent over the three trading days since the company announced that the drug won breakthrough status.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Joel Sendek said the company is filing for approval sooner than he expected, and said he now thinks ibrutinib will reach the market in late 2014 as a treatment for mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said sales could reach $158 million in 2015.

Pharmacyclics also reported its quarterly results after the market closed on Thursday. Over the three months ended Dec. 31, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said it earned $41.9 million, or 56 cents per share, down from $56.3 million, or 78 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, adjusted earnings totaled 62 cents per share, compared with 82 cents per share in the prior-year period.

Revenue fell to $58 million from $77.9 million as the amount of money that it received for licensing and reaching drug development milestones declined. Most of Pharmacyclics' revenue comes from license payments from its drug development partners. In the latest quarter, that included a $50 million payment from Johnson & Johnson and $5 million from Novo Nordisk AS. Operating costs linked to research and development expenses also increased, shrinking profit margins.

The company is switching from a fiscal year ending in June to one ending in December. Over the last six months Pharmacyclics said its net income nearly tripled to $117.5 million, or $1.58 per share. Revenue more than doubled to $160.7 million from $77.9 million.

View the original article here

President should embrace North America's energy resources

By Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) - 02/15/13 02:15 PM ET

In his State of the Union address this week, the president focused his speech on the need to spur economic growth and boost America’s middle class. Included in his proposal was the need to make “America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing” and to take “control of our energy future.” While these are worthy goals, the president failed to outline the necessary steps to achieve them. Absent from the president’s speech were two powerful engines of growth – the Keystone XL pipeline and the development of America’s abundant coal reserves. Rather than harness the potential of the America’s rich energy resources, the president sadly continues to block these important opportunities to create jobs and advance our energy security. The administration’s "all-of-the-above but nothing-from-below" energy policy is harming the middle class.

The White House has needlessly delayed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in spite of the project’s promise to bring jobs and affordable energy to America. It has now been over 1,600 days since the Keystone XL pipeline application was filed with the State Department, and the American people are still waiting for the president to approve this landmark jobs and energy project. The Keystone XL pipeline will help create thousands of middle class jobs. Once constructed, the pipeline would bring nearly a million barrels a day of oil to the United States, helping to reduce our dependence on Middle East oil and providing a stable and affordable energy source to American businesses and consumers.
As the president delays approval of Keystone, his administration is also preventing the development of one of America’s most affordable and abundant energy resources. The United States is home to the largest estimated reserves of coal in the world, and coal remains our country’s greatest source of electricity. But the future of this important American resource is in jeopardy as the EPA continues to pursue harsh regulations aimed at shutting down coal plants. This regulatory attack on coal has already contributed to numerous plant and mine closures across the country and the loss of thousands of middle class jobs. EPA’s recently proposed rule regulating emissions for new power plants will effectively ban the construction of any new coal-fired power plants in America, and the administration is now considering additional rules to regulate emissions at existing power plants. These regulatory policies could mean the end of coal-fired generation in America.
The Keystone XL pipeline and our country’s vast coal reserves represent an opportunity to help create jobs, make energy more affordable, and restore a thriving middle class.  We have the potential to become North American energy independent and rebuild America’s economy, but the president must stop ignoring our energy resources and embrace these positive solutions. 

Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia, is ?vice-chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.

View Comments

View the original article here

GOP ‘Savior’ Marco Rubio Falls Back On The Same Old Anti-Woman Policies

In an interview on Thursday with conservative magazine Newsmax, Tea Party standard-bearer and so-called ‘savior’ of the Republican party Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed that he will become a cosponsor of the “Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.” The bill is a concerted effort to prevent girls in dangerous family situations from going across state lines to receive abortions.

Familiarly known as “the Grandmother Incarceration Act,” CIANA bills have come up in Congress several times in recent years. Nearly every iteration of the legislation would prevent even a victim of rape or incest from getting a ride to an abortion clinic beyond state lines from her grandmother or older sibling, if she is under the age of 18. Instead, the girl would be forced to inform her parents or legal guardian, and be required to have them present.

While the bill has not yet been introduced, previous versions of the text would even apply the requirements to girls who require a medically necessary, potentially lifesaving abortion.

The fact that Rubio will serve as a co-sponsor on the legislation reveals a lot about the supposed new face of the Republican party. The policy, like many of Rubio’s policy choices, is actually an old trick from the Grand Old Party, not some new approach to Republican ideals. And it falls in line with Rubio’s party’s, and the Senator’s own, recent anti-woman efforts:

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act because it allocated money to rape victims.

