'Americans refuse to be terrorized,' Obama says in weekly address

President Obama used his weekly address to recount acts of heroism and generosity in response to this week’s Boston Marathon bombing, declaring that the nation’s spirit will not be shaken.

Three people – including an eight-year-old boy – were killed and more than 100 were injured when metal from the blast ripped through a crowd of people gathered near the race’s finish line on Monday.

The following days saw more bloodshed as a campus security officer was killed, along with one of the suspects, during a tense manhunt that put the entire Boston area on lockdown.

“But in the days since, the world has witnessed one sure and steadfast truth: Americans refuse to be terrorized,” Obama said. “Ultimately, that’s what we’ll remember from this week. That’s what will remain. Stories of heroism and kindness; resolve and resilience; generosity and love.”

The president lauded the actions of police officers, emergency medical technicians and the national guard, who “ran toward danger” to help the injured. Also helping, Obama recounted, were race volunteers, spectators and exhausted runners, some of whom reportedly continued running to the hospital to donate blood for the victims.

He said the United States’ reaction to attacks upon its own is part of what defines the nation.

“If anyone wants to know who we are; what America is; how we respond to evil and terror – that’s it,” he said. “Selflessly. Compassionately. And unafraid."

Obama offered a public thanks to law enforcement and federal authorities called upon to investigate the crimes. A manhunt appeared to end late Friday, when a man believed to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody after a standoff in Boston’s Watertown neighborhood.

His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after being hit numerous times during a pre-dawn firefight with police.

“As a country, we are eternally grateful for the profound sacrifices they make in the line of duty – sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice to defend the people they’ve sworn to protect,” Obama said.

It was a busy week for the law enforcement community, which was also called upon to track the suspect now in custody for sending a series of poison-laced letters to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss., faces as many as 15 years in prison, following his Wednesday arrest.

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Hillary Surges, Reince Priebus escalates GOP war on women, Americans demand jobs

Hillary Clinton has taken a commanding position in national politics, and as I wrote in my latest column, it would be spectacular if Bill and Hillary Clinton would work with the Clinton Global Initiative to devise major new jobs proposals.

Meanwhile, both parties should be embarrassed by the latest depressing jobs report. And Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus escalated the GOP war against women with his intellectually dishonest but highly revealing cheap-shot against Planned Parenthood that misrepresented the group's position on abortion.

It was another week in American politics highlighted by the overwhelming and deep yearning by Democrats that Hillary should run for president in 2016, and the overwhelming and powerful support she would receive from Americans if she does.

My hope is that various Democrats who want her to run and would work for her minimize their cable television chants in support of her. Let's give Hillary some time and space and peace for now.

Hopefully, rather than focusing on political tactics and news cycle spin, we focus on creating jobs. The Clintons have a brilliant job-creating (and deficit-reducing) record from the years of the Clinton presidency and can play an extraordinary role in generating new ideas.

Hillary Clinton did say there is much unfinished business regarding the advancement of women and will no doubt be motivated even more by Reince Priebus's clumsy and dishonest attack on Planned Parenthood.

One Planned Parenthood lobbyist did make an unfortunate comment, and Planned Parenthood's national leadership did promptly correct the record and make things right. Priebus should have known better than to imply that Planned Parenthood supports infanticide when the charge is transparently false and dishonest.

He should not lower himself or his party by making scandalous attacks without checking his facts and setting the record straight. He should not be whining like a crybaby about how unfair the media is, and he should instead apologize to Planned Parenthood.

He should never again support Republican Senate candidates who make ignorant comments about rape. He should reflect on why female voters so overwhelmingly reject his party and its candidates.

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Unemployment To Cost Young Americans $20 Billion Over Next Decade

Young Americans make up nearly half of America’s unemployed workforce, according to a study released Thursday, and the unemployment rate for Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 is a staggering 15.1 percent. But the bleak job prospects for young Americans isn’t just contributing to the nation’s persistently high unemployment rate. According to a study from the Center for American Progress, the long-term effects will hurt young Americans for years to come.

The negative effects of unemployment, in fact, will cost young Americans more than $20 billion over the next decade, CAP’s Sarah Ayres found:

Not only is unemployment bad for young people now, but the negative effects of being unemployed have also been shown to follow a person throughout his or her career. A young person who has been unemployed for six months can expect to earn about $22,000 less over the next 10 years than they could have expected to earn had they not experienced a lengthy period of unemployment. In April 2010 the number of people ages 20–24 who were unemployed for more than six months had reached an all-time high of 967,000 people. We estimate that these young Americans will lose a total of $21.4 billion in earnings over the next 10 years.

It isn’t just unemployment that is depressing wages for young workers, though. College graduates and young workers are increasingly being pushed in to low-wage jobs as better opportunities aren’t available to them because of a slacking job market. Low-wage jobs have made up a majority of the jobs added since the end of the recession, and there are now 13.4 million college graduates occupying them — a 19 percent increase since the start of the recession.

