AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. At the End of the Budget Year
State records a $73 million surplus for 2015
by Garry Rayno, unionleader.com, September 30, 2015
CONCORD — The state has an unaudited $73.2 million surplus for the recently-concluded 2015 fiscal year, which is greater than budget writers anticipated.
“By working closely with state agencies to responsibly manage their budgets and through the hard work of state agencies and employees to exceed their lapse estimates, we have a substantial preliminary surplus for Fiscal Year 2015,” said Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is required to release the final but unaudited 2015 fiscal year figures Sept. 30.
Hassan had warned Republican budget writers in June they were assuming too large a 2015 surplus to help balance this biennium’s budget.
But Wednesday Hassan said the figures, which include accounting adjustments, show the state’s finances are on solid ground.
With the surplus she suggested lawmakers may want to consider increasing state aid to public schools.
“With this surplus, we will be able to greatly strengthen our Rainy Day Fund, maintaining our commitment to fiscal responsibility and the state’s long-term financial outlook,” Hassan said. “Given this surplus, and as we continue to close the books on Fiscal Year 2015, we should closely monitor the coming months of state revenues and consider if there are ways to address concerns raised by communities about school funding levels.”
Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, said the figures show the state is living within its means.
“The report released today proves what the Senate has maintained all along: the Fiscal Year 2015 budget is balanced, honest and shows that the State is living within its means,” he said.
But he questioned why $20 million earmarked for developmentally disabled services and to end the wait list of those moving from school to state services was not spent during the biennium...
State unrestricted revenues were $2.27 billion, while state agencies were authorized to spend $2.28 billion during the fiscal year. However, agencies did not spend $81.4 million, and accounting adjustment reduced the surplus by $15.8 million.
The 2015 fiscal year had a balance of $52.2 million, but the state carried a $21.9 million surplus from the 2014 year, leaving a surplus of $73.2 million.
The new state budget was finally approved last month after Hassan vetoed the original $11.35 billion, two-year spending plan largely due to cuts in business tax rates.
After negotiations, the cuts will become effective beginning in calendar year 2016, but the second phase of the reductions may not occur if revenues do not meet targets.
State agencies operated under a continuing resolution for two-and-a-half months at 2015 spending levels until the agreement was reached and lawmakers overrode Hassan’s budget veto last month.
“By working closely with state agencies to responsibly manage their budgets and through the hard work of state agencies and employees to exceed their lapse estimates, we have a substantial preliminary surplus for Fiscal Year 2015,” said Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is required to release the final but unaudited 2015 fiscal year figures Sept. 30.
Hassan had warned Republican budget writers in June they were assuming too large a 2015 surplus to help balance this biennium’s budget.
But Wednesday Hassan said the figures, which include accounting adjustments, show the state’s finances are on solid ground.
With the surplus she suggested lawmakers may want to consider increasing state aid to public schools.
“With this surplus, we will be able to greatly strengthen our Rainy Day Fund, maintaining our commitment to fiscal responsibility and the state’s long-term financial outlook,” Hassan said. “Given this surplus, and as we continue to close the books on Fiscal Year 2015, we should closely monitor the coming months of state revenues and consider if there are ways to address concerns raised by communities about school funding levels.”
Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, said the figures show the state is living within its means.
“The report released today proves what the Senate has maintained all along: the Fiscal Year 2015 budget is balanced, honest and shows that the State is living within its means,” he said.
But he questioned why $20 million earmarked for developmentally disabled services and to end the wait list of those moving from school to state services was not spent during the biennium...
State unrestricted revenues were $2.27 billion, while state agencies were authorized to spend $2.28 billion during the fiscal year. However, agencies did not spend $81.4 million, and accounting adjustment reduced the surplus by $15.8 million.
The 2015 fiscal year had a balance of $52.2 million, but the state carried a $21.9 million surplus from the 2014 year, leaving a surplus of $73.2 million.
The new state budget was finally approved last month after Hassan vetoed the original $11.35 billion, two-year spending plan largely due to cuts in business tax rates.