MINIMUM WAGE: He won’t support a minimum wage, despite its huge benefits for women.

BIRTH CONTROL: The senator introduced a bill that would have prevented millions of women from accessing birth control.

PAY EQUITY: He called a bill to promote pay equity between men and women “nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers.”

With his post-State of the Union rebuttal, Rubio signed up to be the face of a Republican party that is working hard to win over women and people of color, the groups that cost Republicans the election last time around. But with Rubio’s history of anti-woman policies, and now his renewed commitment to co-sponsor more of the same, he may just on the vanguard of a new Republican path back to the same Republican problems.

View the original article here

Fact Sheet: The President’s Plan to Ensure Hard Work Leads to a Decent Living

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

There’s a basic bargain in America.  It says that no matter who you are or where you’re from, if you’re willing to work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to find a good job, feel secure in your community, and support a family.  President Obama has fought for the middle class, and has made historic investments in making sure that there are ladders of opportunity for those working hard to make it to the middle class.  
The President’s plan builds on the progress we’ve made over the last four years to expand opportunity for every American and every community willing to do the work to lift themselves up.  But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges we face.  It will take a collaborative effort—between business and federal, state, and local officials; faith-based and non-profit organizations; kids and parents—to ensure that hard work leads to a decent living for every American.  The President’s plan:
• Rewards hard work by raising the minimum wage to $9.00: Right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year.  That means too many Americans who are putting in an honest, hard day’s work are living in poverty.  That’s unacceptable.  The President’s plan raises the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00, which would directly boost wages for 15 million workers and reduce poverty and inequality.

• Provides high-quality preschool for every child: Let’s give every child the fair shot he or she deserves.  For America to succeed in the 21st century, we must have the most dynamic, educated workforce in the world, and that education has to start early in life. But today, most four-year-olds aren’t in a high-quality public preschool program.  The President’s plan partners with states to expand high-quality preschool to every child. 

• Partners with communities to help them rebuild and put people back to work: A child’s zip code should never determine her destiny; but today, the neighborhood she grows up in impacts her odds of graduating high school, her health outcomes, and her lifetime economic opportunities. This year, the Administration will begin to partner with 20 communities that were hardest-hit by the recession to help get them back on their feet.  Working with local leaders, the President’s plan targets resources at creating jobs, public safety, education, and housing.

• Creates pathways to jobs for all Americans: The President’s plan offers incentives to companies that hire Americans who’ve got what it takes to fill a job opening, but have been out of work so long that no one will give them a chance anymore.  His plan also supports summer and year-round jobs for low-income youth.  This is in addition to his plan to equip Americans with the skills they need for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the 21st century.

• Expands early childhood opportunity for all Americans: In addition to providing access to high-quality preschool for every child, the President is proposing to make a significant investment in early learning opportunities for our youngest children—birth through age three—by expanding Early Head Start, child care, and other health and education programs.

• Strengthens families: The President is proposing to remove financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples; as well as continuing to support the critical role that fathers play in enhancing the intellectual, emotional, and financial well-being of their sons and daughters.