These losses also hurt the broader economy, as young Americans are less able to spend money. Reports have already shown that unemployment for young Americans is holding back the housing recovery and thus the overall economic recovery, and other reports paint an even worse picture. As Ayres noted, this unemployment will cost young Americans $1.6 trillion over their lifetimes, which will also reduce revenues for the federal government.

But even as youth unemployment remains in crisis, the government has cut more than $1 billion from youth job programs and continues to focus on reducing the deficit instead of policies that will create jobs and help young Americans — and the country as a whole — finally recover from the Great Recession.

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Two-Thirds of Americans Don't Know If They Will Insure Under Obamacare

Break Out the Bandages, Santelli's Tackling ObamaCareCNBC's Rick Santelli maps out the problems he sees with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The survey, which was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, had an overall margin of error of 3.6 percent. At total of 83 percent of those surveyed currently have health insurance, while 17 percent were uninsured—which tracks that national proportions.

(Read More: Uh Oh, Obamacare Math Sinks In for Small Businesses)

Under the ACA, uninsured Americans have until the beginning of 2014 to purchase insurance through health-care exchanges being set up nationwide or other venues—or face a financial penalty. That penalty is equal to $95 per adult, and $47.50 per child, up to a maximum of $285—or 1 percent of household income, whichever is greater.

Those penalties will escalate in future years.

Adams of InsuranceQuotes.com said uninsured people might be holding off making a decision on buying health insurance because "folks are saying that the penalty is low."

"But I have a feeling that it's more that they're not educated," she said.

"It's not surprising that people are confused and uninformed," Adams said. "It's a complicated system. It involves a lot of detail that the average person, unfortunately, is not going to grasp."

That confusion not only could hurt individuals' wallets—by making them pay out-of-pocket for health care as needed—but also put financial pressure on insurers offering coverage through exchanges set up under the ACA.

That system is predicated on the theory that enough healthy people will enroll and buy insurance so that their premiums will offset the costs of benefits for less healthy people in the same plan. If not enough healthy people sign up, Adams noted, insurers will be on the hook for the benefit payouts regardless, cutting into, or erasing their profits.

"If only the sick enroll," Adams warned, "it could be very precarious for the industry and the cost of insurance."

Adams said ignorance could hit lower-income Americans particularly hard.

"There were 68 percent of people who are earning under $30,000, who are not sure what they're going to do," Adams said, despite the fact that "they are certainly eligible" for tax credits to offset the costs of buying insurance under the ACA.

"They should" sign up, she said.

Adams noted that if poor adults without dependents live in states that are not expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, they risk not being covered by that health-insurance program despite making the same low wages as adults who have dependents.

—By CNBC's Dan Mangan. Follow him on Twitter @danpostman.

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Fox: Americans Need Assault Weapons To Protect Themselves From An Iranian Invasion, Al Qaeda

During a roundtable discussion on Friday, Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreed with a network contributor who argued that Americans need to access military-style assault weapons to protect themselves from an Iranian invasion.

“What scares the hell out of me we have a president, as we were discussing during break, that wants to take away our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration,” Angela McGlowan, a former lobbyist for News Corp., said in the midst of a conversation about violence in Syria.

Dobbs quickly agreed, adding, “we’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared? ” Watch it:

The panel also falsely argued that widespread gun ownership in Israel has helped prevent terrorist attacks, though access to firearms is strictly limited to people who “can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger.” Approximately “170,000 guns are licensed for private use in Israel,” while assault weapons are “banned for private ownership.”

[HT: MMFA]

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Investment Company Urges Americans To Stash Money In Belize, ‘One Of The World’s Top Tax Havens’

Tax havens are in many ways the liger of the financial world: everyone knows they exist, but few among us have ever seen one. They exist in a realm most of us remain blissfully unaware of, accessed only by the wealthiest in society.

However, fresh off their 15 minutes of fame during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, tax havens are now being promoted more openly as investment companies try to stoke rich people’s fears and encourage them to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Exhibit A is an investment company named Buy Belize, whose website appeals to wealthy individuals who “lose sleep over the security of [their] assets & hard-earned money” using right-wing language terminology such as “death taxes,” which they incorrectly list at 55 percent (it’s actually 40 percent). The group encourages people to take their money out of the United States and store it in Belize instead, which they call “one of world’s top tax havens — a truly safe locale for your money.” Buy Belize also offers to set up shell companies — International Business Companies — to “protect investments from taxes as well as legal judgments.”

Buy Belize also advertises on The Glenn Beck Program, appealing to wealthy people who are “frustrated, nervous, and worried about change” to open offshore accounts in Belize, “one of the last tax havens left in the world.”

Listen to the radio ad:

Offshore accounts are a principal mechanism rich people and corporations use to avoid paying taxes in the United States. A study last year found that the super-wealthy around the world are shielding at least $21 trillion in secret offshore tax havens, and the problem has grown significantly in the past few years. And it isn’t just Mitt Romney who stores his wealth in foreign tax havens. In 2012, the 60 largest corporations in America offshored $166 billion, costing American taxpayers billions in lost revenue. As a result, this loss of tax revenue is draining federal and state budgets.

To learn more about offshore accounts, listen to NPR’s Planet Money as they demonstrate opening up a shell company “UnBelizeAble.”