After negotiations, the cuts will become effective beginning in calendar year 2016, but the second phase of the reductions may not occur if revenues do not meet targets.
State agencies operated under a continuing resolution for two-and-a-half months at 2015 spending levels until the agreement was reached and lawmakers overrode Hassan’s budget veto last month.
2. Ayotte: Increasing Student Debt
Kelly Ayotte Attempts to Cover Up Record of Repeatedly Voting to Make College More Expensive
by Ajacobs, nhdp.org, October 1, 2015
Concord, N.H. – In Kelly Ayotte’s latest transparent political attempt to cover up her record of voting against the interests of New Hampshire, Ayotte is now trying to mislead voters about her record of repeatedly voting to make college more expensive for Granite State students and families.
Earlier this year, Ayotte voted for the Senate Republican budget that cuts Pell grants by nearly $90 billion (affecting roughly 23,000 New Hampshire students) and ends an expansion of the “Pay As You Earn Program,” which could double the cost of student loan payments for those who had enrolled in the program. Ayotte also voted this year against an amendment that would allow young people to refinance their student loans, which would help 129,000 Granite Staters.
Not to mention that Ayotte also voted to cut Pell Grants for thousands of New Hampshire students in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
“Since going to Washington, Ayotte has always put lobbyists and her special interest backers first, while making New Hampshire families and small businesses pay the price,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Press Secretary Aaron Jacobs. “From voting multiple times to defund Planned Parenthood and block access to women’s health care to repeatedly voting to cut Pell Grants and make college more expensive, Kelly Ayotte has voted directly against the interests of New Hampshire’s families over and over again.”
“But Ayotte won’t be able to cover up her true record of blocking women’s access to health care and making college more expensive because voters will see right through her transparent efforts to deceive them,” added Jacobs.
BACKGROUND:
AYOTTE VOTED FOR THE FY 2016 BUDGET RESOLUTION THAT CUT PELL GRANTS AND ENDS THE “PAY AS YOU EARN PROGRAM”
- Budget Called For End To Expansion of Pay As You Earn Program, Which Could Double Student Loan Payments Of Those That Had Enrolled In The Program. “The resolution also calls for the reversal of President Obama’s expansion of a student loan program that caps a borrower’s monthly bill at 10 percent of income and forgives the debt after 20 years of payment. That income-driven plan, known as Pay As You Earn (PAYE), is part of a suite of repayment options that’s supposed to prevent borrowers from defaulting on their loans, a problem faced by about 20 percent of people repaying college debt. […] An analysis by TICAS concludes that the Republican budget could double the student loan payments of borrowers enrolling in PAYE. If someone owing $29,000 in federal student loans and earning $35,000 a year enrolled in the program, for example, that person’s initial payment could increase from $145 a month under the current program to $217 a month under the reduced program.” [Washington Post, Wonkblog, 5/7/15]
- Budget Would Cut Pell Grants By Nearly $90 Billion Over Ten Years.According to the Senate Budget Committee, “the Republican budget would further cut Pell grants by nearly $90 billion over ten years.” [Senate Budget Committee, 4/9/14]
Ayotte Voted With All Republicans Against Restoring Cuts To Pell Grant Program. [S.Amdt. 828 to S.Con.Res. 11, Vote 101,3/26/15]
- Franken Introduced Amendment To Senate Budget Resolution That Would Have Restored Proposed Cuts Of $90 Billion To Pell Grants.[Minneapolis Star Tribune, Hot Dish Politics, 3/27/15]
AYOTTE HAS ALSO REPEATEDLY VOTED TO CUT PELL GRANTS IN PREVIOUS YEARS
AYOTTE VOTED FOR 2011 REPUBLICAN SPENDING PROPOSAL THAT CUT PELL GRANTS
- 2011: Ayotte Voted For Republican Spending Proposal. [CQ, 3/9/11; H.R.1, Vote 36, 3/9/11]
- Republican Spending Bill Cut $12 Million From The Pell Grants Program In New Hampshire, Which Would Affect 21,000 New Hampshire Students.[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/1/11]
AYOTTE HAS REPEATEDLY SUPPORTED THE RYAN BUDGET THAT WOULD HAVE MEANT SIGNIFICANT CUTS TO PELL GRANTS
