Education Costs, Health Care Will Likely Sway Youth Vote

By Adrianna McGinley

Youth leaders and policy experts cited rising costs in education, health care, child care, and housing as key issues for winning the young vote in 2012.

The discussion at the Center for American Progress was based on a recent report from the think tank Demos and the Young Invincibles entitled “The State of Young America”.

Heather McGhee, Demos’ Washington office Director, noted the report shows that while college tuition has tripled over the last few decades, federal aid has been cut in half. A maximum pell grant that she said covered 69 percent of costs in 1980, today only covers 34 percent. She added that in 2010 the amount of student debt surpassed that of credit card debt and 76 percent of participants in the study reported it has become harder in the last five years to afford college.

McGhee said these numbers make young people “more oriented towards public solutions, more willing to pay higher taxes for higher degrees of service from the government than any generation since the depression generation.”

Aaron Smith, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Young Invincibles, said Congress has the power to help youth but only if they make their voices heard. Smith cited Obama’s Affordable Care Act as “an example of how Congress can really step up to the plate and address one of these big long-term challenges,” and added it would be a grave mistake for Congress to repeal it in 2012.

“Going backwards is obviously, I think, exactly the wrong move…we’re going to be doing more work in the Fall to educate young people about what the health care law actually means for them,” Smith said. “Once you have the education I think then you’re prepared to sort of become an advocate, to tell your story, to explain ‘yes…I’m a young person, but healthcare really does matter to my life,’ and we found that when those stories are told, it can be quite powerful and change the political debate.”

The panel also touched on immigration issues.

Eduardo Garcia, Advocacy Associate for Campus Progress, said the 2012 election will depend on how the administration continues to deal with the undocumented population.

“Young people are very much feeling the impacts of some of the harmful deportation policies that the administration has adopted, and I think that it’s especially hurtful because many of those folks turned out in 2008 to get this president elected.”

The panel cited immigration reform as a possible key to economic recovery as well, saying that while 54 percent of all young adults have or want to start a business, that rate for minority youth is over 60 percent.

Ronnie Cho, White House Liaison to Young Americans and Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement, said it is up to youth to make their voices heard.

“It is incumbent upon ourselves to really assert ourselves, not ask for an invitation to be a part of the discussion, because that’s simply not going to happen and it hasn’t happened…that’s why the discussion hasn’t been around how this affects young people,” Cho said. “It is our time to emerge as this force to be reckoned with.”

McGhee added that while young voters need to stand up, the federal government must continue to protect voters rights, citing that in 2010, 31 states passed voter ID laws that could inhibit youth from voting since over a third of 18 year olds do not have a federally issued ID.

UN Predicts Grim Economic Outlook for 2012

The world economy is on the brink of another recession and prospects for recovery will worsen unless the international community can strengthen cooperation, says the UN’s 2012 Report on World Economic Situation and Prospects.

“We have a situation where we may well be at risk of a double dip. In any case it is very likely there will be a further slow down.” says Jomo Kwame Sundaram, UN Assistant Secretary General for the Department Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).  

Sundaram and DESA director for policy and analysis Rob Vos where at the UN to preset an overview of the report, which will be released in the new year.

Sundaram says today’s announcement by China that its manufacturing sector had shrunk over the recent period is an ominous sign, especially for developing countries that for the most part had continued to do reasonably well during most of the crisis.

“We do not have the basis for a strong recovery in the developed world and what is likely to happen in the near future is the further deterioration of conditions in the developing world.” he said. “This current situation, in the view of the Chinese, is worst than the last quarter of 2008.”

Sundaram says the international community has so far failed to take collective action and adopt preventive measures to ensure possible future European debt problems can be contained. 

He says the complex political relationship between European national governments and the European Union framework, along with ideological differences between the White House and Congress have seriously limited any international consensus to addressing the crisis.

Rob Vos, Director of Policy and Analysis at DESA, says even in a best case scenario global economic growth will drop. 

“We project that the world economy could grow to 2.6% next year, that’s slightly down from 2.8% but that is already a pretty strong deceleration from what happened in 2010 when the world economy was growing at 4 percent.” 

Vos says projections are based on the assumption the European debt crisis will not reach the EU’s larger economies. But with both Italy and Spain coming under increased financial pressure, he says the worse case scenario is quite likely.

The report’s forecast also depends on Congress and the White House agreeing on the extension of payroll tax cuts and emergency borrowing benefits.

“If those two actions don’t happen, we estimate that the US economy could further slow by another one percentage point of growth next year, which would be further down from already slow growth of 1.7%.”