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NM alters Medicaid proposal for Native Americans

SANTA FE, N.M. -- Gov. Susana Martinez's administration says a proposed revision of Medicaid will require only some eligible Native Americans to obtain health services through managed care organizations.

The Human Services Department said Tuesday the federal government has accepted parts of a planned overhaul of the program providing health care for a fourth of New Mexico's population.

Indians qualifying for Medicare and Medicaid or needing nursing home care will obtain health services through managed care organizations. Other Indians will continue having an option of managed care or a fee-for-service system.

The state initially proposed requiring managed care for all eligible Native Americans, but tribal leaders said that could limit access to medical providers for Indians in remote areas.

The Medicaid overhaul, if fully approved by the federal government, will be implemented in 2014.

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Three Problems Contributing To Americans’ Sky High Medical Bills — And Three Ways To Fix Them

This week’s issue of Time Magazine takes a deep dive into Americans’ medical bills and the roots of the U.S. health care industry’s rampant inflation — costs that force one in four American seniors into bankruptcy and over one in three Americans to forgo care.

The investigative piece highlights the exorbitant costs of the most commonplace procedures and medications, and how insurance coverage often falls through for Americans who encounter unaffordable out-of-pocket costs due to the rising price of health care technology and services. Furthermore, it is often impossible for patients to ascertain why they are being charged what they are for care — a pricing opacity that is truly unique to the service-centered health care industry. Here are the three biggest takeaways from the Time exposé on the unsustainable foundations of American health care costs — and some ideas for shifting the U.S. medical landscape towards a more equitable system:

The indefensible costs of medical testing, technology, and drugs. Much of the report focuses on the costs of receiving basic care and testing, such as diabetes tests, drawing blood samples, or even taking plain old Tylenol — which one hospital in the report marked up to $1.50 per pill, approximately 100 times its general market price, for a cancer patient. Hospitals are largely able to get away with this because they are, as the article puts it, “sellers in what is the ultimate seller’s market,” so device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital chains — even technically “nonprofit” ones — are free to run up the tabs on Americans’ care. Use market competition and price negotiations to lower costs. In its Senior Protection Plan, the Center for American Progress (CAP) advocates tying relatively low Medicare drug rebates to more generous Medicaid drug rebates, and enforcing competitive bidding for all health care products in both the public and private sectors, as well as intrastate price negotiations in the private medical sector that constrains annual spending to a predesignated cap. All told, such reforms would reduce American health care spending by at least $180 billion.People usually don’t know why they get charged what they do for care. It’s a common mantra among health care reform advocates — America doesn’t have a health care system, it has a sick care system. Services are charged after the fact, often in the form a hefty, inscrutable bill that tells patients very little about why they are being asked to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to receive care that can mean the difference between life and death. This opacity allows providers to get away with jacking up the price of services even as medical technology makes huge strides — which should theoretically lower costs. One GAO report states that “the lack of price transparency and the substantial variation in amounts hospitals pay for some IMD [implantable medical devices] raise questions about whether hospitals are achieving the best prices possible.”Make hospitals issue easily understandable receipts for all health care services.This is a relatively simple fix that would help facilitate further cost reductions by rooting price negotiations in easily-available, verifiable, and uniform data. As the CAP health policy team’s Topher Spiro states in an email to ThinkProgress, “We propose full price transparency—so it wouldn’t take a seven month investigation by a reporter to find out what prices are being charged.” The best possible outcome would be for hospitals and insurers to provide a comprehensive list of services to all patients and beneficiaries that let Americans know exactly how much a particular disease treatment or procedure will cost them.Americans get care at expensive hospital chains that don’t necessarily provide the best service. As Time’s article points out, national and multi-national hospital chains rule the American medical industry — but that doesn’t mean they provide the cheapest, highest quality, or most efficient care. For instance, at the Texas giant MD Anderson, hospital administrators charged Sean Recchi over ten times as much for a chest x-ray as they would have been reimbursed by Medicare, which is required by law to approximate the price of services rendered. Why? Because Sean Recchi had subpar private insurance, and MD Anderson could get away with it.Encourage patients to visit high-performing hospitals with insurance incentives. Americans might believe that such hospitals are their only recourse — but that doesn’t have to be true. One approach to encouraging providers to provide more efficient, quality, and affordable care would be the creation of tiered insurance plans that reward patients — through lower premiums and deductibles — who use low-cost, high-quality hospitals for their care instead of the highest-cost brand name hospitals.

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The Other Aaron’s Law: How FASTR Could Help Americans Access The Research They Paid For

Just over a month after internet folk hero and activist Aaron Swartz ended his own life, a bipartisan group of law-makers have introduced legislation that would make progress on a cause near and dear to his heart: Open access to publicly funded research. The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), introduced this week by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), and Kevin Yoder (R-KS) in the House and Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) in the Senate, “require[s] federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal,” building on the success of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) 2008 public access policy.

