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.

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

What Are the Key Federal Policy Issues for Nonprofits?

/ The Old Crank

Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, wrote an opinion piece last week for The Chronicle of Philanthropy that was critical of the Independent Sector’s new report on nonprofit advocacy, Beyond the Cause, arguing that is was undermined by “a self-serving agenda and an implicit, if not intentional, suggestion that Independent Sector become the central hub of the [nonprofit] sector’s advocacy efforts.”

The Chronicle headline would lead you to believe that the article was primarily about Eisenberg’s discomfort with the notion of Independent Sector serving as the voice for all on nonprofits, but the meatier part of his critique actually concerned the specific policy issues that they reported as the most critical to the field. He doesn’t agree with their choices, and suggests five policy changes that he thinks would make more of a difference. Those changes are (in a nutshell):

  • Improving what he labels as a “dysfunctional” nonprofit regulatory system.
  • Mandating an increase to the share of assets foundations must distribute annually.
  • Encouraging greater socioeconomic diversity on nonprofit boards of both foundations and nonprofits.
  • Closing the growing gap between large and small nonprofits. He notes that small organizations are shrinking (or closing) while large nonprofit are thriving and that tis disproportionately hurts the poor and disadvantaged, who typically get services from smaller, community-based nonprofits.

You can read the entire article to read his arguments in depth.

It’s useful to think about the most pressing policy issues impacting nonprofits, even though I don’t think it’s easy to come up with a list that every nonprofit would agree on, considering the size and diversity of the sector—which includes organizations ranging from universities with multi-million endowments to small, all-volunteer organizations with tiny budgets. And sometimes we forget that the sector includes a wide variety of political points of view as well.

For his part, Eisenberg thinks it’s impossible for nonprofits to share a broad consensus about which issues are most important, and that “the best that nonprofits can accomplish is to strengthen their individual advocacy and lobbying activities and join with other organizations in coalitions that fight for specific policy changes.”

But is it really impossible to come up with a short list of changes that a broad consensus of organizations could agree are important? And while I agree that working via coalitions is an effective strategy, the reality is that the best coalitions often are led by a trusted leader that pulls everyone together and keeps things organized. While I don’t think a single entity could speak for everyone on every issue facing nonprofits, a lead organization that was able to bring the sector together on a handful of the most critical issues, if it resisted the temptation to dominate the advocacy space on its own, could be very effective. The more groups there are advocating here in Washington on behalf of this sector, the more likely we are to drown each other out.

For the record, here are the issues that Independent Sector picked as most important:

  • Protecting against proposals that could limit the organizations eligible for charity status.
  • Protecting against proposals to limit or remove charitable tax deductions for donors.
  • Clarifying advocacy and lobbying rules for charities and private foundations.
  • Guarding against any proposed revisions to Internal Revenue Service disclosure forms that could hamper nonprofit operations.
  • Reducing/eliminating overly burdensome paperwork and red tape involving government contracts with nonprofits.
  • Providing more government-financed research on the nonprofit sector.

Early Reports Suggest DACA Increasing Demand for Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

Back in I August I wrote an article suggesting that the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative might increase demand for GED classes—and for adult education classes in general.

According to Miranda Leitsinger of NBC News, it has. Although it’s not clear yet what the impact of DACA has been on the demand for adult education in general, she reports that interest in the GED test is on the rise, at least in some states.

Some GED state testing centers are seeing a spike in requests to take the test or a course, as well as an uptick in calls with questions about the exam since the government began accepting applications for the deferred action program on Aug. 15, according to an informal survey of state GED test program administrators conducted by the GED Testing Service, the official creator of the exam.

In Iowa, centers have experienced a 20 percent rise in English as a Second Language attendance for GED prep, while Massachusetts has seen a 25 percent to 50 percent surge in registration for the test through Spanish. In North Carolina, there has been a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in testing requests, including to take it in Spanish, prompting adminstrators to order more such tests for next year.

I suspect that the main reason an increase in demand is only being reported from some states is due to a lack of data. The GED test program administrator survey cited here, for example, is characterized as “informal,” and it could be that many states did not respond or have not collected data on this yet.

Leitsinger also suggests that DACA is increasing immigration advocates’ awareness of the lack of adult education services available:

I think it’s fair to say that the immigrant rights movement is discovering the education reform movement … and that they’re really coming to understand, first of all, how hard it is to get a GED and secondly, how limited the capacity of adult education programs is,” said Margie McHugh, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. “Certainly this 350,000 or so young people are the most immediate concern and the most vulnerable for not making it through the process, and that’s very much related to both the difficulty of pursuing a GED or completing a GED … and also the lack of availability of programs.”

What’s critical about all this is that it means that the relief provided by DACA is going to be much more accessible to those with the means to pay for GED classes. I’d be interested to know the extent to which the administration took into account the availability of free/low-cost adult education services when they formulated this policy, and whether they were concerned that the lack of such services might seem unfair to those with limited means. Secondly, now that there is evidence that the potential DACA applicants are frustrated by the lack of affordable services, whether this presents an opportunity for immigration rights advocates and adult education rights advocates, working together, to ramp up our advocacy on the need for adult education services.