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By Matt Barreto, Latino Decisions

The 2012 presidential election was barely over when Republicans correctly surmised that their outreach to Latino voters was anemic and they better change course.  The focus to date has been entirely on immigration reform –  which represents an extremely troubling area for the GOP – but by no means is the only policy area in which Latino voters have strong preferences at odds with current Republican rhetoric.  When it comes to the economy, rated as the top issue by 53% of Latino voters in the 2012 election, the Republican Party is equally vulnerable.

In the impreMedia/Latino Decisions election eve poll of more than 5,600 Latino voters an astounding 77% said they favor tax increases on the wealthy as part of the plan to reduce the deficit  (See Figure Below).  Only 12% said they favor a spending cuts-only approach.  And there is a message here for both parties from Latino voters: among Democrats 86% expect to see tax increases on the wealthy in the deficit plan and the Democrats who benefited greatly from record high Latino support cannot ignore this overwhelming preference.  For Republicans who look to make in-roads consider this: among Latino Independents 77% support tax increases on the wealthy, and even among Latino Republicans 51% support higher taxes on the wealthy compared to just 35% who want a cuts-only approach.  Among self-described born-again Christians, a subgroup of Latinos that George W. Bush carried in 2004, 69% support raising taxes on the wealthy as part of a deficit plan.

It is without question that the Republican Party faces an obstacle with Latino voters on immigration rhetoric and policy, and things must change.  As Jeb Bush told Republicans at the RNC in Tampa – we have to “stop acting stupid on immigration policy.” However these potential Republican converts are also watching the GOP on the fiscal cliff.  Overall, 31% of Latino voters said they would be more likely to vote Republican in the future if the party took a leadership role and helped to pass comprehensive immigration reform.  Among these potential GOP pick-ups, 13% support a spending cuts-only approach while 77% support tax increases on the wealthy as part of the overall debt reduction plan.  Simply put, while Republicans look to make in-roads with Latinos on a softer approach to immigration, they risk alienating more than three-quarters of potential voters if they oppose tax increases on the wealthy.

And support for an approach that combines spending cuts with tax increases on the wealthiest Americans is very popular among Latinos in key battleground states where Latino voters are very influential in who wins and who loses.  According to the impreMedia/Latino Decisions 2012 election eve poll, in Florida, 72% of Latino voters support tax increases on the wealthy as part of the plan. In Colorado and Nevada the support reaches 80%.  In Arizona, 73% support tax increases on the wealthy, and in New Mexico 77%.  In state after state, Latino voters are strongly supportive of a deficit reduction plan that not only cuts spending, but also increases revenues by increasing the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans.  If politicians ignore this directive, they do so at their own peril in terms of securing or persuading Latino voters.

This article was first published in Latino Decsions.

Dr. Matt Barreto is an associate professor of political science at the University of Washington, and director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (WISER). He is also the co-Director of the Washington Poll, a statewide opinion survey conducted by Pacific Market Research.matt.barreto@latinodecisions.com

[Photo by Rob Crawley]

By Latinovations

Debates of the upcoming fiscal cliff are causing many politicians to question what the right path would be for Latino families, acknowledging that no decision is likely to come easy.

The fiscal cliff is described by NBC Latino as the time at the end of this month where a series of tax cuts, part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which were implemented over the last few years come to an end, while at the same time, automatic spending cuts on government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, take place. This in turn affects Americans nationwide, but would also affect Latino families drastically.

“Almost half of U.S. Latinos rely on social security as their source of retirement income,” says Xavier Becerra, California Democratic Congressmen, referring to proposed cuts and changes in Medicare eligibility. Becerra also spoke out against Republican proposals for steep cuts in Medicaid, saying that it would threaten gains made under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which would insure nine million more Latinos.

“What will Congress and the White House to do make sure families don’t lose access to refundable tax credits, and how to make sure gains and opportunities stay intact for the neediest families?”says Cynthia Rodriguez, head of Congreso de Latinos Unidos.

