WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget ran into immediate trouble in Congress on Monday among lawmakers who said it tries to do too much while cutting the deficit too little.
The quick response came as Obama sought to juggle his twin goals of creating jobs, which entails tax cuts and new spending, and cutting the deficit, which involves the opposite.
“States Restart Health-Care Push,” - The Wall Street Journal Tight Budgets May Limit Legislative Efforts to Lift Coverage as National Plan Stumbles
With the fate of a national health care overhaul unclear, state legislators are pushing their own bills aimed at expanding coverage, though tight budgets are likely to hinder many of these efforts.
Lawmakers in at least two states, California and Missouri, have introduced legislation for the current session to create government-backed coverage for state residents. In others, including Virginia and New Jersey, legislators are hoping to tweak existing state programs to include more people.
The first lady takes childhood obesity as her cause.
The White House Kitchen Garden is frozen under, but, this Black History Month, first lady Michelle Obama is once more using food to address the epidemic of childhood obesity that has gripped the country and, she said in a recent speech to the United States’ Conference on Mayors, “never fails to take my breath away.”
The following is a statement from PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell in response to President Obama’s first State of the Union address:
“A recovery that merely recreates our inequitable pre-recession economy is no recovery at all. Throughout his first year and his first State of the Union address, President Obama has made it clear that all Americans deserve to live in opportunity-rich communities. He has listened to and learned from those closest to our nation’s challenges.
During his the first year of Obama’s tenure, PolicyLink and our allies have:
Of course, listening is just the first step. We must now put these ideas and innovations into practice. The path is clear…the president and all allies of equity in America must now walk that path with purpose. A true national recovery depends on it.”
The first year of the Obama Era has been defined by noise - voracious political pundits, screaming Tea Partiers, and cries of “too left” and “not left enough” from competing corners of political world. With the surprise election of Scott Brown yesterday following a loud and boisterous campaign built on voters’ anger at a still-stagnant economy, the noise isn’t likely to ebb soon.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will make it easier for cities and states to spend federal money on public transit projects, and particularly on the light-rail systems that have become popular in recent years, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday.
Administration officials said they were reversing guidelines put in place by the Bush administration that called for evaluating new transit projects largely by how much they cost and how much travel time they would save.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama’s emergency spending measures last year saved up to 2 million U.S. jobs, the White House said on Wednesday, but it warned that the outlook for the economy remained uncertain.
Obama, anxious to reduce double-digit U.S. unemployment which has dented his popularity, has already called for additional government measures to boost jobs on top of the $787 billion stimulus package he signed in February 2009.
Americans are fat, but at least they’re not getting fatter.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans are overweight or obese, but that number hasn’t changed much in the last decade, according to a team of doctors Wednesday in two studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In the past three years, the government has provided the nation’s schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn’t meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program “meets or exceeds standards in commercial products.”
That isn’t always the case. McDonald’s, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.
When a local advocacy group releases a report aimed at changing city policy, it’s often ready to expect immediate resistance from the target of critique, and then perhaps slow alterations made over time.
But when the nonprofit Children’s Rights released a report last month analyzing how long it takes for foster children to obtain a permanent home, the city agency involved – the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) – not only supported the release, but soon announced a related initiative aimed at shortening the length of time children remain in foster care.
This would be even more remarkable if the report hadn’t all but closed the case on what many in the city’s child welfare community have known for years: New York has one of the worst mechanisms for helping children move from foster care to permanent homes in the country. (It placed 44th among 47 states; see p. 71 of this state report.)
President Obama proposed a new set of job-creation proposals Tuesday designed to confront a stark problem: Even though the rate of job cuts in the economy has eased, the pace of hiring remains far below normal.
That issue – how to spur hiring – is the central one for policymakers considering how to bring down America’s unemployment rate in the next year.
Mr. Obama said his proposals have the best chance to succeed, delivering the “greatest number of jobs [at] the greatest value for our economy.”