Vos says the US should also start thinking about short term stimulus measures to avoid an increase in home foreclosures, which he says continues to undermine the health of the banking sector and negatively impact the economy.

“There is weaknesses and some dangers in the mortgage market that because of the high unemployment, a lot of the home’s are underwater so to speak, that their debts are higher than the value of their homes, that there may be a need to give people more bridge loans to overcome those problems and to avoid more foreclosures.”

Obama Moves Forward With Items To Help Jobless Vets

By Andrea Salazar

President Obama is using his executive authority to try and put veterans back to work with new tools to connect returning soldiers to civilian jobs.

Obama announced those tools during a Rose Garden speech today in which he called on Congress to pass two parts of his American Jobs Act - the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warriors Tax Credits.

“We’re here today to try to take some steps to better serve today’s veterans in a rough economy,” he said. “These are the kinds of Americans who every company should want to hire. And yet…more than 850,000 veterans remain unemployed.”

The White House initiatives include an online veteran’s jobs bank, a Veteran’s Gold Card that gives veterans six months of personalized counseling and case management and My Next Move For Veterans -  a website connecting veterans with civilian jobs.

“Having served and defended our nation, it just doesn’t make sense that many of these well-trained, highly-skilled and motivated individuals can’t find a job worthy of their incredible talent,” said Matt Flavin, director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy, on the increasing number of unemployed post-9/11 veterans.

Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, said Monday that the initiatives would use existing resources and would reduce veteran unemployment.

“These particular technology initiatives are meant to reduce the time it takes for a veteran to find an available job,” Chopra said. “That would reduce the unemployment rate, even if it hasn’t increased the net number of new jobs.

Flavin, however, emphasized that the initiatives are “not a substitute for robust congressional action” that would create jobs.

The Senate will debate the tax credits this week. The measures would give businesses up to $5,600 for hiring veterans who have been unemployed for longer than six months and up to $9,600 for hiring disabled veterans.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) followed the president’s remarks by saying that the House passed a veterans job training bill in October, which Senate has yet to act on it.

Casey: Currency Bill Aimed At Punishing Cheating China

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) spoke to reporters ahead of a key vote later today in the Senate on a bill to crack down on alleged currency manipulation by the Chinese government.

Casey said that Chinese officials must learn that they won’t get away with devaluaing their Yuan. 

“It’s time to vote and act to let the officials in China know there are consequences to cheating,” Casey said during a conference call.

Proponents of the legislation argue that over the past decade China has manipulated its currency and maintained trade policies that have harmed the U.S economy.

“We’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the past decade and many are attributable directly to China’s currency policies,” Casey said.

The Senate bill, which has bipartisan support, would impose tariffs on Chinese imports and allow easier investigations into currency manipulation.

Not everyone is happy with the bill, however.

Around 50 U.S industry groups have vocally protested it and the White House has yet to endorse it. 

Some are worried that the legislation would lead to a trade war with China. 

Casey, however, has no such concern. 

“China would be wise to play by the rules,” he said. “The United States still has quite a mark on China, which they’re interested in so I would hope they wouldn’t overreact to it. I am not concerned by that. I am more concerned that we do nothing.” 

Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

As President Obama’s deadline to approve or disapprove licensing of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline draws closer, NASA’s lead climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, addressed reporters at the National Press Club to explain the grave consequences of approving such a project. 

“We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday. 

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline system that would be utilized to transport crude oil from Canada to oil refineries in the midwestern region of the US. Environmentalists, including some in Congress, oppose it on the grounds that it could disrupt and taint domestic clean water supplies, and could jeopardize efforts to shift to clean energy sources.

Hansen argued that if humans continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, 20-40 percent of species on the planet will become extinct by the end of the century. The hydraulic cycle, he said, has become more extreme, resulting in extreme floods and drought intensification. Coral reefs are being destroyed, sea levels are lowering and glaciers are receding, causing rivers to run dry, he added.

Hansen warned that if the next phase of the Keystone pipeline is approved, America will continue to feed its “oil addiction” and will continue to burn fossil fuels, further destroying the environment. 

“Fossil fuels are finite,” Hansen stated. “We’ll have to move to clean energy at some point so we may as well do it before we burn all the fossil fuels and ruin the future of our children.”

Hansen was among the first group of scientists to spread such warnings of global warming 30 years ago. Frustrated that his cries over the threat of climate change was going unheard, Hansen turned to civil disobedience in 2009. He has been arrested twice for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining, once in West Virginia and once outside the White House.

Following his remarks at the NPC, Hansen joined more than 60 religious leaders outside the White House to spread awareness of the environmental dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a civil disobedience act that has been going on for weeks.