- Ayotte Voted For The Ryan Budget Three Times. [CQ, 3/21/13; S.Amdt. 433 to S.Con.Res. 8, Vote 46,3/21/13; CQ, 5/16/12; H.Con.Res. 112, Vote 98,5/16/12; CQ, 5/25/11; H. Con. Res. 34, Vote 77, 5/25/11]
- Under The FY 2012 Ryan Budget Nearly 3,500 New Hampshire Students Would Have Lost Access To Pell Grants While Other Students Would Have Seen Average Pell Grant Cut Of Nearly $2,000. [House Committee on Education and Labor, Press Release, 4/14/11]
- Under the FY 2013 Ryan Budget, $9.6 Million Students Nationwide Would Have Seen Their Pell Grants Fall By More Than $1,000 In 2014 And More Than 1 Million Students Would Have Completely Lost Access To Pell Grants Over The Following Decade. [Office of Management and Budget, Blog,3/21/12]
- Insider Higher Ed: The FY 2014 Ryan Budget Would Have Meant “Fewer Students [Were] Eligible” For Pell Grants. “The budget also calls for reversing changes to the grant’s needs analysis formula put into place in 2007, which expanded the number of students eligible for Pell Grants, in essence making fewer students eligible to receive them. It also revisits proposals put forward last year: using ‘fair value’ accounting for student loans, which makes the program seem much less profitable for the federal government than it does under current accounting rules.” [Inside Higher Ed, 3/13/13]
3. The Importance of NH's First-in-the-Nation
Primary change bad for everyone
Editorial, nashuatelegraph.com, October 1, 2015
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told the National Journal this week that Republicans may seek to shake off the tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire going first in the presidential selection process in favor of a series of regional primaries after this election cycle.
"I don't think there should ever be any sacred cows as to the primary process or the order," he told the Journal's Tim Alberta.
Moooooo.
This is not the first time the early-voting states have come under attack from the political parties, which have long been frustrated by our refusal to let the political elite do our thinking for us when it comes to picking a candidate.
"One of the things I would have been interested in doing is sort of like a rotating primary process, where you would divide the country into five quadrants and have a primary about once every two weeks. And then you could have about a 10-week primary process," Priebus said.
If that happens, say good-bye to one-on-one politics as it has long been practiced in New Hampshire, which is exactly what the party power-brokers are gunning for. They want only their anointed candidates to have a shot at the nomination - the ones with the backing of the super PACs and big-money donors.
Because they are small states, New Hampshire and Iowa have traditionally leveled the playing field by providing at least a nominal opportunity for under-financed, lesser-known candidates to contend until at least one vote is cast. Not all of them do - as we've seen in the past few weeks with Rick Perry and Scott Walker dropping out - but at least New Hampshire and Iowa afforded them a chance.
If New Hampshire were lumped in a primary with the other Northeast states, you could say goodbye to house parties and stump speeches and town-hall meetings at which voters look candidates in the eye and ask for their take on the issues of the day.
"The entire nation benefits when candidates are forced to answer the concerns of voters face-to-face in living rooms and backyards across New Hampshire," state Republican Party Chairman Jennifer Horn said in a statement Tuesday, and she's right.
It may be self-serving to say so, but there is value to having a small state like New Hampshire in the lead primary position. It enables the likes of Carly Fiorina or Bernie Sanders to come here polling in the single digits and, through sheer hard work and shoe leather, connect with voters to gain traction and raise themselves up to a contending position.
Such an ascension would be virtually impossible if New Hampshire were lumped in with the likes of New York, New Jersey or one of the other big states. Instead, those states would draw the candidates and the attention and campaigns would revolve around media markets, filtered messages, television ad buys and who has the money to get on the air, the voters be damned.