Swartz faced a maximum sentence of decades in prison at the time of his death for charges related to his alleged downloading of nearly 5 million documents from the academic database JSTOR, in what many believe was an attempt to release the data. While efforts to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the law Swartz was being prosecuted under, using the moniker “Aaron’s Law” emerged quickly, the introduction of FASTR is the first legislative effort since his death to address the open access movement — the effort to provide unrestricted access to peer-reviewed research online.

Here’s how academic publishing works: Research is largely done by members of university communities (frequently funded by the public) who submit research to journals for publication (sometimes paying for the privilege). Then journals send the research back out to other academics to be edited blind (usually pro-bono), and the journal’s (often for profit) publishers sell back access to the published research to university libraries.

While the largest of the for-profit academic publishers, Elsevier, made $1.1 billion in profits in 2011 with a profit margin of around 35 percent, libraries have struggled to afford rising subscription costs that drove up expenditures by a staggering 273 percent between 1986 and 2004. The Harvard Faculty Council released a statement on the crisis last year noting that the prices for online content from two major providers increased by around 145 percent over the last six years alone, saying “[m]any large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive.”

FASTR is not an outright solution to this broken system, but it is a substantive step in the right direction that would provide open access because academic federal funding is the primary source of basic research support in the U.S. (the majority of which is carried out by academic institutions). And there are signs that the open access movement is making dents in the the academic publishing industry’s armor, like JSTOR’s Register & Read program. Neither that limited concession or FASTR will fully bring about the world of free information Swartz envisioned, but taken together they are a sign that world is slowly moving in the right direction.

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GOP Senator Would Take Away Health Coverage From 30 Million Americans To Avoid Military Cuts

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday the government should protect the Defense Department from automatic spending cuts by slashing $1.2 trillion from the Affordable Care Act.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham suggested that the sequester’s across-the-board cuts to federal spending, including about a roughly 7.5 percent reduction in military spending, would be “destroying the military.” But rather than agree to President Obama’s proposed alternatives to the sequester, the South Carolina Republican said we should save money by eliminating health care for the 30 million people covered by the Affordable Care Act:

CHRIS WALLACE: Let me just ask you one more question about the sequestration before we let you go, Senator. You know if we go into the sequester, the president is going to hammer Republicans, the White House already put out a list of all the things, terrible things that will happen if a sequester kicks in, 70,000 children losing Head Start. 2100 fewer food inspectors and small business will lose $900 million in loan guarantees and you know, Senator, the president will say your party is forcing this to protect tax cuts for the wealthy.

GRAHAM: Well, all i can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — take Obamacare and put it on the table. You can make $86,000 a year in income and still get a government subsidy under Obamacare. Obamacare is destroying health care in this country and people are leaving the private sector, because their companies cannot afford to offer Obamacare and if you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, look at Obamacare, don’t destroy the military and cut blindly across the board. There are many ways to do it but the president is the commander-in-chief and on his watch we’ll begin to unravel the finest military in the history of the world, at a time when we need it most. The Iranians are watching us, we are allowing people to be destroyed in Syria, and i’m disappointed in our commander-in-chief.

The draconian cuts to vital programs Graham and other Republicans are demanding, including providing health insurance for the millions of Americans who otherwise would not have it, will hurt the economy and hurt real people.

But Graham’s “solution” also misses a key reality: Obamacare actually reduced the deficit. His proposal to put its elimination on the table would mean increasing the budget deficit by an estimated $109 billion over the same 10-year period, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

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Fact Sheet President Obama’s Plan for Early Education for all Americans

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

“In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children…studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, form more stable families of their own.  We know this works.  So let’s do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.”
President Barack Obama
State of the Union, February 12, 2013

The beginning years of a child’s life are critical for building the early foundation needed for success later in school and in life.  Leading economists agree that high-quality early learning programs can help level the playing field for children from lower-income families on vocabulary, social and emotional development, while helping students to stay on track and stay engaged in the early elementary grades.  Children who attend these programs are more likely to do well in school, find good jobs, and succeed in their careers than those who don’t.  And research has shown that taxpayers receive a high average return on investments in high-quality early childhood education, with savings in areas like improved educational outcomes, increased labor productivity, and a reduction in crime. 

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to expand access to high-quality preschool to every child in America.  As part of that effort, the President will propose a series of new investments that will establish a continuum of high-quality early learning for a child – beginning at birth and continuing to age 5.  By doing so, the President would invest critical resources where we know the return on our dollar is the highest: in our youngest children.

• Providing High-Quality Preschool for Every Child:  The President is proposing a new federal-state partnership to provide all low- and moderate-income four-year old children with high-quality preschool, while also expanding these programs to reach additional children from middle class families and incentivizing full-day kindergarten policies. This investment – financed through a cost-sharing model with states – will help close America’s school readiness gap and ensure that children have the chance to enter kindergarten ready for success.

• Growing the Supply of Effective Early Learning Opportunities for Young Children: To expand high-quality early learning opportunities in the years before preschool, the President will call for a significant investment in a new Early Head Start-Child Care partnership.  Competitive grants will support communities that expand the availability of Early Head Start and child care providers that can meet the highest standards of quality for infants and toddlers, serving children from birth through age 3. 

