Archive for May, 2009
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
 President Obama has a plan to make college more affordable for millions of Americans. The plan would save almost ten billion dollars a year by shutting down a program that gives banks wasteful subsidies on student loans, and devote the savings to Pell Grants to help students pay for college. Unfortunately, student loan company lobbyists are pressuring Congress to save their wasteful subsidies at the expense of students and their families.
Join with Campus Progress: Choose students over banks, because we need a better future, and because we are fed up with banks taking billions from taxpayers for no good reason.
>>>Click here to take action<<<
Tags: college affordability, student loans
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Public (Option) Enemy #1, by Campus Progress writer, Dylan Matthews, explores the option of a public health insurance plan amidst the current debate for health care reform and its benefits for young people, as well as its opposition from legislators like McConnell (R-KY) and the private insurance big wigs.
The public plan, both alone and as part of a broader health care package, would provide substantial benefits for young workers between 20 and 30. “Right now the insurance market is very, very difficult to navigate for a young freelancer trying to navigate the rest of their job details,” explains Matt Singer, CEO of the progressive activist organization Forward Montana. “The health insurance exchange/connecter outlined in both the Baucus and the Obama plans, plus the public health insurance option, will make the whole system more navigable for people overwhelmed with a lot of other pieces in the reform.”
Singer added that the cost savings of the plan would be particularly attractive to young workers’ employers. Based on his own experience running the health insurance plan for Forward Montana’s employees, an exchange including a public option would be helpful for those administrators determining health coverage for their young employees. “First, we’d end up in a bigger pool, which would bring our rates down,” he explains. In other words, the public option would have a larger group of people purchasing insurance than in pools of employer insurance plans, meaning that risk can be shared more widely, ultimately bringing costs down.
Read more here
Tags: health care reform, public health insurance, public plan, young people
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Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
Barron over at The New Republic posted an awesome overview of the status of the direct lending fight on TNR’s blog The Plank. Here’s a highlight:
“Facing pushback from his Democratic allies, Obama may be tempted to cave and accept some version of Sallie Mae’s plan. But he shouldn’t. It’s still a huge waste of taxpayer money, it leaves the door open for private lenders to reassert themselves in the future, and it’s more expensive for borrowers. Obama should make full use of his current political advantages and cut lenders out of the equation once and for all.”
We agree that this issue is too important to compromise.
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Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
Via Matthew Yglesias, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, only 24% of voters know that Cap and Trade has something to do with the environment, while 46% believe it’s about healthcare or regulating wall street.
As someone working day and night on empowering young people to organize around climate policy, this isn’t much of a surprise. Cap and Trade is an extremely ineffective term that has no emotional connection to the looming threat of the climate crisis and to the incredible opportunities that will come from solving it. It also refers to one of the most complicated set of policies in our democracy which makes it really hard to come up with an effective name. Even climate bloggers shy away from using the term, preferring things like: “clean energy jobs policy” and “closing the carbon loopholes”.
I have tried explaining this complicated policy countless times, usually with the result of causing shut-eye to anyone listening. Luckily, there are people out there that found much better and simpler ways to explain it:
(more…)
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Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
 Health Care reform legislation is in the works and is expected to hit the Senate floor in July. Thanks to reconciliation requirements, a reform bill must be voted on by October 15, so Congress is buzzing to life around the health care debate this week.
The Senate Finance Committee outlined yesterday three options for what reform could look like. The committee’s overall statement proposed that the government should provide a new health insurance exchange, but did not clarify whether it would include a publicly run option or not. (This will be the topic of hot debate in these weeks to come.) If a public plan were to be included, however, the three scenarios the committee laid out were:
- A Medicare-Like plan: government administered
- A Third Party plan: administered by a third party
- A State plan: administered by states
If a public plan were not included in the new health insurance exchange, the committee suggested the regulation of the insurance market to make coverage more accessible.
The insurance industry has jumped on board with this fourth option in hopes to avoid a public plan that they fear would drive them out of market. They sent a letter to Obama on Monday presenting a plan to contain costs and end underwriting practices, such as denying coverage to patients with pre-exisiting conditions or charging more for women versus men.
While the industry’s efforts at joining the table around the health care discussion is understandable and lauded by some, I will quote Senator Schumer (D-NY) here and say the industry is presenting a “good faith effort” but “It does not mitigate the need for a public plan option in our health care reform bill”.
We need a public plan option to ensure health care coverage for all, it’s time to put people before profits. Write your local paper to show Congress and the administration that you demand a public option.