Granite Staters take their role as candidate-vetters seriously, and history shows we have a pretty good track record. Not perfect, but pretty good, nonetheless, precisely because we think for ourselves.
Changing the primary system would represent nothing less than the marginalization of retail politics in this country and the subordination of the country's interests to those of the big-moneyed political elite who hold outsized sway with the parties.
4. Funny-Money-Frank Multitasking
Frank Guinta Votes To Shut Down The Government
from NH Labor News, nhlabornews.com, September 30, 2015
Today, the House of Representatives avoided a Republican-led government shutdown, just a few hours before midnight by passing a short-term funding resolution that will keep the United States government open through the beginning of December. With a vote count of 277-151, Congressman Frank Guinta proved to be more extreme than most of his colleagues by voting against that legislation that would keep the government open. Clearly, Guinta prefers to play politics over governing responsibly.
If Guinta had his way, a government shutdown would have occurred at midnightWednesday, with potentially disastrous results on the economy and private sector jobs, the closure of many government agencies, delayed veterans’ disability checks, stalled small business loans and much more.
“Over the course of several months, the Republican Party has brought our country closer and closer to the brink, by holding the government hostage over women’s health funding. And, while the Congress has temporarily avoided that shutdown at the very last minute, Guinta has made perfectly clear his willingness to take us over the edge. Guinta’s reckless vote against preventing that shutdown demonstrates a dangerous refusal to govern responsibly,” said Meredith Kelly of the DCCC
Guinta Sets 'Grassroots Goal' Ahead Of Fundraising Deadline
by Brady Carlson, nhpr.org, October 1, 2015
Political candidates send lots of emails as the end of a fundraising quarter approaches. New Hampshire Congressman Frank Guinta is no exception – though there’s a bit more to his story than what’s in the message.
“We are just hours away from the end of the 3rd quarter,” read an email Wednesday from the Guinta camp. “I am asking for your support to help us prepare for our upcoming battles.”
Among those “battles”: raising money. Guinta’s fundraising haul dropped by more than half after news broke earlier this year that the Federal Election Commission concluded he’d accepted $355,000 in illegal campaign donations from his parents. The money Guinta raised after the FEC report was made public in May came almost exclusively from political action committees, with only three individual contributions.
Guinta’s fundraising email asks supporters to raise the final $5,000 of a “grassroots goal.” The campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, so we don’t know what that goal was. But we can expect a much clearer picture of Team Guinta’s finances, including whether he’s repaid the $355,000 he received from his family, by October 15th. That's when campaigns must file their third quarter fundraising reports with the FEC.
5. Maybe Also Affected by Number of Right-Wingers per Capita?
These Are The 10 Drunkest Cities In New Hampshire
by Nick James, roadsnacks.net, September 29, 2015
Is there anything wrong with being called the drunkest city in your state?
Especially in New Hampshire, which is first in the nation in terms of the amount of beer and spirits consumed every year. You guys drink 4.76 gallons of beer a year (which is about 50 bottles of Sam Adams for every one of you).
Sure, many places in New Hampshire have more sober residents. But they sure do make up for it in these cities below.
How do you decide how much a place drinks? By the number of available places to buy booze, and by how often people are talking about drinking, that’s how.
Plus, we thought why not add in a stereotype? Studies have indicated that when one or both partners in a marriage are alcoholics, that couple is three times more likely to divorce.
After analyzing all cities with a decent amount of people in them, we came up with this list as The Drunkest Cities in the Drunkest State:
- Manchester
- Portsmouth
- Wolfeboro
- Laconia
- Littleton
- Nashua
- Meredith
- Conway
- Seabrook
- Hampton
...
4. Laconia
Population: 15,951
Divorce rate: 15.1%
Bars per capita: 2nd
Liquor stores per capita: 21st
Divorce rate: 15.1%
Bars per capita: 2nd
Liquor stores per capita: 21st
Laconia is on the other side of Lake Winnipesaukee, near Lake Winnisquam. Try saying that after a few rounds.