• Extending and Expanding Evidence-Based, Voluntary Home Visiting: Voluntary home visiting programs enable nurses, social workers, and other professionals to connect families to services and educational support that will improve a child’s health, development, and ability to learn.   President Obama has already committed $1.5 billion to expand home visitation to hundreds of thousands of America’s most vulnerable children and families across all 50 states.  The President will pursue substantial investments to expand these important programs to reach additional families in need.

The President’s Commitment to Early Education

A zip code should never predetermine the quality of any child’s educational opportunities.  Yet studies show that children from low-income families are less likely to have access to high-quality early education, and less likely to enter school prepared for success.  By third grade, children from low-income families who are not reading at grade level are six times less likely to graduate from high school than students who are proficient.  Often, the high costs of private preschool and lack of public programs also narrow options for middle-class families.

High-quality early childhood education provides the foundation for all children’s success in school and helps to reduce achievement gaps.  Despite the individual and economic benefits of early education, our nation has lagged in its commitment to ensuring the provision of high quality public preschool in our children’s earliest years. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that the United States ranks 28th out of 38 countries for the share of four-year olds enrolled in early childhood education.  And fewer than 3 in 10 four-year olds are enrolled in high-quality programs. 

Preschool for All

• The President’s proposal will improve quality and expand access to preschool, through a cost sharing 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 dollars to states based their share of four-year olds from low- and moderate-income families and funds would be distributed 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, which states may choose to reach and serve in a variety of ways, such as a sliding-scale arrangement.

• 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:

o State-level standards for early learning;
o Qualified teachers for all preschool classrooms; and
o A plan to implement comprehensive data and assessment systems.

Preschool programs across the states would meet common and consistent standards for quality across all programs, including:
o Well-trained teachers, who are paid comparably to K-12 staff;
o Small class sizes and low adult to child ratios;
o A rigorous curriculum;
o Comprehensive health and related services; and
o Effective evaluation and review of programs.

• The proposal also encourages states to expand the availability of full-day kindergarten.  Only 6 out of 10 of America’s kindergarten students have access to a full day of learning.  In order to ensure that our kindergartners spend the time they need in school to reach rigorous benchmarks and standards, funds under this program may also be used to expand full-day kindergarten once states have provided preschool education to low- and moderate-income four year-olds.

• Under the President’s proposal, investment in the federal Head Start program will continue to grow.  The President’s plan will maintain and build on current Head Start investments, to support a greater share of infants, toddlers, and three-year olds in America’s Head Start centers, while state preschool settings will serve a greater share of four-year olds. 

Quality Early Learning for Our Youngest Children

• The President will also launch a new Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership program, to support states and communities that expand the availability of Early Head Start and child care providers that can meet the highest standards of quality for infants and toddlers, serving children from birth through age 3.  Funds will be awarded through Early Head Start on a competitive basis to enhance and support early learning settings; provide new, full-day, comprehensive services that meet the needs of working families; and prepare children for the transition into preschool.  This strategy – combined with an expansion of publicly funded preschool education for four-year olds – will ensure a cohesive and well-aligned system of early learning for children from birth to age five. 

• The President is proposing to expand the Administration’s evidence-based home visiting initiative, through which states are implementing voluntary programs that provide nurses, social workers, and other professionals to meet with at-risk families in their homes and connect them to assistance that impacts a child’s health, development, and ability to learn. These programs have been critical in improving maternal and child health outcomes in the early years, leaving long-lasting, positive impacts on parenting skills; children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional development; and school readiness. This will help ensure that our most vulnerable Americans are on track from birth, and that later educational investments rest upon a strong foundation. 

Building on Success

President Obama has committed to a comprehensive early learning agenda for America’s children that begins at birth and provides the support and services needed to set them on a path of success in school and in life:

• Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge: The Early Learning Challenge has rewarded 14 states that have agreed to raise the bar on the quality of their early childhood education programs, establish higher standards across programs and provide critical links with health, nutrition, mental health, and family support for our neediest children.

• Head Start and Early Head Start: President Obama has made historic investments in the Head Start and Early Head Start programs to reach an additional 61,000 children.  Under the President’s leadership, enrollment in Early Head Start in particular has nearly doubled.  The Obama Administration has also implemented needed reform in the Head Start program by identifying lower-performing grantees and ensuring that those failing to meet new, rigorous benchmarks face new competition for continued federal funding. 

• Supporting our Federal Child Care System: The President has proposed new investments to expand access and quality in the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

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.

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11 GOP Governors Still Need To Decide Whether Or Not To Deny Health Care To Low-Income Americans

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) announced on Wednesday that he will turn down Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, which makes him the thirteenth Republican leader to refuse to extend public health insurance to additional low-income Americans. Six GOP governors — in Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio and Nevada — have expressed support for expanding Medicaid, and the rest still need to decide what they want to do about that particular provision of the health reform law.

And even though most GOP leaders claim that expanding Medicaid would be too costly, they’re actually being lobbied by hospital companies, economists, and health care experts who all say the financial benefits — since the federal government will fully fund the first several years of expansion — are too good to turn down:

“It’s fascinating, because on the political level, it’s a classic clash between money and politics,” said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere health advisory company. He said he and his 170 advisers working with the health care industry are hearing plenty about expansion.

