Recognizing What Historically Black Colleges and Universities Mean to America
As I stood watching the Virginia State University drum-line perform in the White House this week (likely the first time an HBCU drum-line has ever perform
ed at the White House), I was reminded of how far we have come as a nation and hopeful about where we are heading. The nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities have served our nation since 1837. They educated freed slaves, giving them the priceless gift of a mind filled with world’s possibilities. Today, this noble goal of our HBCUs continues as they unveil for their students the world of possibilities for themselves, their communities and our nation.
Guests attending this White House event left with a glow not unlike that of January 20, 2009, but they also left with a resolve to do the work that will be necessary to ensure all students have access to a high quality education and armed with the tools they need to reach for the American Dream.
President Barack Obama signs an executive order for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the East Room of the White House
When the President reflected on some of the legends that have matriculated through HBCU’s – Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King, WEB Dubois -I thought about how important and critically necessary these institutions have been to the fabric of our nation. I was reminded of the tremendous legacy of HBCUs and that when we invest in our young people at these schools we are preparing the way for the next King, Marshall, and Dubois.
President Obama has demonstrated his commitment to these institutions not just with this event, but also through his budget. The 2011 budget calls for $98 million in new money for HBCUs, including a commitment of $850 million over ten years. These are resources the schools can use however they see fit to build their capacity to deliver a quality education to their students. For the students, this year’s budget calls for an increase in the Pell Grant program, raising it to $5,710 annually. More than 50 percent of the students attending HBCUs qualify for Pell Grants and other forms of support. This is important because, as President Obama said, one in two students at HBCUs are the first in their family to attend college, and HBCUs continue to educate many students who often times would not be able to go to college for financial reasons.
Members of the audience watch as President Barack Obama signs an executive order for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the East Room of the White House
The HBCU presidents and other guests present nodded in agreement as the President talked about the need to increase access and completion at HBCUs and the critical role they play. President Obama believes we must continue investing and supporting HBCUs as part of meeting his mission to develop a world-class education system in America. This is not just for the benefit of African Americans, but as we work to compete with our neighbors around this globe, it is to the benefit of all Americans.
Often in Washington we get mired in partisan debate and lose track of what’s really important. Education. Access to opportunity. A fair and living wage. These are things that matter and can make a difference in the lives of people no matter who they are, what they look like or where they are from. We were reminded of these truly American values this week, and for that I am eternally grateful. Now let’s get to work!
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William Jawando is a Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement
Information on the Chilean Earthquake and Tsunami Warnings
The President made the following statement on the earthquake in Chile and preparations for a possible tsunami that could reach American shores later today:
Tsunami warnings are in affect for Hawaii, N. Marianas, American Samoa, Marshall and Solomon Islands. A tsunami advisory is in effect along the west coast of the United States and Alaska. More information can be found at the National Weather Center’s website.
FEMA continues to monitor the situation, and through Region IX in California, is in contact with the State of Hawaii, and recommends that individuals follow the advice of local officials. FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate is monitoring the situation from FEMA Headquarters in Washington, DC and released the following statement:
FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security are closely monitoring the situation, and officials are in close contact with the State of Hawaii and the U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean that could be impacted by a potential tsunami. FEMA stands ready to assist should a request for assistance be made, and does have pre-deployed assets in Hawaii, including food, water, generators and other resources. We urge all individuals to follow the direction provided by local officials.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed and is monitoring developments from Vancouver, where she is serving as the lead of the US Delegation at the Olympics.
More information and resources (updated throughout the day):
The National Weather Center’s Tsunami.gov.
General Information on Tsumani preparedness as well as a tool to determine if your address is in a tsunami evacuation zone.
In Hawaii, citizens can go to http://www.scd.state.hi.us/ for the latest news and information. Additionally, the States of California, Washington, and Oregon have similar sites on their web pages dedicated to this.
The State Department has collected information and resources at www.state.gov/chilequake. If you are U.S citizen looking for a loved one in Chile, please contact State’s Consular Affairs Bureau on 1-888-407-4747.
A "person finder" has also been published to help find individuals in affected area in Chile – this resource is not maintained by the US government.
Robert Gibbs is White House Press Secretary
A Disappointing Return to Political Games with Severe Consequences for Those Who have Lost Their Jobs
On Thursday, Democrats and Republicans came together in the House to pass an emergency bill that will temporarily extend benefits for American workers and small businesses. It showed that in times of great need, our elected officials can still set aside their differences to do right by the American people.