The President’s Commitment to Ensuring Hard Work Leads to a Decent Living

• Rewarding hard work by raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour: The President believes that no one who works full time should have to raise their family in poverty. But right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year – which leaves too many families struggling to make ends meet, with a family of four supported by a minimum wage worker still living below the poverty line, even counting tax credits for working families.  That’s why the President is calling on Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage to $9.00 and index it to inflation thereafter.  The President is also proposing to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, which has not been increased for over twenty years. The erosion in the real value of the minimum wage has been a factor in increasing inequality in recent decades. The President’s proposal would address this problem by raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation so that working families can keep up with rising costs.
o Raising the minimum wage mostly benefits adults, and especially working women: Around 60 percent of workers benefiting from a higher minimum wage are women, and few are teenagers – less than 20 percent.
o Raising the minimum wage helps parents: The average worker who would benefit from a rise in the minimum wage to $9 an hour brought home 46 percent of his or her household’s total wage and salary income in 2011, according to the Current Population Survey.
o For a working family earning $20,000 - $30,000, the extra $3,500 per year from raising the minimum wage would cover:
? The family’s spending on groceries for a year; or
? The family’s spending on utilities for a year; or
? The family’s spending on gasoline and clothing for a year; or
? Six months of housing.
• Providing high-quality preschool for every child: For America to succeed in the 21st century, we must have the most dynamic, educated workforce in the world, and that education has to start early in life. Every dollar invested in early learning and development programs saves about $7 down the road in higher earnings that yield more revenue, and lower government spending on social services and crime prevention. The President is presenting a plan to provide access to preschool for every child, while also incentivizing states to expand access to full-day kindergarten.
o The President’s proposal will improve quality and expand access to preschool, through a partnership with all 50 states, to extend federal funds to expand high-quality public preschool to reach all low- and moderate-income four-year olds from families at or below 200% of poverty.  The U.S. Department of Education will allocate funding to states based on their share of low- and moderate-income four-year olds, and distribute funds to local school districts and other partner providers to implement the program.  The proposal would include an incentive for states to broaden participation in their public preschool program for additional middle-class families. 
o Funds will support states as they ensure that children are enrolled in high-quality programs.   In order to access federal funding, states would be required to meet quality benchmarks that are linked to better outcomes for children, which include:
? state-level standards for early learning;
? qualified teachers for all preschool classrooms; and
? a plan to implement comprehensive data and assessment systems.
o Preschool programs across the states would meet common and consistent standards for quality across all programs, including:
? well-trained teachers, who are paid comparably to K-12 staff;
? small class sizes and low adult-to-child ratios;
? comprehensive health and related services; and
? effective evaluation and review of programs.
• Partnering with communities to help them rebuild and put people back to work: A child’s zip code should never determine her destiny; but today, the neighborhood she grows up in impacts her odds of graduating high school, her health outcomes, and her lifetime economic opportunities. Working with local leadership, the President is proposing to align a number of his signature revitalization initiatives from the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department for Agriculture to ensure that federal programs and resources are focused intensely on 20 communities hardest hit by the recession. 
We’ve seen this approach work in places like San Antonio, TX where Mayor Julian Castro is revitalizing neighborhoods that have been distressed for decades, leveraging significant private investment to focus funding where the need is greatest and the evidence of impact is strongest.  In San Antonio, the United Way is working alongside teachers and cops to improve young people’s chances at graduating from high school.
The Administration will designate each of these areas as “Promise Zones” through a transparent, competitive process that can bring a number of programs to bear, including: 
o Targeted investments can transform high-poverty communities into places of opportunity that can attract private investment, improve education, and create jobs.  Such investments may include:   
? Targeting neighborhoods to reduce violent crime by providing Department of Justice funding for local law enforcement and community leaders;
? Transforming high-poverty neighborhoods by leveraging Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to attract private investment to tear down distressed public housing and build new mixed income homes, while ensuring that low-income residents do not get displaced; and
? Ensuring students in these communities graduate high school prepared to enter the workforce or are prepared for college by utilizing Department of Education funding to expand early education, after school and summer instructional time, as well as reduce dropout rates.
o Promise Zone tax incentives to stimulate growth and investments in targeted communities. These incentives will includes tax credits for hiring workers and tax write-offs for capital investment within the Zone.
o Helping local leaders navigate federal programs, cut red tape, and use federal resources more effectively.
• Creating pathways to jobs: The President’s plan helps low-income youth find summer and year-round jobs, teaches our kids the real world skills they need to find a job, and offers incentives to companies that hire the long-term unemployed.  These steps are critical to ensuring that our economic recovery reaches all Americans. In his FY2013 budget, the President proposed a Pathways Back to Work Fund to help support job and work-based training opportunities for long term unemployed and low income adults, , and support summer and year-round jobs for low-in¬come youth. The fund would build on the successful efforts of the Recovery Act’s TANF-ECF program, which helped support job opportunities for 260,000 low-income individuals in 39 States and DC, and the Administration’s Summer Jobs+ effort in 2012. The President has shown a commitment to continuing to provide support to unemployed Americans by proposing wide-ranging reforms to the unemployment insurance program, some of which were adopted in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2012. Recognizing that the opportunity to acquire the skills to get and keep a good job starts early and through education, the President will also announce:
o Modernizing America’s high schools for real-world learning: The President is announcing a new competition to kick-start a redesign of high schools to emphasize real-world learning. The President’s plan will invest in redesigning high school to focus on providing challenging, relevant experiences, and reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and that create classes that focus on technology, science, engineering, and other skills today’s employers are demanding to fill jobs open now and in the future. In addition, the President is proposing to strengthen and reform our federal investment in career and technical education to better align programs with the needs of employers and with the demands of higher education.
• Expanding early childhood opportunity for all Americans: Today, far too many kids are already behind academically and developmentally by the time they start school, and never truly catch up—compromising our ability to compete in a global economy and sidelining huge pools of untapped talent. 
o Starting early childhood education from birth. In addition to providing high-quality preschool for every child, the President’s proposal will grow the availability of high-quality early learning programs for young children to ensure that the expansion of preschool services for four-year-olds is part of a cohesive and well-aligned system of early learning for children from birth to age five.  This investment will focus on our existing infrastructure of federally-funded programs such as Early Head Start, and the Child Care and Development Fund to expand services and boost their quality.
o Extending and expanding voluntary home visiting: For our youngest at-risk children and parents, the President will also propose a substantial investment to expand voluntary home visiting programs that provide nurses, social workers, and other professionals to connect families to assistance that will improve a child’s health, development, and ability to learn. This will help ensure that our most vulnerable Americans are on track from birth, and that later educational investments rest upon a strong foundation.
• Strengthening families: The President will also continue his commitment to support healthy marriages for all families, including removing deterrents for low-income couples to get married and supporting the critical role that fathers play in enhancing the intellectual, emotional, and financial well-being of their sons and daughters. The Administration proposes to allow existing federal programs, like the child support program, to implement models that get more men working and engaging with their children. The Administration also proposes to allow States to test strategies to overcome financial deterrents to forming safe and stable two-parent households and marriage in federal programs. 