“It sets up a really difficult tension between the Republican governors and the hospitals, but there’s an increasing level of political cover being given to the governors to expand their programs,” Mendelson said. [...]

In Florida, a recent poll found that 60% of residents would like to see Medicaid expanded, Mendelson said. Several economic studies have found the states may benefit both by federal funds going into local economies, as well as taxes from those sales going back into the coffers of local government.

The significant federal funds allocated to states that choose to expand Medicaid led the hospital industry to wonder if governors were bluffing about rejecting the expansion. That quickly proved not to be the case, as stubborn GOP politicians in some of the states with the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation still refused to cooperate with the health care reform law.

Diverse coalitions across the country have partnered to pressure resistant lawmakers to expand their Medicaid programs. The growing list of GOP governors who have accepted the optional expansion over the past few weeks seemed to signal that political deadlock may soon give way to reality, but the remaining Republican leaders may buck that trend when they eventually announce their own decisions.

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How Dental Coverage Falls Short For Low-Income Americans

Four-year-old Torrie Smith, a little girl in a low-income Colorado household, suffers from devastating dental health issues. Her plight could have been avoided with regular preventative dentist check ups, which would have been free for Torrie under Medicaid — but her mother Wendie didn’t know about the dental health benefits afforded to Torrie under the public insurance program until it was far too late.

Torrie’s issues underscore the considerable gaps in America’s dental health coverage system. Dental insurance remains elusive even for many who have employer-sponsored health coverage — some estimates peg the number of Americans forgoing dental care at over 100 million, with children and the poor being disproportionately affected. That’s particularly bad news considering that dental problems are lifelong problems, and poor dental health early on in life leads to a status quo in which over a quarter of elderly Americans over the age of 65 lose all of their teeth.

And as the Coloradoan reports, even Medicaid beneficiaries face a dearth of coverage due to low reimbursement rates for dentists accepting Medicaid patients:

State Medicaid data reported to the federal government show that less than half of the 453,000 Coloradans under age 21 who were eligible for benefits in federal fiscal year 2011 received some kind of dental service. Only a quarter of Colorado counties met a 2010 state goal of getting at least 44 percent of Medicaid-eligible residents under age 19 to visit a dentist, according to an I-News analysis of state records.

“Dental disease is not self-resolving,” says Diane Brunson, director of public health for the University of Colorado’s School of Dental Medicine. “It’s not like catching a cold and you put up with it for a week or 10 days and you’re fine. You have to get treatment. And it’s so much more beneficial all the way around — to the child, to their family, to taxpayers — if dental problems can be prevented.”

While the state appears to be making strides in improving its numbers, part of the problem is the paucity of dentists willing to see Medicaid children. Only 10 percent of Colorado’s 3,500 or so dentists are considered “significant” Medicaid providers, meaning that they are reimbursed for at least 100 visits per year. Moreover, 20 of Colorado’s 64 counties do not have a dentist who accepts Medicaid.

A large part of the problem has to do with a lack of knowledge regarding essential health care benefits, which leads to the vast majority of Americans not claiming preventative dental care that they are eligible for. “When she came along,” Wendie said of Torrie, “they gave me a (Medicaid) card and said it was for her doctor visits. They didn’t say dental or anything like that.” That’s nothing new when it comes to Americans and their preventative care benefits — only one in five Americans in high-deductible insurance plans know that much of their preventative care is free.

But as the Coloradoan’s article points out, it also has to do with Medicaid’s historically low reimbursements for doctors. Since states share a considerable amount of authority along with the federal government when it comes to determining Medicaid’s budget, the program is often an easy target for budget cuts. But those cuts carry with them a considerable human cost for some of America’s poorest residents. As ThinkProgress has consistently reported, that makes implementing Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion a medical imperative for the American poor — but as Torrie’s story shows, educating families about the care that they are eligible for is just as important.

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The Meat Industry Consumes Four Times The Amount Of Antibiotics As Sick Americans Do

The meat industry uses a considerable amount of antibiotics to fight bacteria on its livestock farms — so much so that it actually far outpaces the amount of antibiotics used to treat sick people in the country. According to FDA data compiled by Pew Charitable Trusts, the livestock industry is consuming almost four-fifths of the total amount of antibiotics used in the U.S.:

And, as Mother Jones points out, that points to a dangerous trend in the meat industry. As livestock in close quarters breed bacteria, and the industry uses more and more antibiotics during their production in order to contain those pathogens, common bacteria are developing a resistance to drugs. For example, more than 75 percent of the salmonella found on ground turkey in 2011 was resistant to at least one antibiotic used to treat it — and over half were resistant to three or more different antibiotics. Unless the meat industry changes its practices, the FDA will have a difficult time keeping up with ensuring their products are safe to consume.

And even though Americans are consuming considerably fewer antibiotics than the meat industry, antibiotic resistance isn’t just an issue among lifestock farms. Diseases that affect humans — such as whooping cough, tuberculosis, and gonorrhea — are also growing increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat them. Since testing and marketing new antibiotics isn’t as profitable for the pharmaceutical industry as selling the drugs that are already on the market, production has lagged behind over the past few decades, and global health officials warn that an impending “antibiotic apocalypse” could make even the most common infections incurable.