As previously reported on La Plaza, the fiscal cliff has been a topic that has divided much of Congress, causing many to worry that it will take up much of Washington’s focus in early 2013.

“If parties don’t reach an agreement before the fiscal cliff deadline, the median Latino household earning around $43,000 a year would see taxes increase by about $2,200,” says Julie Rodriguez, Associate Director for Latino Affairs at the White House Office of Public Engagement. “As a result, families would be spending about 200 billion less on retail, for example, an industry which employs over 2 million Latinos.”

Efforts like those of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a non-partisan movement which hopes to mobilize key communities across the United States, is urging elected officials to step up and solve the nation’s fiscal challenges, but have received a substantial amount of backlash for its apparent support for entitlement reform.

“I certainly would not support privatizing social security or turning Medicare into voucher care,”said L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa, the most recent addition to the Campaign to Fix the Debt’s steering committee, addressing the issue and explaining his support for the group.

On his side, Congressman Becerra worries that many Latino families would be “pushed off the edge” of the middle class or the pathway to the middle class if deep cuts take place.

Janet Murgia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, said her organization has been meeting with legislators from both parties to discuss the fiscal cliff impact on Latino families.

“Latinos favor a balanced approach to deficit reduction – this is not the time to raise taxes on working and middle-class families,” says Murgia.

This article was first published in Latinovations.

[Photo by smaedli]

By Curt Werner, Voxxi

Much was made during the presidential campaign that the economic downturn and to a large extent the nation’s tax structure combined to yield unprecedented economic disparity between haves and have-nots. While the newly re-elected president battles with recalcitrant Republicans over fundamental economic issues, a.k.a the real or imagined fiscal cliff, it might be a good idea to take a look at some of the fallout that proposed spending cuts might have on the nation’s already beleaguered public school systems.

A threat looms large that a dual economic society could lead to a state of affairs where quality education is reserved for the haves, leaving the have-nots to scramble for ways to reach an increasingly distant American dream.

Spending cuts contained in the next federal budget could make it even more difficult for millions of families trapped in the cycle of poverty. In terms of education, Hispanic families have much to lose in their struggle to push their children ahead in a world that places higher value than ever on expertise in key areas like science, math and technology.

State of Hispanic education

A fast-growing U.S. Hispanic population of 50 million still sags under the weight of some of the lowest educational attainment levels, including a stubbornly high dropout rate.

Hispanics enrolled in K-12 schools number more than 12.4 million students, which means about one in five U.S. students are Hispanic. Yet almost half of all Latino students never graduate high school.

The White House addressed the matter in April of last year when it outlined a series of steps designed to improve educational achievement among Hispanics.

President Obama has made it a point to advance Hispanic education with a focus on improving pre-K and early childhood instruction. He has said and many educators agree,  that achievement among Hispanic students is key if the U.S. wants to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world, a goal the president has set to reach by 2020.

Despite an outsized margin of victory in the recent elections, the president still faces strong headwinds in his efforts to reach that goal and actually improve Hispanic education opportunities.

Fiscal cliff, vouchers and what lies ahead

Declining tax revenues since 2008 have forced cuts in a number of vital public services at the state level, among them education, where thousands of teachers have been set adrift in an unprecedented swath of layoffs that have crippled many local school systems. Untold numbers of others have been discouraged from joining the teaching profession by low pay and that same threat of cutbacks.

These layoffs might stymie gains in education but have served to delight Tea Party politicians and their ardent followers, many of whom view public education as an ideological enemy.

On the other hand, the political right has always supported school vouchers, which opponents insist would give students from well-off families yet another leg up and further drain precious resources from public schools by slashing much-needed funding for salaries, supplies and construction, much of it long overdue.

Vouchers generally favor those already able to pay for private and parochial school and it’s no longer uncommon for parents to send their preteens to private schools costing upwards of $40,000 a year. In other words, school vouchers can be exposed by and large as another Republican program of aid for the wealthy.

Voucher talk aside, Hispanic education faces persistent obstacles to achievement.