But just when we thought we were seeing progress, we have been confronted with a disappointing return to tactics that could be harmful to the American people, with Senator Bunning (R-KY) blocking the extension of several critical priorities for middle-class families. If Senator Bunning gets his way, hundreds of thousands of people could be ineligible for COBRA tax credits for health coverage created by the Recovery Act; 400,000 individuals who cannot find work will lose their unemployment insurance; thousands of small businesses will lose access to credit; transportation projects and public safety programs across the country would be halted; critical transportation safety personnel will be furloughed at a time of increased concern about the safety of our roads and highways; and 600,000 doctors across the country who care for our seniors and veterans could be subject to a 20 % pay cut, including 8,105 in Senator Bunning’s home state of Kentucky.
Make no mistake about it: this bill is too important to fall prey to the political games of one person. If Senator Bunning succeeds, it would have a devastating effect on millions of people as early as Monday.
There’s nothing wrong with someone taking a principled stand for something they believe in, but Senator Bunning voted to extend these same benefits in 2008. Over the past decade, unemployment insurance extensions have been passed as emergency measures under Republican and Democratic Congresses alike. So what we’re seeing right now is politics at its worst. It’s a perfect example of why so many Americans are fed up with Washington.
We need to think about how our actions will impact the American people, because they sent us here to work for them. We need to put an end to the gamesmanship, and do whatever is in our power to put Americans back to work. They expect and deserve nothing less of us.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director
Weekly Address: The Olympic Spirit, the Spirit of Bipartisanship, and Health Reform
The President takes a moment to congratulate our Olympic athletes. Discussing the unity and pride Americans feel in cheering them on, the President relates that sentiment to his own desire for bipartisanship in Washington. He praises the recent bipartisan meeting and talks about moving forward on health reform.
Federal Interagency Members Meet with Public on Next Steps for the National AIDS Strategy
Cross-posted from the AIDS.gov blog.
Approximately 200 people gathered on Wednesday to hear about progress on one of President Obama’s major initiatives—the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). This meeting provided an opportunity to update the public on the process for developing the Strategy, as well as current status and next steps. It allowed the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) and HHS to share feedback from community discussions which began last summer, and offered participants the opportunity to meet with the Federal HIV Interagency Working Group – made up of representatives from agencies working on HIV/AIDS across the Federal government, including White House offices. The working group was brought together in an effort to establish a coordinated response to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
President Obama is committed to addressing HIV/AIDS in the United States and tasked ONAP, under the direction of Jeffrey Crowley, to develop the NHAS. The Strategy will allow ONAP to identify a small number of high-payoff action steps that can shift and improve our nation’s response to HIV/AIDS in order to achieve the President’s goals.
A large component of developing this strategy involves public feedback. As Crowley said at the meeting, "We want to acknowledge the important role that you are playing. You helped us spread the word and get people to our community discussions. We are here today, in part, because we have heard you. In recent weeks, we have heard several questions about where we are in the process and what is happening and we wanted to take this opportunity to update you."
As part of the community discussions, members of the working group met directly with 4,200 people in cities all across the country, including members of the public health community, AIDS service organizations, and people living with HIV/AIDS. In Jackson, MS, discussions with people living with HIV/AIDS gave hope for better understanding what it’s like to live with HIV in the South. In Minneapolis, the working group participated in site visits to help them understand what African immigrants are experiencing.
The public has been a crucial and active partner in all our efforts. We will continue to update you on our progress as we work to develop a strong roadmap to send to the President.
Please visit www.AIDS.gov next week to watch a video of the meeting, view video feedback from community leaders, or get additional information on Wednesday’s NHAS meeting.
Julia Eisman is the New Media Communications Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
150,000 Rays of Sunlight: More White House Visitor Records Posted Online
In September, the President announced that – for the first time in history – the White House would release visitor records. Today’s posting brings the grand total of records that this White House has released well over a 150,000 record milestone. You can view them all in our Disclosures section. These releases have provided the public an unprecedented look into the activities of the White House.