Here, they have the 2nd most bars per capita in the state.
For a small place, there were a fair number of drunk Tweets coming from Laconia. Including this gem:
“ very drunk guy singing from his deck across the street just sums up the people of Laconia”
...
7. Meredith
Population: 6,241
Divorce rate: 19%
Bars per capita: 9th in NH
Liquor stores per capita: 2nd
Divorce rate: 19%
Bars per capita: 9th in NH
Liquor stores per capita: 2nd
It’s beginning to look like the area surrounding Lake Winnipesaukee is the place to be for the drinking types of New Hampshire. At least if you want to belly up to the bar fairly often.
And the divorce rate is really high here as well. When there are lots of liquor stores in the area, and 1 in 5 people has hit the Big D already, that’s a sign that people are out and about quite regularly.
{To see comments on all 10, as well as a list of the top 67, click on the following link:
AND NATIONALLY
6. Some Ideas for Reducing Student Debt
So you want to slash college debt?
Eight cutting-edge proposals for tackling America’s next great financial crisis.
by Stephen Heuser, politico.com, September 23, 2015
Higher education is putting young Americans in a bind: As a degree becomes more crucial to their professional futures, it also becomes more daunting to their finances. The price of a college degree is rising faster than inflation, much faster than American salaries, even faster than medical expenses.
What to do? On the campaign trail, the issue has emerged as catnip for Democrats eager to nab young voters: Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have proposed plans that would allow students to graduate “debt-free,” while Bernie Sanders has gone even further, proposing a sweeping overhaul that would make college completely free.
Free college is unlikely in the U.S., but within the higher-ed world, everyone from college presidents to financiers have been hatching ideas for getting costs and student debt under control. Some ideas would create new incentives for students, others would shift responsibility to colleges; some even involve new financial instruments. Below, 8 out-of-the-box ideas being floated or piloted right now.
1. Pay students to hurry up
“Four-year colleges” are something of a lie: at a majority of them, fewer than half the students graduate on time. Those extra terms add up, not only in tuition and fees but also in lost income. To keep students on a faster and financially sounder track, a growing number of schools are offering cash bonuses to students who finish in four years or less. Attend Howard University, for example, and you’ll get half-off your final semester of tuition if you graduate in four years. That saves just under $6,000 for students paying the sticker price. And students graduating from Texas state universities on time can receive $1,000 rebates on graduation.
Will it work? For colleges who think their image could get a boost from improving their graduation rates, the idea makes sense. But when it comes to bringing down student debt, on-time graduation only goes so far, and it won’t appeal to all colleges.
2. The “job or a refund" model
Student debt is a perfectly sensible investment if it leads to promising career. Without a good job, it can quickly become a crisis. Some coding bootcamps are now insuring against that risk by refunding tuition to students who don’t get jobs after graduating. These are short-term, time-intensive courses that have caught on like wildfire in Silicon Valley in recent years. Code Fellows in San Francisco offers a full refund to graduates who fail to find jobs in their field, and says it only has a 3 percent refund rate.
Will it work? It’s hard to know if the model extends to degrees less narrowly focused on single job skills. And the bootcamps themselves are unaccredited schools whose growth is bringing them up against student-protection regulations; California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education sent a letter last year demanding the bootcamps come into compliance with its rules.
3. Cash to schools
Every year Congress hands money to 9.4 million low-income students in the form of federal Pell grants, but the original idea was to supplement that with a second pot of money paid directly to colleges and universities to support their education. That never happened. Forty years after the law passed, Louisiana State University President F. King Alexander has argued that reviving direct school aid would give public universities a fresh incentive to serve low-income students, rather than recruiting high-paying students from out of state or even abroad.
Would it work? Federal payments might help keep tuition down and prevent low-income students from getting pushed toward expensive private or for-profit colleges. But Pell grants already cost $35 billion per year, and it’s tough to imagine lawmakers finding more money under today’s tight budget constraints.