Building on the Progress We’ve Made

In addition to the President’s comprehensive reform agenda to increase access to high quality education for all Americans, the Administration will build on a strong foundation in these key areas that help create ladders of opportunity.
• Increased access to early childhood education: The Administration’s significant investments in Head Start, Early Head Start, and child care funding have increased access to early education for hundreds of thousands of young children. We increased the number of children served in Head Start and Early Head Start by 61,000 and boosted child care funding, while implementing historic reforms to ensure that Head Start children are served only by the best programs. Under the President’s leadership, enrollment in Early Head Start in particular has nearly doubled. The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge has rewarded 14 states that have agreed to raise the bar on the quality of their public and private early childhood education programs, establishing higher standards across programs and providing critical links with health, nutrition, mental health, and family support for our neediest children.
• Supporting strong families and marriage: The Affordable Care Act invests more federal funds in voluntary home visiting services for low-income parents and newborns—providing hundreds of thousands of families with services on maternal and child health, parenting skills, nutrition, child abuse prevention, and parental education and employment. The President fought to extend an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) that reduces “marriage penalties” in the tax code for working parents with children. Finally, the President has a long-standing and deeply personal commitment to encouraging both parents to be actively engaged in a child’s life, with a particular emphasis on reaching fathers through partnerships and modernizing our federal programs.
• Revitalizing Neighborhoods: Since 2009, the President has invested more than $350 million in more than 100 of the nation’s persistent pockets of poverty through two of his signature programs. Fashioned after the Harlem Children’s Zone, the Administration has invested in Promise Neighborhoods to support high-poverty communities in building a ‘cradle through college’ pipeline of educational supports to help young people graduate high school and pursue higher education. Choice Neighborhoods helps transform neighborhoods with distressed public housing and concentrated poverty into opportunity-rich, mixed-income neighborhoods, by aligning investments in improved housing with expansion of high-quality educational opportunities.
• Partnering with local leaders to support distressed cities: In 2011, the White House launched Strong Cities, Strong Communities, a unique partnership between Mayors and the federal government to drive economic growth in chronically distressed cities. Through federal teams on the ground and specialized technical assistance, the pilot is helping seven Mayors implement their economic visions to promote strategic partnerships between government and businesses that create jobs, implement strategic city planning, and use taxpayer dollars more efficiently.
• Providing jobs and skills training for low-income youth and adults:  The President’s Pathways Back to Work Fund would build upon success in the Recovery Act, which helped place 372,000 low-income youth into summer and year-round employment and supported job opportunities for about 260,000 low-income individuals in 2009 and 2010. The President’s Summer Jobs+ Initiative in 2012 also secured commitments from the private sector, non-profits and government at all levels to provide opportunities for low-income and disconnected youth.  In total, more than 150 Summer Jobs+ partners committed over 300,000 training and mentorship opportunities, including over 100,000 paid jobs.
o Reforming our Unemployment Insurance System to Help Put People Back to Work: The President has already shown a commitment to continuing to provide support to unemployed Americans and to make our unemployment system more of a back-to-work system. The President proposed, and Congress adopted in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2012, wide-ranging reform to the unemployment insurance program that encourage states to adopt work-sharing programs to prevent layoffs, help the unemployed start new businesses, and give states authority to run pilots helping workers on unemployment insurance get on-the-job experience designed to lead to employment.
? Strengthening economic security for all working Americans through tax relief: As part of the end-of-year fiscal deal, the Obama Administration secured permanent middle-class tax relief, preventing a $2,200 income tax increase this year for the typical family of four. The President fought hard to include extensions of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit improvements that provide critical assistance to 15 million low- and moderate-income working families with children. 