Today’s release is just one example of the many efforts that were recognized by a consortium of independent outside government reform groups that gave the Administration an A for its first-year actions making government open and transparent—and these actions have also been praised by other outside experts. This Administration’s concrete commitments to openness include issuing the Open Government Directive, putting up more government information than ever before on data.gov and recovery.gov, reforming the government’s FOIA processes, providing on-line access to White House staff financial reports and salaries, issuing an executive order to fight unnecessary secrecy and speed declassification, reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records, and webcasting White House meetings and conferences.
Like previous months, today’s release includes visitor information for the Vice President and his staff at the White House Complex, the names and dates of visitors to the Vice President’s Residence for the official events between November 1 and November 30, and the visitors to the Residence who appear on the daily schedules of the Vice President and Dr. Biden.
Also, as we have previously noted, sometimes rather than providing clear information, transparency can have confusing or amusing results. Given the significant number of visitors to the White House, many visitors share the same name as a notable figure. For example, John Adams is included in today’s release. Obviously, the well-known individual with that name did not visit the White House, but we have included the records of the individuals that did.
Norm Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform
Health Insurance Reform Will Help Small Businesses
As President Obama made clear at the bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform, and has emphasized all year, small businesses stand to gain substantially from his proposal for comprehensive health insurance reform.
Small businesses are essential to the nation’s economy and its recovery from the recession. They are responsible for a disproportionate share of economy-wide net employment growth, and account for a large majority of jobs in start-ups, a key source of innovation and economic growth.
Nevertheless, both a CEA report released last year and new analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers shows that the status quo of rising costs and declining coverage is unsustainable for small businesses. Over the past decade, average annual family premiums for workers at small firms increased by 123 percent, from $5,700 in 1999 to $12,700 in 2009, while the percentage of small firms offering coverage fell from 65 percent to 59 percent. As shown in the following figure, this insurance offer rate is especially low at small firms with fewer than 10, 25, or 50 employees.
While opponents of reform have raised concerns that some of the provisions in the President’s proposal will harm small businesses and their employees, the facts, figures, and discussion below show that the proposal will mean tax cuts, no new requirements, and numerous other benefits for small firms and their employees:
The President’s proposal makes more than 60 percent of small firms eligible for tax credits to help combat rising costs and declining coverage for their workers.
CEA estimates indicate that more than 60 percent of small employers would be eligible for the new $40 billion small business tax credit in the President’s proposal. This represents a total of nearly 4 million small firms eligible for the credit. Moreover, millions of workers at small firms and their families would be eligible for their own tax credits to purchase coverage through the Exchange if their firms did not offer coverage.
The President’s proposal exempts virtually all small businesses from any employer responsibility requirements.
The proposal specifically exempts all firms that have fewer than 50 employees – 96 percent of all firms in the United States or 5.78 million out of 6.02 million total firms – from any employer responsibility requirements. These 5.78 million firms employ 33.8 million workers.
More than 96 percent of firms with 50 or more employees already offer health insurance to their workers. Thus under the President’s proposal, less than 0.2 percent of all firms in the U.S. (approximately 10,000 out of 6.02 million) would face new employer responsibility requirements. And many of the firms not currently offering coverage are likely to do so because of the lower premiums and greater set of plan choices in the Exchange.
Pooling together with other small firms and individuals through a competitive Exchange will reduce costs, increase plan choice, and provide pressure on insurers to reduce their markups.
Because individuals and small businesses are not currently pooled together into larger health insurance groups, the administrative costs of marketing and operating health plans are up to 26 percent higher as a percentage of claims compared with larger firms, leading to higher premiums.
A report by the Congressional Budget Office (pdf) confirms that the Exchange will reduce costs and increase competitive pressure on insurers, driving down premiums for a given amount of coverage for a given group of enrollees by 1 to 4 percent in the small group market.
The President’s proposal will reduce “job lock,” and spur entrepreneurship, job growth, and productivity at small firms.
As described in a recent CEA report, health insurance reform will reduce “job lock” – the fear of switching jobs or starting a small business due to concerns over losing health coverage – by guaranteeing access to coverage for all Americans. This will encourage more people to launch their own small businesses.
Moreover, reform will make small firms more competitive by allowing them to offer coverage comparable to that of larger firms, letting them recruit and retain talented workers.
Finally, improvements in access to coverage will lead to better health status and reduced disability, increasing workplace productivity.
