Federal Policy

President Obama Expects Immigration Reform Legislation “Very Soon” After Inauguration

/ The Old Crank

Via The Washington Post‘s transcription, here is the full text of President Obama’s comments on immigration reform during his news conference yesterday. The question was posed by a Telemundo reporter. I’ve bolded the parts I thought were most interesting.

QUESTION: On immigration reform, the criticism in the past has been that you did not put forth legislation with specific ideas and send it up to the Hill. This time around, you have said again that this will be one of the top priorities for a second term. Will you, then, send legislation to the Hill? And exactly what do you envision is broad immigration reform? Does that include a legalization program?

And also, what lessons, if any, did Democrats learn from this last election and the Latino vote?

OBAMA: Well, I think what was incredibly encouraging was to see a significant increase in Latino turnout. This is the fastest-growing group in the country and, you know, historically what you’ve seen is Latino vote — vote at lower rates than the broader population. And that’s beginning to change.

You’re starting to see a sense of empowerment and civic participation that I think is going to be powerful and good for the country. And it is why I’m very confident that we can get immigration reform done. Before the election, I had given a couple of interviews where I predicted that Latino vote was going to be strong and that that would cause some reflection on the part of Republicans about their position on immigration reform. I think we’re starting to see that already.

I think that’s a positive sign. This has not historically been a partisan issue. We’ve had President Bush and John McCain and others who have supported comprehensive immigration reform in the past. So, we need to seize the moment.

And my expectation is that we get a bill introduced and we begin the process in Congress very soon after my inauguration.

OBAMA: And, in fact, some conversations I think are already beginning to take place among senators and congressmen and my staff about what would this look like. And when I say comprehensive immigration reform, it’s very similar to the outlines of previous immigration reform. I think it should include a continuation of the strong border security measures that we’ve taken. Because we have to secure our border. I think it should contain serious penalties for companies that are purposely hiring undocumented workers and — and taking advantage of them.

And I do think that there should be a pathway for legal status for those who are living in this country, are not engaged in criminal activity, are here to — simply to work. I’ve — it’s important for them to pay back taxes. It’s important for them to learn English. It’s important for them to potentially pay a fine, but to give them the avenue whereby they can resolve their legal status here in this country, I think is very important. Obviously making sure that we put into law what — the first step that we’ve taken administratively dealing with the DREAM Act kids is very important as well.

The one thing that I’m — I’m very clear about is that young people who are brought here through no fault of their own, who have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to our flag, want to serve in our military, want to go to school and contribute to our society, that they shouldn’t be under the cloud of deportation. That we should give them every opportunity to earn their citizenship. And so, you know there are other components to it, obviously. The business community continues to be concerned about getting enough high-skilled workers.

And I am a believer that if you’ve got a PhD in physics, or computer science who wants to stay here, and start a business here, we shouldn’t make it harder for them to stay here, we should try to encourage him to contribute to this society. I think that the agricultural sector, obviously has very specific concerns about making sure that they’ve got a workforce that helps deliver food to our table. So there’re gonna be a bunch of components to it, but I think whatever process we have needs to make sure border security’s strong, needs to deal with employers effectively, needs to provide a pathway for the undocumented here, needs to deal with the DREAM Act kids.

And I think that’s something that we can get done.

Parents and Family Literacy

/ The Old Crank

When a state or community literacy initiative promises to “promote literacy at home” or “engage parents.” I always look to see whether there is any discussion of the literacy level of the parents of the children that the initiative is targeting. If not, it’s a pretty safe bet that little-to-no resources are going to be invested in helping any of those parents or caregivers with low literacy skills become better readers themselves.

November is National Family Literacy Month, and I gather, from what I’ve been reading, that the term “family literacy” is sometimes used in this context to embrace a broad range of family based reading activities—most often initiatives that promote reading at home. It’s worth noting, however, that targeted literacy instruction for parents—as well as children—is what has historically distinguished a “true” family literacy program from other literacy initiatives. I know that there are those in the family literacy field who don’t believe that the components of a family literacy program need to be as rigidly defined as the Even Start program, but (I think) everyone does still agree that, at a minimum, a family literacy program should include literacy instruction for adults as well as children.

This isn’t just a semantic issue: funding for true, multi-generational family literacy programs has been dwindling in recent years (the federal investment in Even Start family literacy has been completely eliminated, in fact), and blurring the distinction between true family literacy programs and general literacy promotion could end up masking over the fact that support for family literacy is on the decline.

