[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]Second of two parts
Re “What Has Obama Done for the Poor and Middle Class?”
While others were plotting, fighting for attention, and whining, President Obama was busy doing the following:
• Spurring job creation: “In addition, to helping those most affected by the recession, the budget will extend emergency assistance to seniors and families with children, Unemployment Insurance benefits, tax credits, and relief to states and localities to prevent layoffs.”
• Reforming the job training system: “The budget calls for reform of the Workforce Investment Act, which supports almost 3,000 one-stop career centers nationwide and a range of other services. With $6 billion for workforce investment and $4 billion in the Dept. of Education, the budget calls for reforms to improve workforce investment.”
• Tightening anti-discrimination enforcement: “To strengthen civil rights enforcement, the budget includes an 11 percent increase in funding to the Dept. of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. This will help handle implementation of a historic new hate crimes law. The budget also provides an $18 million, or 5 percent increase, for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee. This will allow for more staff to reduce the backlog of private sector charges.”
• Supporting historically black colleges and universities: “The budget proposes $642 million, an increase of $30 million over the 2010 level, to support Minority Serving Institutions. The Administration supports legislation passed by the House of Representatives and pending in the Senate that would provide $2.55 billion in mandatory funding over 10 years.”
• Helping families struggling with child care costs: “The budget will nearly double the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for middle-class families making under $85,000 a year by increasing their credit rate from 20 percent to 35 percent of child care expenses. Nearly all eligible families making under $115,000 a year would see a larger credit. The Bbdget provides an additional $989 million for Head Start and Early Head Start to continue to serve 64,000 additional children and families funded.”
• Reforming elementary and secondary school funding: “The budget supports the Administration’s new vision for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act … The budget provides a $3 billion increase in funding for K-12 education programs authorized in the Act, including $900 million for School Turnaround Grants. The Administration will request up to $1 billion in additional funding if Congress successfully completes reauthorization.”
• Increasing Pell Grants: “The Recovery Act and 2009 appropriations bill increased the maximum Pell Grant by more than $600 for a total award of $5,350. The budget proposes to make that increase permanent and put them on a path to grow faster than inflation every year, increasing the maximum grant by $1,000, expanding eligibility, and nearly doubling the total amount of Pell grants since the president took office.”
• Helping relieve student loan debt: “To help graduates overburdened with student loan debt, the Administration will strengthen income-based repayment plans for student loans by reducing monthly payments and shortening the repayment period so that overburdened borrowers will pay only 10 percent of their discretionary income in loan repayments and can have their remaining debt forgiven after 20 years. Those in public service careers will have their debt forgiven after 10 years. The budget also expands low-cost Perkins student loans.”
• Preventing hunger and improving nutrition: “The president’s budget provides $8.1 billion for discretionary nutrition program supports, which is a $400 million increase over the 2010 enacted level. Funding supports 10 million participants in the WIC program, which is critical to the health of pregnant women, new mothers, and their infants. The budget also supports a strong Child Nutrition and WIC reauthorization package that will ensure that school children have access to healthy meals and to help fulfill the president’s pledge to end childhood hunger. The president continues to support the nutrition provisions incorporated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
• Revitalizing distressed urban neighborhoods: “The budget includes $250 million for HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods program, which will target neighborhoods anchored by distressed public or assisted housing with physical and social revitalization grounded in promising, measurable, and evidence-based strategies.”
• Increasing funding for the housing choice voucher program: “The president’s budget requests $19.6 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher program to help more than two million extremely low-income families with rental assistance to live in decent housing in neighborhoods of their choice. The budget continues funding for all existing mainstream vouchers and provides flexibility to support new vouchers that were leased and $85 million in special purpose vouchers for homeless families with children, families at risk of homelessness, and persons with disabilities.”
• Preserving 1.3 million affordable rental units through project-based rental assistance program: “The president’s budget provides $9.4 billion for the Project-Based Rental Assistance program to preserve 1.3 million affordable rental units through increased funding for contracts with private owners of multifamily properties. This critical investment will help low-income households to obtain or retain decent, safe and sanitary housing. In addition, the Administration requests $350 million to fund the first phase of this multi-year initiative to regionalize the Housing Choice Voucher program and convert public housing to project-based vouchers.”
• Promoting affordable homeownership and protecting families from mortgage fraud: “The budget requests $88 million for HUD to support homeownership and foreclosure prevention through Housing Counseling and $20 million to combat mortgage fraud. In addition, the budget requests $250 million for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp.’s grant and training programs. Of the $250 million, $113 million is requested for foreclosure prevention activities, a $48 million increase (74 percent) over 2010.”
• Fighting gang violence and violent crime: “The budget provides $112 million for place-based, evidence-supported, initiatives to combat violence in local communities, including $25 million for the Community-Based Violence Prevention Initiatives that aim to reduce gun and other violence among youth gangs in cities and towns across the country, and $37 million for the Attorney General’s Children Exposed to Violence Initiative, which targets the youth most affected by violence and most susceptible to propagating it as they grow up.”
• Expanding prisoner re-entry programs: “The budget provides $144 million for Dept. of Justice prisoner re-entry programs, including an additional $100 million for the Office of Justice Programs to administer grant programs authorized by the Second Chance Act and $30 million for residential substance abuse treatment programs in state and local prisons and jails. In addition, the budget provides $98 million for Dept. of Labor programs that provide employment-centered services to adult and youth ex-offenders and at-risk youth.”
• Fully funding the community development block grant program: “The budget provides $4.4 billion for the Community Development Fund, including $3.99 billion for the Community Development Block Grant Formula Program and $150 million for the creation of a Catalytic Investment Competition Grants program. The new Catalytic Competition Grants program will provide capital to bring innovative economic development projects to scale to make a measurable impact.”
What have Tavis Smiley and Cornel West done, other than promote their shows and try to sell you books and “ghetto loans?” Nothing.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