To begin with fewer than half of Latino children are enrolled in any early learning program. Only about half of all Latino students earn their high school diploma on time; those who do complete high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college. It’s no surprise then, to find that a scant 13 percent of Latinos have a bachelor’s degree, and only 4 percent have completed graduate or professional degree programs.

The Head Start and Early Head Start programs promote school readiness by enhancing the cognitive and social development of children through the provision of education, health, nutritional, social, and other services to enrolled children and families.

At the requested funding level, more than 968,000 children—more than 854,000 in Head Start and 114,000 in Early Head Start—can participate in the program, up from 904,000 in 2009. Thirty-six percent of the Nation’s Head Start children are Latino, the largest of any minority group in the U.S.

Overall, Latinos have the lowest education attainment level of any group in the U.S. Aside from immigration reform on the federal level, the matter of Hispanic education is a challenge that looms even larger.

The President’s 2012 budget request would increase funding for Head Start and Early Head Start by $866 million for a total of $8.1 billion. Reducing funding for proven programs like Head Start and overall fiscal support for public schools, whether indirectly through vouchers or more directly by outright cuts in education funding, would amount to a setback the nation as a whole can ill afford.

It’s one of the consequences that negotiators for the fiscal cliff would be wise to take into account.

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Curt Werner has covered both the business and clinical sides of healthcare for more than 25 years mostly for trade publications. He has written on cardiology, orthopedics, seniors and supply chain issues for hospitals and other healthcare entities.

[Photo By SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget]

By Raisa Camargo, Voxxi

The pressure is mounting for a solution on the fiscal cliff to be resolved at the end of the year with civic rights supporters asserting Latinos are likely to feel the effects immediately.

The argument made by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) indicates that because Latinos face a higher unemployment rate—10 percent—the “struggle to stay afloat might become unbearable.”

“We’re doing Hill visits with members on both sides of the aisle to talk about issues like the fiscal cliff—like all Americans we know that our Latino voters went to the polls with these issues in mind, but especially with the economy on their mind,” Janet Murguia, NCLR president explained during a conference call Wednesday.

“They overwhelmingly favor a fair, balanced and shared approach to deficit reduction. This is also not the time to raise taxes on working and middle class families.”

Speculation dictates that Congress might go over the fiscal cliff, which means automatic tax rates will rise for all Americans next year. For those with a taxable income of $43,500,the tax rate would go up by 1.5 percent. Likewise, the highest tax rate would increase to 24.5 percent for the top 1 percent of the highest earners, according to data cited by the George Washington University.

Both Democrats and Republicans have pushed proposals that would avert such a scenario, yet negotiations are still frozen on political principles.

The president indicated a “quick deal” could be approached if the Republican Party compromises on raising tax rates for the top two percent or those making more than $250,000 a year, in exchange for entitlement reforms.

Jason Furman, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and the Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, explained that the president is focused on “balanced deficit reduction” and that’s not likely to be reached unless higher tax rates on higher-income households are enacted.

“Accomplishing that is central to making sure that the middle class or the most vulnerable are not going to be blamed for deficit reduction, which is something that he wouldn’t allow to happen,” Furman told VOXXI.

Democrats have equally indicated that they don’t want entitlement reform cuts namely Medicare and Medicaid. Rumors seem to signal that Republicans on the other end might become more flexible on raising tax cuts for the two percent of higher income earners, but that might not come without spending cuts on entitlements. News reports indicate that it’s still unclear how far the president would be willing to move on entitlements in his ongoing negotiations with Boehner.

Automatic cuts would affect unemployment, consumer spending and education

Jennifer Ngandu of NCLR also reinforced that such a conversation shouldn’t necessarily mean more cuts.

“We think it’s important to have a discussion on entitlement reforms, but that shouldn’t automatically go towards the direction of cuts,” said Ngandu.

Furman later clarified that their position on Medicaid and matching grants to states has changed in light of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act and that will be one provision the administration will be evaluating.