After months of lending its cautious, very qualified support to health-care reform, the health-insurance industry has lobbed its first bomb at the Democrats’ proposals. But many of the industry’s assertions appear to have missed their mark.
Just two days before Tuesday’s scheduled vote on the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill, a report warning that the bill would result in sizable hikes in insurance premiums was released, and then widely panned as a flawed analysis of cherry-picked information. A spokesman for the committee called the report a “hatchet job, plain and simple”; and some Democrats on Capitol Hill claimed that the insurers’ broadside would actually ease, rather than slow, passage of health reform by unifying the various factions of the party against an industry with precious little credibility among the public. (See 10 players in health-care reform.)
WASHINGTON — As the White House and Congressional leaders turned in earnest on Wednesday to working out big differences in the five health care bills, perhaps no issue loomed as a greater obstacle than whether to establish a government-run competitor to the insurance industry.
One day after the Senate Finance Committee approved a measure without a “public option,” the question on Capitol Hill was how President Obama could reconcile the deep divisions within his party on the issue. All eyes were on Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the Maine Republican whose call for a “trigger” that would establish a government plan as a fallback is one of the leading compromise ideas.
NEW ORLEANS — In his first presidential visit to this city, Barack Obama praised the resiliency of residents in rebuilding their flood-wrecked homes and promised to continue flowing federal dollars to the effort.
“It is always an inspiration to spend time with the men and women who have reminded the rest of us what it means to persevere in the face of tragedy and rebuild in the face of ruin,” Obama said during a town-hall-style meeting at the University of New Orleans.
Health reform has officially become a test of character — the character of our nation and, perhaps more immediately, the character of our elected representatives.
Last night, President Obama laid out a strong, meaningful and moral health-reform platform. It is a sensible and fair approach that will help improve the lives, health and security of millions of American families.
Under the plan, hard-working Americans can be sure that an unexpected layoff or an effort to start your own business won’t keep you from getting the treatment you need. And strong prevention measures will help save money and reduce the terrible effects chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma are having on low-income people and communities of color.
It is time for leaders on all sides to put their heads down and do the work we elected them to do. The Obama plan represents a broad consensus, packed with the most promising ideas from experts, doctors and leaders on both sides of the Congressional aisle.
After a long, hot, loud August filled with disinformation and overheated rhetoric, it is time for the politics to cool. How Republican leaders react to this speech throughout September and October will show clearly whether they are in Washington to make the lives of everyday Americans better or if they are there to score cheap political points at the expense of the American people.
The perpetual campaign must stop. Our unfair, outdated, and unresponsive health-care system has dragged down families and businesses for far too long.
Obama stepped up to the plate last night, showing a willingness to bring any good ideas into the fold. But a willingness to compromise does not mean stepping away from essential elements and cannot represent a willingness to wait.
The time is now for real change. It’s up to our elected leaders to decide whether they want to play a constructive role — or merely hurl invective from the sidelines.
This article also appeared in the Washington Post’s “Health Care RX” experts panel. For more of Angela Glover Blackwell’s analyses, click here.
It makes me sad and a little sick that Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs Czar, was forced to resign after being targeted by a vicious smear campaign. The Obama administration lost a brilliant mind who worked day and night to, as Van would say, “get the greenest solutions to the poorest people”. Indeed, Van did as much as anyone to put the concept of the Green Collar Economy on the map, including publishing a best-selling book with that title. More than that, he was one of the nation’s most pragmatic environmental visionaries, someone who was always thinking up practical, pattern-changing solutions to massive climate problems.
Van grew up in a small town in Tennessee, went to a provincial college, and wound up graduating from Yale Law School, launching a number of important nonprofit organizations, and winning way too many awards to count, including being named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list. He’s a remarkable American success story, eloquently captured in Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker profile.
Sending your kids back to lunch-lady land this fall? Careful, your child’s dining mates may be upping his chances of packing on the pounds. A study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that how much tweens and teens eat can be influenced by how much their friends weigh.