The two leaders discussed the world economy and President Obama's plan to pursue a U.S.-European Union free trade agreement, which was mentioned in his State of the Union address earlier this week.

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov.

Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, answers questions from the public about immigration reform and President Obama's State of the Union Address in an “Open for Questions” session moderated by Elianne Ramos from LATISM.

view all related blog posts

View the original article here

The politics of lowered expectations

The president’s State of the Union address represented a sustained exercise in the politics of lowered expectations. President Obama used this year’s speech to remind Americans of a familiar list of policy priorities and to signal that he would not be opening up a broad new agenda in his second term.

Just four years ago, the president faced a seemingly more immediate, focused, and insistent set of problems. His corresponding rhetoric reflected a keener sense of urgency, innovation, and leadership. In 2009, President Obama confronted a ballooning unemployment rate, unstable markets, and a housing industry near collapse. At the time, the president pledged to the nation that “we will rebuild, we will recover” and he promised “to act boldly and wisely to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.”

Now, four years later, and just a few weeks into his second term, the president used the first few minutes of his 2013 State of the Union to look back on some of the progress he had purportedly made in meeting these ambitious goals. He cited our gradual emergence from a “grueling recession,” the creation of new jobs under his administration, the renewal of the American auto industry, the partial “healing” of the housing market, and the “rebounding” of Wall Street.

But, in projecting ahead, the president’s 2013 agenda was much more modest. This time, his aspirations included raising the minimum wage and “removing the financial deterrents to marriage” for the poor. Much of his speech reflected an impulse to make government dollars stretch further — a laudable goal, but hardly a rallying cry for a nation facing difficult and important policy choices.

Even on the issues where the president spoke most passionately, his pleas for action were tempered. The culmination of his call for gun control was urging Congress to provide a “simple vote” on existing legislation. Similarly, his insistence that we must “look out for our fellow Americans” was bolstered by the sense that our government should not provide a worse example than its people.

Perhaps the tone of lowered expectations reflected the reality of a second term president facing a divided Congress and a public with somewhat mixed views about the president’s major policy accomplishments like the Affordable Care Act and the TARP.

But comparing the 2009 State of the Union to the most recent speech reveals another powerful reality — and one that has troubling implications as we move into the legislative challenges of the next four years.

In 2009, the president, the Congress, and the populace at large seemed to be under no illusions: the nation was facing an economic crisis. Indeed, it is somewhat chilling to read President Obama’s delicate (and not entirely convincing) pledge that bank deposits were “safe” and citizens could “rely on the continued operation of our financial system.” Indeed, four years ago the president spoke directly to this state of national anxiety, by linking his response to the financial meltdown with previous periods when governments turned calamity into opportunity. Among other examples, he cited the post-Civil War infrastructure boom and the World War II GI Bill.

In 2009, the president and the Congress acted decisively because everyone agreed there was a crisis and they rallied around it.

Four years later, President Obama reassured his audience that we faced only a “manufactured crisis,” a reference to our past and future legislative deadlines for resolving impasses on the budget and debt ceiling. Presumably, the president meant that the underlying financial issues did not pose trenchant problem on their own - -only the “artificial” deadlines imposed by Washington and the consequences (sequestration, tumbling markets, deepening distrust) these could provoke.

But this conclusion isn’t obvious. Our continued butting against these deadlines speaks to underlying and seemingly intractable substantive disagreement about budgeting, policy priorities, and the status of entitlements. The underlying crisis is not that we don’t have a big enough hourglass, but that the nation needs a totally new business plan — and we can’t even decide on what fonts to use for the spreadsheets.

The president, the Congress, and the nation must seize on this state of affairs as an emergency — and must respond with the focus, initiative, creativity, and compromise that often results from such a shared sense of crisis. Until that happens, we will drift to a future in which our financial tribulations worsen and our ability to address them weakens.

Washington’s unwillingness to think in crisis mode is a problem of its own making.

View Comments

View the original article here