The Obama administration also reiterated that a Latino family of four or a married couple with two children earning between $50,000 and $85,000 could see an income tax rise by $2,200 if a deal on the Bush tax cuts is not reached. There are an estimated 3.6 million working Hispanic families and 6.3 million Hispanic American children that would continue to benefit under the earned income tax credit and child tax credit plans, but that could also be potentially reduced.

Both plans are refundable tax credits that help lower income working families and individuals. The amount of the credit varies depending on the level of income and the number of dependents that are supported.

Other areas that could potentially see eventual reduction are cutbacks on charitable deductions that reinforces non-profit sectors. In addition, the cuts would also affect Title 1 education programs in addition to early childhood education programs such as Head Start, which could affect an estimated 96,000 fewer children that are served.

“We know that 37 percent of Latinos attend high poverty schools and so that’s approximately 1.8 million fewer low income public school children that could be receiving reading and math help,” said Julie Rodriguez, Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and granddaughter of Cesar Chavez.

“The impact potentially to Pell grants—40 percent of Latino college students receive the support of the Pell grants—these are general estimates at this point, but I think it’s indicative of the fact that the Latino community has a lot at stake in these conversations and in these debates,” she said.

Xavier Becerra says Latinos aspire to be part of the middle class

If the sequester hits, there will also be automatic cuts toward new job training programs that would likely affect Latino youth. Those who are between 16 and 19 years of age are currently facing an unemployment rate of 28.9 percent, according to the Department of Labor (DOL).

The “fiscal cliff”—the combination of tax increases and deep budget cuts that will automatically take place at the beginning of the New Year—would return the unemployment rate to more than 9 percent nationally, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The national unemployment rate stands at 7.8 percent.

This comes in light of the fact of spurring consumer confidence recorded on Black Friday. The Pew Hispanic Center also noted that Hispanics have grown more satisfied with the nation’s direction and more confident in their finances since 2011, according to a recent survey conducted on November 2.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, (D-Calif.), who was recently elected as chairman to the House Democratic Caucus in the 113th Congress and serves in the Ways and Means Committee, reassured that he is in support of strengthening entitlements including social security and health care. Thus, it can’t be sacrificed.

“Latinos are part of the aspiring class. We aspire to be in the middle class. You should feel like you’re in the middle of America, not on the edge,” he said.

Becerra then spoke about the resilience of the Latino community to confront the fiscal cliff.

“The reality is that as much as people are crying that we may go over a fiscal cliff and ‘oh this could be doomsday,’ the reality is for many of our families, we’ve seen far harsher times,” he said. “While we confront those who say the sky is falling, the reality is we for the longest time have kept the sky above America and we’re going to continue to do it.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Raisa Camargo is a staff writer at Voxxi.

[Photo by  Navin75]

By Hope Gillette, Voxxi

Solving the fiscal cliff issue is current priority for the United States government, as at midnight on December 31, 2012, provisions from the Budget Control Act of 2011 will go into effect.

Creating a solution is important because a number of temporary payroll cuts and tax breaks will be nullified for the upcoming year, and without a new agreement regarding spending, more than 1,000 government programs are slated for substantial cuts. Among those planned cuts, explains CNN, are a number of health-related programs.

“You wouldn’t necessarily see the impact right at first, but agencies like the CDC will have to prioritize. Something will have to give, so you’d see a lab close here and a monitoring program end here, so down the road they won’t able to monitor, say, a disease outbreak nearly as well as they can now,” said Indivar Dutta-Gupta, who works with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The problem is, we already are seeing historic low spending on these types of programs…”

Which health programs are at risk from fiscal cliff decision?