In the study, 130 kids ages 9 to 15 were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. But the overweight children ate the most when paired with an overweight friend - an average of 300 more calories than when they spent time with leaner friends. The research also found that friendship itself makes the appetite grow stronger: when overweight kids ate with similar-weight kids who were already their pals, they threw back an extra 250 calories than when they ate with chubby kids they had just met.
Dr. Robert O’Connor had taken charge of the emergency room only minutes earlier when the cellphone in his pocket rang: The Western Albemarle Rescue Squad was on its way with a 14-month-old girl who had suffered a possible seizure.
Ten minutes later, Tyler McNeely climbed out of the ambulance, her face frantic and her pale, subdued baby in her arms. Shana Crabtree, a third-year resident in green scrubs, waited for them at the University of Virginia Medical Center. EMT Andrew Todhunter delivered a staccato summary of Clara’s vital signs.
“Grass Roots Put New Orleans Back on Its Feet,” - The Wall Street Journal With Federal Aid Finally Flowing to Hurricane-Ravaged City, a Flurry of Rebuilding Helps Shield It from U.S. Downturn
NEW ORLEANS — This once-ravaged city is finally mending from Hurricane Katrina after years of administrative delays and political disputes that choked the flow of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Money now flowing through the city is beginning to deliver the most visibly widespread improvements since Katrina struck four years ago today. Scores of public works projects are under way. The last police precinct using a FEMA trailer as temporary headquarters moved into real offices earlier this year. More than half the public schools in New Orleans have been turned into higher-performing charter schools. Returning residents have pushed the population to 76% of its prestorm total of about 455,000.
“Moderate” opponents of health-care reform like to say that we cannot afford it, particularly in the midst of a recession that has widened the deficit with both reduced tax revenue and the fiscal stimulus package. This was the argument advanced by Sen. Joe Lieberman on TV a week ago and repeated by Michael Gerson in this newspaper: “Obama’s massive spending, intended to stabilize the economy, also drained the Treasury, making it more difficult to propose major new expenditures.”
To make it easier for children to eat healthfully and move more, local governments in towns and cities across the country need to help create a better environment, a new report says.
Children and their families should have access to grocery stores that offer plenty of healthful food such as fruits and vegetables, and schools shouldn’t be surrounded by fast-food restaurants. Children should be able to ride their bikes or walk safely to school, and they should have safe places to play afterward, says the report out today from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council.
This post originally appeared on The Washington Post’s “Health Care RX” weekly panel discussion, in response to the question: “Recent polls show declining support for President Obama’s handling of the health-care issue. What should he do to get the effort back on track?”
What are we even arguing about again?
Though the volume of the health-care debate has never been louder, it has never been more silent on what really matters to the real lives and real struggles of everyday Americans.
During the campaign, President Obama and his team were geniuses at keeping an even keel and steadily pushing on a single narrative — hope — that was both powerful and flexible. But during the health-care fight, they have been unfocused. Of course, it’s hard to have a consistent message when you’re bargaining with 535 potential legislative partners at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue (not to mention the dozens of TV and radio hosts who wield inordinate power in the modern media landscape).
Obama must take a step back and remind all Americans why we need to reform health care in the first place.
He needs to fill a town hall with people who have faced death or bankruptcy because of insufficient insurance or no insurance at all. Participants shouldn’t be hard to find — all of us have friends or neighbors or family members who have faced this harsh reality (or just go to Andrew Sullivan’s site where he has spent the past several weeks collecting dozens of heartbreaking “Views from Your Sickbed”)
Obama is a master of policy detail and — If he weren’t so politically savvy — would have made a terrific technocrat. But he must stress the big picture here.
We all know the health-care system is broken. We all know dealing with insurance companies is a maddening, often-frightening task. And we all know people will die needlessly unless we get some kind of reform now.
We need Obama to remind us of this fact. Every day. Every hour. The real pain of real Americans needs to become the center of this debate again, not the pitched voices of ill-informed mobs.