Health insurance reform will benefit workers, firms, and the government budget in many more ways. For a discussion of these impacts, please read the CEA’s report on the Economic Case for Health Care Reform. Chapter 7 of the Economic Report of the President (pdf) also provides a comprehensive discussion of the challenges in the current health care system and the way that reform components work together to address these problems.
Christina Romer is Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and Mark Duggan is a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers who focuses on Health
Direct Lending to Help Students, Not Banks
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s op-ed in the Washington Post today discusses the importance of providing direct student loans to help more poor and middle-class students attend college. He explains that under the current law, “working Americans pay while bankers get rich.” The banking industry is pushing against President Obama’s education proposal in order to protect its taxpayer subsidy, which has generated billions in profits for banks and compensation for executives. Secretary Duncan writes:
The banks have had plenty of help with government bailouts and other subsidies while working families and students are increasingly squeezed. President Obama wants to eliminate the subsidy for banks and use that money to help poor and middle-class students and adults attend college.
The president also wants to strengthen community colleges, give grants to states that improve college completion rates and boost early-learning programs. He wants to lower maximum monthly payments for student loans from the current 15 percent of income to 10 percent to make college debt more manageable.
Not surprisingly, the banks are working hard to block our common-sense proposal. Sallie Mae, the largest player in the student lending business, has spent millions of dollars to lobby Congress and run ads in several states, claiming that our proposal will cost jobs and inhibit service. These claims must be challenged.
President Obama’s proposal is currently awaiting Senate consideration, learn more about the proposal from our blog post back in April when he first announced the proposal.
Our Annual Report and Growing Support for Our Middle Class Agenda
Today, the Middle Class Task Force is proudly releasing our first annual report , which highlights the work we’ve done over the past year, and reaffirms the Administration’s commitment to fight for the middle class. The Task Force has traveled across the country to hear about the challenges facing American families and to gather ideas about how to address those challenges. We talked green jobs in Denver, manufacturing in Ohio, college affordability in St. Louis — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also received thousands of comments from ordinary Americans through this website, and met with leading experts on the issues facing the middle class.
The report begins with a thorough examination of some of the economic challenges facing the middle class, but most importantly, it outlines several policy proposals that will ease the burden on middle class families.
In support of our work, we’re also posting several letters from organizations backing our proposals to cap student loan payments, help families with soaring child care costs, enhance retirement security, and support families caring for seniors and people with disabilities.
Jared Bernstein is Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice President, and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force
Terrell McSweeny is Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President
A Productive Day & Another Step Towards Putting Americans in Charge of Their Health Care
Ed. Note: Watch video of the meeting in our section on the President’s proposal.
Today’s bipartisan health care meeting offered something you rarely see in Washington: an open, honest, productive discussion between the political parties. Leaders from across the political spectrum gathered at Blair House to exchange thoughts about an issue that touches all of us: rising health costs and unfair insurance company practices.
The President doesn’t view today’s meeting as a campaign debate or piece of theater – and he didn’t approach it as if it were scored like an Olympic event. The President went to Blair House focused on the substance – not the process – and he left the meeting focused on substance: how we put the American people in control of their own health care.
The President remains committed to enacting meaningful health insurance reform that will lower costs for families and small businesses by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in American history. He wants to enhance insurance choices and promote competition with a new insurance marketplace where people and small businesses will be able to have the same choices that every member of Congress will have. His proposal will provide common sense rules of the road and basic consumer protections that keep insurance companies honest and he’ll fight to make sure that no American is denied coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition.
Throughout the day, both sides found areas of agreement on important issues like:
Preventing waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid
Addressing medical malpractice reform
Reforming the insurance market
Giving individuals more choices in coverage, and giving small businesses the opportunity to pool coverage for their employees
But there were also important areas of disagreement.
There was a fundamental disagreement about whether we should set some common sense rules of the road to protect American families and small businesses from insurance company abuses. The President doesn’t believe we can afford to leave those decisions about your care to the insurers alone.
The President believes that a problem this big cannot be addressed incrementally. And while insuring 30 million people is going to cost money, it’s important to remember that most of this money is going to tax credits that will reduce premiums and help people get better coverage.
And while the President appreciated the participation and input of everyone today, he doesn’t think we can just scrap a year’s worth of work and start over. The millions of Americans that are suffering can’t afford another year-long debate. There’s too much at stake.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director