• Food safety: The plant and animal health inspection budget will be decreased by $71 million dollars, and the Food Safety and Inspection agency budget will be decreased by more than $1 billion dollars. Cuts could mean fewer inspectors and a less monitored food supply.
• Medicare: Medicare funding would be decreased by approximately $11 billion, decreasing payment options to hospitals and long-term care facilities.
• National Institutes of Health: This government agency funds numerous disease research projects around the country, and an unsolved fiscal cliff would mean a budget loss of more than $2.5 billion.
• Low-income food assistance: WIC and other government programs designed to provide food assistance for low-income families would lose $543 million dollars.
• Centers for Disease Control: The CDC stands to lose $464 million from its budget which could impact the agency’s ability to provide vaccinations and monitor disease outbreaks accurately.
• Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes: This program, which is geared toward keeping housing safe for low-income families, would lose approximately $10 million dollars from its budget.
• Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program: A projected $30 million budget reduction would apply to the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, which helps prevent abuse, neglect and childhood injuries.
• Department of Homeland Security, Office of Health Affairs: Tasked with protecting citizens from biological, terrorist, nuclear, and chemical attacks, among other things, this program is scheduled for a $14 million budget cut.
• Social Security: Social Security, if no solution is found regarding the fiscal cliff, will take a $241 million budget cut.

While the healthcare industry will take hits should the fiscal cliff remain unresolved, some government officials do not like the purposed solutions any better. According to a report from ABC News, President Obama has purposed raising tax revenue by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years while still cutting $600 billion from programs such as Medicare. The purposed solution also includes more stimulus spending totaling approximately $200 billion dollars.

“All of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table,” criticized House Speaker John Boehner.

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Hope Gillette is an award winning author and novelist. She has been active in the veterinary industry for over 10 years, and her experience extends from exotic animal care to equine sports massage. She shares her home with four cats, a dog, a horse, and her tolerant husband.

[Photo by Tulane Public Relations]

By Lily Eskelsen, NEA

We’re all in trouble when I start a sentence with, “… and reasonable people in Congress will find a way get this done…” and the room explodes with laughter.

Because we’re in this mess for lack of a sufficient number of reasonable people. When this soap opera began, there was a standoff between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over how to balance the budget, and with the clock ticking, if they didn’t get agreement it would mean (again) the shutdown of the Federal government.

Since neither side actually wanted to see that happen with an election coming up, they agreed to put it all off until now. They said things would be different because they agreed to come back … with axes.

The deal with the devil was that if they couldn’t agree on how to balance the budget, all the Bush tax cuts – some of which helped the middle class and some of which helped the rich – would expire (as the law requires unless they are extended) AND practically everything in the national budget would be chopped by 10%.

They would just start swinging axes blindfolded at everything from funding for hurricane emergencies to after-school programs for poor kids. Chop!

Both sides saw (and see) this as a very bad thing. For entirely different reasons. Some don’t want the tax cuts to expire, especially on the richest 2% of Americans. Some don’t want drastic cuts in help for college students and school lunches.

Some want to keep the mystifying tax breaks for mega companies moving U.S. jobs to China. Republican and Democratic mayors and governors and legislators don’t want cuts in federal transportation dollars that help fund road repair and cancer research or state universities.

So, no one actually wants the ax to fall, at least not indiscriminately. To get this done in a purposeful way that protects the middle class and protects communities, we will need a critical mass of reasonable people who have to see that you cannot hack your way out of this. Across the board, blind cuts will be devastating to children and their families.

We need balance. We need focus. We need more money.

It’s a matter of fairness. The richest 2% of the country got the lion’s share of the Bush tax cuts. Way back then, the country was told that giving huge tax breaks to the richest of the rich amongst us would improve the economy and create more jobs and it would trickle down like mana from heaven on the rest of us as they shared their wealth with workers. There is no evidence that has ever happened.

Ending the Bush tax cuts for the biggest wealth, closing tax loopholes for large corporations and ending the policy of rewarding businesses who ship jobs and profits offshore would raise a trillion dollars. That’s just fair.

And it’s just smart to take off the blindfold and really look at the federal budget and use common sense to balance our revenues with our national priorities.

I’m an elementary teacher, so I see the world through children. I know that a first grader only has one chance to be a first grader. I know a high school senior only has one chance to be a high school senior. You can’t tell them to wait for a better Gross National Product to get the Special Ed teacher they might need or reading tutor in a Title One school that serves our poor families, or the band class or basketball team or AP Chemistry course that could have earned them a scholarship.