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More Than 75 Percent Of Americans Delayed Their Retirement To Avoid Losing Health Benefits

Tying health insurance benefits directly to employment is forcing most Americans to work longer than they would have otherwise, a new study from the Employee Benefits Research Institute finds.

According to the study’s results, more than three fourths of retired Americans ended up working longer than they initially planned because they didn’t want to lose access to their employer-based health benefits. And a majority of the Americans who are currently in the workforce are also planning to delay their retirement in order to keep the insurance plans they have through their employer:

This builds upon previous research that shows the Great Recession has seriously impacted older Americans’ ability to retire. An estimated 62 percent of working Americans now report they’re planning to put off their retirement — up from 42 percent in 2010 — largely due to job losses and financial insecurity. These issues go hand-in-hand particularly because, as health care costs continue to rise, Americans are increasingly worried about being able to afford their insurance coverage.

And the United States’ primarily employer-based health insurance system doesn’t just impact Americans’ retirement decisions. It has also contributed to the “job lock” phenomenon, which prevents Americans from switching jobs or changing career paths because they’re too worried about losing access to their health benefits. “Job lock” ultimately creates an inefficient labor market, since workers may not take better jobs because they’re concerned about having a gap in health coverage.

Fortunately, Obamacare will take steps to address these dynamics by making health care more affordable to low- and middle-income Americans, as well as preventing insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The health reform law “completely changes the playing field,” one of the study’s authors told Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff. “If everything goes as planned, you’ve got guaranteed issue next year. You don’t need the employer to fill the gap.”

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WashPost And AP: Obama Is ‘Liberal’ Because He Agrees With Most Americans We Need More Climate Action

This Washington Post headline sums up so much that is wrong with the media and politics today:
I understand why fossil-fuel-funded conservatives assert that climate change is “liberal.” By why does the Associated Press and WashPost fall into that trap?

I guess it’s true, as Stephen Colbert famously said, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” See also David Frum Tweets: ‘Horrible Possibility: If The Geeks Are Right About Ohio, Might They Also Be Right About Climate?’ [Though I'll leave it to others to explain just why it is liberal to want to let women be (officially) in combat!]

These remarks in Obama’s inaugural are, apparently, what the AP and Washington Post consider liberal:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

Now even Rasmussen, a firm with a well-known conservative bias, found in a poll the day before the election that 68% of American voters see global warming as a “serious problem.”

Uber-wonk Nate Silver dismantles the media’s lame frame in his look “at the most recent polling on some of the agenda items Mr. Obama laid out:”:

The PollingReport.com database includes two polls on global warming conducted after the Nov. 6 presidential election. An Associated Press-GfK poll in the field from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 found that 78 percent of respondents said they believed the planet had warmed over the past 100 years, and 49 percent said they thought global warming would be a “very serious” problem for the United States if left unaddressed (31 percent said they thought it would be “somewhat serious”).

Fifty-seven percent of the 1,002 adults surveyed said the United States government should do “a great deal” or “quite a bit” on global warming.

A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll conducted Nov. 8 to 11 found that 57 percent of adults said they thought global warming was increasing the likelihood of storms like Hurricane Sandy.

I guess liberals are now a (silent) majority in this country!

Even the WashPost‘s own economic and White House reporter, Zachary A. Goldfarb, mocks this media spin in his piece, “Obama’s daring liberal agenda is neither daring nor liberal. Discuss”:

In his speech, by contrast, Obama hewed closely to public opinion. He defended “the commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security” — but did not propose expanding the safety net.

“Judged on an absolute scale, going back to Roosevelt, that’s a pretty centrist or conservative position: ‘I’m opposed to cutting it,’?” said James Stimson, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Back in the 1970s, the two parties jostled about who could be more generous in dispersing Social Security.”

… Obama’s call to battle climate change in his second term underscores a similar phenomenon. His position sounds liberal because it appeases the environmental base of the Democratic Party and because Republicans have increasingly opposed efforts to stem global warming. But there wasn’t always such an ideological gap between the parties. In the 2008 presidential race, Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), had almost exactly the same plan to help solve the problem of a warming planet.

Looking at this history and today’s opinion polls, it would seem pretty easy to find consensus in America on a lot of big issues — not just “liberal” or “conservative” solutions.

Then again, in Washington, everything needs a label.

Yes, well, the media in particular need a label. Heck, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, where I work, is routinely called ”liberal leaning” by the media because we support things like climate action.

Goldfarb notes, “the central mechanism of Obamacare — the individual mandate, which Republicans blasted as a massive liberal exercise of power — began as a conservative idea.” And cap-and-trade was actually first put into law for controlling pollution by President George H. W. Bush.

Obama is basically pushing a moderate Republican agenda. It’s just that there aren’t any modern Republicans left, much as we don’t have any “below average temperature” years any more. Shifting baselines, indeed.