Tags: health care reform, public plan
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Monday, May 11th, 2009
There is an interesting article today in the Washington Post about the schism between Sallie Mae and other student loan companies on the loan giant’s alternative proposal for student loan reform. It includes a very strange quote from John Dean, special council to the Consumer Bankers Association President, comparing the proposal to “pornography.”
Campus Progress and other groups that fight for the interests of students are also opposed to the proposal, but we wanted to make sure that lawmakers and young people are adequately warned about the raunchy content that all of the warring loan company camps are putting out, as well as the President’s proposal. (more…)
Tags: college affordability, student loans
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 11th, 2009
 This is a few days old, but it is worth noting that TPM Muckraker recently reported that Citibank, which received $45 Billion in bail out funds, emailed their student loan borrowers and encouraged them to take action against President Obama’s higher education policies.
The email stressed threats to “competition” and “borrower benefits,” without even mentioning the goal of the proposed policy: to save the government an estimated $94 billion over ten years that could be used to expand the Pell grant program. Any attempt to argue against the President’s proposal must first explain how saving a broken and wasteful system will increase access to college more than investing billions in need-based grants.
(more…)
Tags: bailout, citibank, college affordability, student loans
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Thursday, May 7th, 2009
 On Wednesday May 7th, Campus Progress joined the Chesapeake Climate Action Network for an action in front of Blue Dog Democrat Congressman Boucher. We targeted the South Western Virginia representative because of his ‘negotiator’ (i.e. polluter) role in the committee talks to get climate legislation passed in congress. Among his extremely disturbing recommendations for changing the bill are:
Boucher is leading his gang of polluter-friendly blue dogs in asking for the transfer of wealth from taxpayers, ratepayers and young people to the most polluting industries disguised as an attempt to do the opposite. In his efforts he is either demonstrating utter ignorance about climate science and energy economics, or that he just plain doesn’t care about working families.
The action was a resounding success. About 10 of us sat in front of Representative Boucher’s office making phone calls to his own constituents to inform them about just the kind of representation they had in the federal government and to urge them to take action. After about 20 minutes, Boucher himself walked by and, on his way to his office ran into Climate champion Ethan Nuss from CCAN who confronted him about why he continues to turn down meetings with young people in his district. Finally realizing how serious young people are about protecting our future (…duh!), he hurried up inside and sent out his chief of staff to take our heat for him (sweet negotiator). She took the list of over 33 students from Virginia Tech that requested a meeting and promised to find some time for a meeting next week.
We’ll see if this is just another empty promise from a coal-loving politician or if they are serious about recognizing the depth of young people’s passion for solving the climate crisis. Either way, those 33 students (plus constituents from other schools) will be coming to D.C. next week to either meet with their ‘rep’, or to have a sit-in his office and invite the media to whitness who Boucher and other Blue Dog Democrats really represents.
That is why it is more important than ever that you call YOUR representative and tell them to stand up to the Blue Dogs in demanding a science based climate bill, that supports working families and invests in clean energy jobs. Call 1-877-666-3393 to get connnected directly to your representative’s office.
* In future posts I plan to dwelve into some of the details about some of the most problematic aspects of the bill (the billions of pounds… literally… of offsets, support for the clean coal fairy tale, etc) and some of the most essential ones (renewable portfolio standards, money for adaptation, etc).
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Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
 On top of losing jobs, losing homes, and struggling to make ends meet in this economy – that our dear administration of the last eight years left us with – Americans are losing health care coverage at an unprecedented rate, whether employed or not.
The Center for American Progress released two reports with interactive maps that show the loss of health insurance per state that is occurring every day and the increase of uninsured Americans that has risen dramatically over the last two years:
Health Care in Crisis
Dramatic Increase in the Uninsured in Every State
It is astonishing and frustrating all at once to know that so many Americans are lacking health coverage, when the duty of the government is to ensure that all citizens are cared for -
“recent polls show six in 10 think the government should provide health insurance or take responsibility for providing health care to all Americans.” [CNN 3/5/09]
- especially when there are solutions out there to provide all Americans with quality, affordable health care.
The bickering over what and how big the role of government should be in the new health care system has got to end. Especially the debate over whether to include a public health insurance option. A public insurance pool is vital to ensuring coverage for all and would still leave Americans with the choice of keeping their private plans if they are happy with them.
The rhetoric and fear over big government will only stall progress on fixing our severely broken health care system. The failure of our current system is getting out of control- it’s time for health care for all NOW.
Tags: health care, health care reform, health insurance, uninsured
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