4. A futures market in student lives
In the business world, companies raise immediate capital by promising investors a portion of their future profits. Should students be able to do the same? A crop of startups are offering a new financial product called “income share agreements,” in which investors give students money upfront for college in exchange for a percentage of student income after they graduate. Start-up lenders such as Pave and 13th Avenue have gotten this idea off the ground, and they say they’ve enjoyed good results so far. The idea isn’t new: In fact, it’s an old Milton Friedman plan. More recently it’s been adopted by Sen. Marco Rubio, who has proposedlegislation clearing up a legal grey area currently surrounding these deals.
Will it work? Right now the legal questions make it a challenge; critics also make the moral argument that garnishing future income sounds like indentured servitude. And the idea only works for students whose futures look good enough that investors want to buy in.
5. Goodbye, football
One reason college is expensive is the huge cost of running a brick-and-mortar campus, with all its amenities and employees. A few experimental colleges are trying to slash costs by radically paring these things away, teaching students largely or entirely online, without most of the things that traditionally make up a campus. With the help of outside donors, a California-based school called the University of the People has developed a nearly free degree in two majors; students pay only minor fees. Another, the $10,000-per-year Minerva Project, is testing out elite-style education offered online to students who live in Minerva-operated dorms around the world—and who don’t mind ditching the football team.
Will it work? On a small scale, it might. The University of the People expects 5,000 enrollees next year. But the idea has limited appeal; most students still prefer to learn in person, and colleges—especially those in the top tier—have deep ties to the campus-based model.
6. Let bankrupt borrowers discharge their loans
What makes student loans especially onerous is that they’re one of the only forms of debt that can almost never be discharged: They follow borrowers even through bankruptcy, and the federal government can even garnish wages or tax returns from graduates who default. As President Barack Obama works to cement his higher education legacy, the White House has floated making it easier to discharge some loans, those taken out from private lenders that aren’t federally guaranteed, in an effort to help ease student debt.
Will it work? For the private loans, it might actually make borrowing more difficult. Without that extra ability to collect, private lenders would have higher risk, and loans would likely get smaller or more expensive. And even Obama has shied away from proposing that borrowers could walk away from their federal loans; that would leave taxpayers on the hook.
7. Skin in the game
One idea that sounds far-fetched is actually catching on in discussions this fall about rewriting the country’s main higher education law: that colleges should have a financial stake in whether their students succeed. As it stands, federal grants and loan guarantees make it easier for colleges to jack up tuition with little incentive to produce results for borrowers. That might change if they had a minor equity stake in student loans, or had to pay a fee when students default— also known as “skin in the game.”
Will it work? Not if colleges have anything to say about it. “The higher education lobby—specifically the private higher education lobby—is extremely effective at lobbying” to keep the current deal in place, said Alexander Holt, policy analyst at New America. But as the public grows more and more restless about mounting higher education costs, political pressure could force them to make a deal.
8. Go to Europe!
College is far cheaper in Europe, where most students attend public universities and countries devote more government resources to higher education. Germany went completely tuition-free in 2014. The deal applies to foreigners, too, and many college and graduate programs are taught in English. Norway, too, charges no tuition or fees to international students. Amazingly, this means it can be far cheaper for an American student to fly overseas, rent an apartment and attend a top German university than it is to go to their local state school.
Will it work? For some students, it already does—in 2011, the last year for which data is available, more than 4,000 Americans sought degrees in Germany. But Europe is still out of reach for less well-off Americans, and there will surely be limits: it’s unlikely European countries would keep their doors open if that 4,000 students became 400,000.
7. Bringing Drug Prices Down
Let Medicare use its leverage to lower drug costs
by Bloomberg News, sentinelsource.com, September 28, 2015
The rising cost of prescription drugs isn’t quite the crisis it’s made out to be, but it’s still worth addressing. Hillary Clinton isn’t alone in suggesting the most sensible way to do that.