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STUDY: Americans Just Can’t Afford Mental Health Treatment

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has just released its annual report on drug use and mental health disorders in America, and its findings confirm: Americans cannot afford the cost of their mental health treatment — even if they have insurance.

The report estimates that 45.6 million American adults suffered from Any Mental Illness (AMI) in 2011, comprising 19.6 percent of the adult population. Of that 45.6 million, a meager 38.2 percent received any sort of mental health services — and this graph breaks down why:

While 15 percent of Americans suffering from AMI cited inadequate insurance coverage as their main obstacle to seeking care, a staggering 50 percent said that mental treatment costs are simply too high. And that number includes both insured and uninsured Americans, illustrating how expensive out-of-pocket costs for mental health care are relative to the available coverage.

The data also highlights the damage done by the cultural stigma associated with such care. Over 37 percent of Americans who should have received treatment didn’t believe that they needed any or that treatment wouldn’t help — a dangerous assumption that is likely to exacerbate mental illness — and an additional 35 percent were afraid of negative social consequences or being institutionalized.

That last statistic should weigh heavily on lawmakers’ minds as they craft comprehensive gun safety legislation that also addresses mental health services. Mental health professionals have already expressed concerns that New York’s sweeping new gun laws may end up reinforcing stigmas about mental health care and dissuade Americans from seeking the care they need.

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Majority Of Americans Believe Food Workers Need Paid Sick Days

Illustration by Chris Ware, Lexington Herald-Leader

79 percent of workers in the food industry and a whopping 90 percent of restaurant workers report having no paid sick days, despite the obvious hazard posed by food workers coming to their jobs while sick. According to a new survey commissioned by the National Consumer League, Americans believe that should chang.

57 percent of respondents said it is “very important or important that the restaurant they frequent provide workers with paid sick days.” (In a slight disconnect, fully 92 percent of those polled said “it’s very important or important that the servers and cooks in the restaurants they frequent do not cook or serve while sick.”)

“Without having the benefit of paid sick days, restaurant workers can’t afford to be sick and are forced to come to work — and handle consumers’ food — when they should be at home resting,” said NCL’s Michell McIntyre. “Providing paid sick days is very clearly in the interest of consumers and the workers who handle their food.”

But lack of paid sick days is a problem that extends beyond the food industry. Overall, 40 percent of private sector workers and 80 percent of low-income workers do not have a single paid sick day. 20 percent of workers report either losing their job or being threatened with dismissal for wanting to take time off while sick.

The U.S. is currently experiencing the worst flu season in a decade, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that workers exhibiting flu-like symptoms stay home from work. But for a huge number of workers — including those handling the food that untold numbers of Americans will eat — staying home simply isn’t a possibility. (HT: Joe Satran)

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Americans Prefer Cockroaches, Traffic Jams and Nickelback To Congress

As the nation braces itself to hit the debt limit as early as February 15, Congress is as gridlocked as ever. Republican lawmakers are now suggesting they will resist raising the debt ceiling, risking a government shutdown and a default on U.S. credit. The last fight over the debt ceiling in August 2011 led to an unprecedented downgrade of U.S. credit and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars.

Americans were paying attention during 2011's fight, and their approval rating of Congress plunged to an all-time low soon after the credit downgrade. A record 82 percent of respondents said at the time they disapproved of the job Congress was doing. Now, on the verge of another debt ceiling crisis, that number has risen to 85 percent.

Public Policy Polling decided to figure out just how much Americans hate Congress by asking respondents to compare their feelings about their lawmakers to a list of other unpopular things. The results were not pretty:

Congress did beat out North Korea, Lindsay Lohan, the Ebola virus, gonorrhea and the Kardashians.

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Great Recession Forced All Americans To Cut Back On Their Health Care

Although the Great Recession has taken an outsized toll on African-Americans and Hispanics, new research suggests that the economic downturn has forced Americans across all racial groups to equally cut back on their medical services.

After researchers at the University of Maryland analyzed more than 54,000 U.S. adults’ health care use, they found that — despite their assumptions that the demographic groups struggling the most as the result of the Great Recession would also struggle the most to access health care — the declining economy impacted all Americans’ ability to get the care they need. During the recession, the average number of doctor visits and prescription drug refills dropped about the same amount for whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. Visits to the emergency room were also essentially unchanged across all groups.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Americans across all racial and economic groups have equal access to health services. There were significant racial disparities in medical care before the Great Recession hit — for example, while whites visited the doctor an average of about 7 times a year around 2005, the average rate was closer to 5.75 for blacks and 4.5 for Latinos during that time period. African-Americans were, and still remain, more likely to be hospitalized than other groups. Earlier reports from the Census Bureau have found that 40 percent of the Americans living in poverty did not visit a doctor in 2010, and confirmed that Hispanics were the least likely group to make a trip to the doctor’s office that year.

But, as the lead researchers for the new study point out, at least the growing economic inequality between whites and racial minorities during the recent recession hasn’t widened the gulf when it comes to health care. “Although minorities bore the brunt of the recession in terms of losses in employment, income and insurance, our findings suggest that trends in [medical] use patterns were similar across race and ethnicity,” the study concludes.

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