From a policy perspective, given what we know about the critical role that providing adult literacy education to parents likely plays in improving the academic achievement of children from low-income families, retaining this distinction makes sense. If adult and family literacy advocates don’t make that distinction, there’s no reason to expect that policymakers will. In many communities and in many households, a program that does no more than simply acknowledge a parent’s role in a child’s literacy development is probably not going to be enough.

Tax Break of the Day

/ The Old Crank

For your next givers vs. takers debate, via Bloomberg:

Theodore L. Jones has held season tickets on the 43-yard line at Tiger Stadium, home of the perennial football powerhouse Louisiana State University, for almost 20 years. Because of the Baton Rouge lawyer’s lobbying in Congress in 1986, he and thousands of other fans get a tax break on donations they make as a condition for buying seats.

The deduction Jones helped craft is now costing U.S. taxpayers more than $100 million a year in revenue that the Treasury can’t collect, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.

h/t: The Chronicle of Philanthropy

History of TANF Block Grants Illustrates Why WIA Block Grants Pose a Threat to Adult Education Funding

/ The Old Crank

Yesterday I gave a short talk on federal adult education policy issues at the WATESOL Fall Convention in Maryland, as part of a larger panel discussion on advocacy.

One of the policy trends I mentioned was the Republican inclination toward reducing the number of federal programs and consolidating them into state block grants, thus providing states with more decision-making power in how those federal funds are used. (They also tend to want to reduce federal spending to begin with, of course, at least for non-defense programs.) Their argument is that state officials are in a better position to decide how federal funding can best meet the particular needs of their state.

I want to describe in detail why I think federal program consolidation is a threat to federal funding for adult education.

My specific point of concern is with House Republicans’ Workforce Investment Act (WIA)  reauthorization bill, H.R. 4297 (The Workforce Investment Improvement Act of 2012), which was passed by the House Education and the Workforce Committee in June, (but has yet to be voted on by the full House, and probably won’t be). This bill would consolidate all of the different WIA job-training programs and convert them into a block grant program for states. It’s worth noting that the 2012 Republican platform also proposes consolidation of federal workforce programs into state block grants “so that training can be coordinated with local schools and employers.”

Title II of WIA—which specifically supports programs focused on helping people improve their literacy skills—is not subject to this consolidation provision. However, H.R. 4297 would give states the option to further consolidate their federal adult education funds—and a bunch of other non-WIA training funds—into a Workforce Investment Fund that would be also created under this bill. This option can be thought of as the turbo version of consolidation. If states chose to do this, they would have a great deal of flexibility on how to use the dollars they assign to the WIF. Most significantly, from an adult education perspective, once Title II money is assigned to the WIF, it would no longer have to be used to serve the specific purposes of Title II.

And the evidence seems to be pretty strong that this is exactly what would happen if this bill (or something like it) should ever become law.

The history of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants is instructive. As noted in a recent report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), in the years since the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program was converted into a block grant program, states have often used the flexibility of TANF block grants to redirect TANF funds to plug holes in state budgets or free up funds for purposes unrelated to TANF’s stated purposes.

We also know that money tends to flow away from adult education when public officials have the flexibility to re-purpose adult education dollars. The most dramatic example is in California, where in 2009 the legislature passed a bill that gave individual school districts the flexibility to take money from one funding category and move it into another. In the years since the passage of this bill, hundreds of school districts have used funding originally intended for adult education to fill gaps in their K-12 budget. This has reduced overall state adult education funding in California by nearly half, from $754 million to $400 million. (I argued last year that the CBA is probably the worst piece of legislation for adult education in the entire U.S. over the last several years.)

I’ll concede that in some states, it’s possible that enlightened leadership might actually use the flexibility under the Republican approach to increase services for adult education—and theoretically states could even target more money towards individuals not well-served under the current system. (CPBB notes, for example, that in the case of TANF, some funds were used for child care and welfare-to-work programs— and other reasonable welfare reform efforts—particularly in TANF’s early years.) But I think the evidence above suggests that the opposite is more likely over time: that states would tend to use the flexibility of block grants to steer WIA money away from it’s intended purposes, and that this would lead to budget gaps in job training programs when demand is high. State officials would then be tempted to move adult education funds over to job training programs to shore up those gaps, in the same way that school officials in California diverted adult education money to shore up their K-12 budget gaps.

In it’s report on TANF, CPBB warns that “block grants can lead to less accountability, lessened federal direction and oversight, and significant amounts of federal funds being spent in ways that Congress did not envision or intend.” Given what we know, diminished federal oversight over adult education funding will likely result in a substantial reduction in that funding across the country.

WIA reauthorization my be on hold for now, but I expect consolidation to be part of the WIA debate in the next Congress.