First, about that crisis. Yes, the U.S. pays 40 percent more for drugs than other countries do, and last year those costs rose 12.6 percent. But the increase is expected to slow, and drugs still account for just 10 cents of every dollar Americans spend on health care.
What has rightly made drug costs a political issue, however, are the astronomical prices of a few specialty medicines. Sovaldi, a cure for hepatitis C, costs $1,000 a pill — or $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment — compared with $10 a pill in Bangladesh. Avastin, a lung cancer treatment, costs $11,908 a month. Daraprim, which fights parasitic infections, this month jumped to $750 a pill, from $13.50. (The company that owns the drug backed down in the face of public pressure.)
The best strategy to push down such prices — the one endorsed by Clinton and one of her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders — is to give Medicare, which pays for 29 percent of all U.S. prescription drug purchases, the ability to negotiate prices with drugmakers.
That Medicare doesn’t already do this is Congress’s fault. In 2003, when lawmakers created the Medicare prescription drug benefit, they explicitly prohibited bargaining. Presumably, this was to maintain the support of drug companies, but it gives away great leverage that Medicare could use to keep drug prices in check.
Along with this bargaining power, the government needs better information on drug effectiveness. Clinton endorses this, too. An authoritative body, similar to those in other countries, should compare various medicines for the same condition. The Affordable Care Act created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to address similar questions, but it is prohibited from considering the relative value of drugs.
Some medicines may be so unique and effective as to be worth buying at a high price. But both Medicare and private insurers need to know which ones they are.
8. Blowing Up the Potential Republican Coalition
by the Democratic Strategist, The White Working Class Roundtable Newsletter, Fall 2015
The most dramatic development in the 2016 election campaign has been the rise of Donald Trump and the tremendous popularity he has achieved among white working class Americans. As Ron Brownstein notes: "Trump is displaying a striking strength among the Republican Party's growing ranks of [white] working class voters, The billionaire developer is building a blue-collar foundation."
This development has profoundly transformed the outlook for the 2016 elections and made the unexpected political volatility of white workers the most complex and important trend in American politics.
The White Working Class Roundtable is therefore pleased to present a thoughtful new Strategy Memo that considers the tremendous implications of this change.
This development has profoundly transformed the outlook for the 2016 elections and made the unexpected political volatility of white workers the most complex and important trend in American politics.
The White Working Class Roundtable is therefore pleased to present a thoughtful new Strategy Memo that considers the tremendous implications of this change.
[To read the full memo, click on the following link:
9. Myth-Busting
New Study Demolishes 3 Pernicious Myths About First-Generation Immigrants In America
by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, thinkprogress.org, September 24, 2015
The newest arrivals in America are assimilating faster into the society than previous generations, and their experiences don’t fit into the most common stereotypes leveled against them, according to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report published this week.
Culling data from the 41 million foreign-born immigrants in the country — a population that includes the 11.3 million undocumented immigrant population — the study authors write in their 400-page report that integration into American society “may make immigrants and their children better off and in a better position to fully contribute to their communities.”
“They’re integrating as well as, or even faster, than immigrants who came from Europe in the last century,” lead author and Harvard University sociology professor Dr. Mary Waters told ThinkProgress in a phone interview this week. “In that way, I think it should be reassuring to Americans who are often worried that somehow the immigrants are not learning English, are not progressing well, or becoming full Americans. What we find overall — there’s a lot of details and caveats — but overall, the immigrants are rapidly assimilating into American society.”
Water noted that the study was intended to be “factual and independent of politics.” Even so, her study’s findings do repudiate some of the existing myths about the impact that immigrants have on American society, and could challenge some of the recent xenophobic rhetoric
Here are the main takeaways from the study that help debunk some persistent misconceptions about immigrants:
Immigrants are healthier than native-born Americans
Compared with native-born Americans, foreign-born immigrants are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and cancers, have fewer chronic health conditions, have lower infant mortality rates, have lower rates of obesity, and have longer life expectancy rates, among other issues. They’re also less likely to suffer from depression and abuse alcohol, the report found.