We have to prioritize our children – their health, education and safety – in any reasonably balanced budget.

They are 100% of our future. It’s not a cliché. It’s real.

Reasonable people will understand that we have to protect children, and we’ve got to protect senior citizens and their retirement security. Older people who depend on that modest Social Security check and the ability to get to a doctor when their health becomes more fragile, would spiral into poverty without receiving the middle class benefits that it took a lifetime for them to earn.

How does it help the economy for them to be destitute and bankrupt from medical bills? It’s not a balance to have our seniors see cuts in Medicare or Social Security and not ask millionaires and billionaires step up and do their fair share.

This is more than math. This is a moral obligation. It will take the thoughtful precision of true patriots to find the balance; to find the needed revenue to avoid over-the-cliff cuts in health, education, retirement security and essential infrastructure; to find the way out of the wilderness of the financial mess from which the world is still recovering.

To charge into surgery wielding sharp axes is an irresponsible act of irresponsible people.

You do not swing axes around children.

This article was first published in Lily’s Blackboard.

Lily Eskelsen, an elementary teacher from Utah, is Vice President of the National Education Association. She is one of the highest-ranking labor leaders in the country and one of its most influential Hispanic educators.

[Photo by Liz (perspicacious.org)]

By Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post Latino Voices

Juandiego Wade is worried.

As vice chair of the Charlottesville City School Board in Virginia, he’s responsible for the well-being of its 4,000 students. And if Congress doesn’t come up with a solution to upcoming automatic budget cuts soon, his students may feel the loss. “We’ve already been cut to the bone,” Wade said. So with the estimated reduction of $350,000 to his district’s budget, it’s hard to see what else can go before cutting teachers. Charlottesville may have to fire four teachers, special education programs, and help for delinquent students.

As the federal government faces what’s become known as the fiscal cliff, education advocates are lobbying, organizing and campaigning to protect their programs. On Wednesday, the National School Boards Association trotted out school board members, including Wade, on a conference call to make their case.

“Our state got a lot of attention during the last election. we got a lot of visits from all the politicians, a lot of money was spent,” Wade said. “We’re wishing some of that is spent now on education.”

Advocates said across-the-board cuts may threaten the entire network of supports for U.S. children, particularly those who live in poverty. Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before a Senate committee to warn against the cuts. “Essentially we’re just playing chicken with the lives of the American people,” he said at the time.

Now, as the reality of 7.8 percent cuts loom, lobbyists are stepping up their efforts — even as legislators warned that negotiations could be lengthy. “Sit back, this is going to take a while,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told The Hill, describing a meeting with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Three federal programs critical to education — Title I funds for poor students, state grants for special education and the Head Start public pre-school program — would lose $2.7 billion over 10 years, predicted a Senate report based on the Congressional Budget Office projection that sequestration would slash spending by 7.8 percent. As many as 15,000 teachers and aides may lose their jobs, and 10,000 special education workers may be laid off.

Deborah Rigsby, the National School Boards Association’s legislative director, put it in stark terms. “For every $1 million in federal aid that a school district receives, sequestration would cut $82,000, or more than one teacher,” Rigsby said. “These cuts to our schools would be devastating and of course would impact student achievement.”

Though federal spending accounts for about 8 percent of all education dollars, the U.S. contribution is larger in poorer areas. According to an analysis by the New America Foundation, large districts such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Miami-Dade rely on federal funding for more than 15 percent of their budgets. Milwaukee and Chicago use U.S. cash to sponsor more than one fifth of their schools’ costs.

Smaller…

READ MORE HERE

This article was first published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.

Joy Resmovits is a Huffington Post education reporter. She most recently worked as a Fellow at the Jewish Daily Forward. Before that, she wrote for the Wall Street Journal’s Greater New York section. She has also contributed to the New York Daily News, Education Update, the Columbia Daily Spectator, and the St. Louis Beacon. She graduated from Barnard College.

[Photo by  DonkeyHotey]