That finding refutes the idea that immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to enter our borders because they may pose some kind of health risk. Arguing that immigrants have diseases has long been a fearmongering tactic employed to scare people into believing that immigrants could spread infectious diseases and wreck havoc for Americans.
When thousands of unaccompanied Latin American children and families crossed the border last year, numerous lawmakers refused to grant them temporary refuge, claiming that the immigrants may have “known diseases and gang affiliations” and that “you don’t ship people that are ill and contagious all over the country. At the time, other lawmakers claimed that Central American immigrants could have tuberculosis, measles, chickenpox, and even the Ebola virus (a predominantly West African disease). In spite of the claims, many of those immigrants have already been vaccinated in their countries, which actually have higher vaccination rates than the United States.
Allowing immigrants to join the U.S. health care system could make them even healthier. But some of them are finding themselves shut out of the Affordable Care Act, even if they’re in the country legally. It’s possible that legal U.S. residents and citizens were among the “overwhelming majority” of the more than 400,000 legal immigrants who lost their insurance coverage earlier this year after getting flagged for citizenship and immigration issues.
As a previous Journal of General Internal Medicine study found, undocumented immigrants are not a drain on the health care system, instead providing a surplus of $35.1 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund between 2000 and 2011.
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans
First-generation immigrants are incarcerated at one-fourth the rate for the native-born. The new study found that it’s likely that the crime rates among the second and third generations catch up to the crime rates for the native-born population, which the authors point out could be “an unwelcome aspect of integration.”
That finding helps challenge GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s insinuation that immigrants are rapists, drug dealers, and criminals. A growing number of Republican lawmakers have pointed to individual crimes committed by immigrants to double down on calls to secure the border and to get rid of so-called “sanctuary cities,” places where local law enforcement officials can refuse to turn over immigrants to federal immigration officials. But turning up the heat on criminal immigrants actually runs counter to the truth about the immigrant population as a whole.
The report backs up at least two other studies that came to similar conclusions. The Immigration Policy Council recently released a report finding that immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born population, with the violent crime rate dropping 48 percent during the period of time when the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent. And a 2013 Criminology and Delinquency study found that second-generation immigrants catch up to native-born Whites when it comes to criminal offenses, but that first-generation commit crime at a lower rate.
Immigrants are learning English faster than ever
The study found that 85 percent of the foreign-born population speaks a language other than English at home, with about 62 percent of all immigrants speaking Spanish. At least half of the immigrant population speaks English “very well” or “well,” and less than 10 percent said they speak English “not at all.”
Compared with their predecessors, immigrants are losing their ancestors’ languages at around the same rates as their historical predecessors, “with English monolingualism usually occurring within three generations,” the report found.
But even with the advancement of English integration throughout the generations, the report found that there are various barriers to English proficiency, like lack of funding from federal and state agencies to support adult English-language classes or access by low-skilled, poorly educated, residentally segregated, and undocumented immigrant populations.
“The troubling issue is that federal and state support for adult English-language classes has declined in the last decade,” Waters said. “So people who want to learn English don’t necessarily have access to that.”
America does not have an official language, though many states have already passed or are trying to pass legislation to make their official state language English, sometimes as part of an anti-immigrant push to limit immigrants into their localities. Most recently, a Pennsylvania lawmakerturned off the microphone for a Latina colleague who objected to his English-only bill.
Even GOP candidates have hedged right on advocating for English-only legislation. Trump criticized former Florida Jeb Bush (R) for not exclusively speaking English on the campaign trail. And Carly Fiorina indicated that “English is the official language of the United States.”
“There’s no need for English-only legislation,” Waters stated, noting that the switch to English in the second generation is “overwhelming,” while the switch in the third generation is generally complete. “It seems to be happening on its own. If people wanted to support English-language use, then perhaps increasing federal and state support would be the way to go.”
FINALLY two-spot
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