budget

Well, another day, and another unknown guy lamenting the horrible things happening to our generation and our supposed complicit behavior.

This rando, some Gen Xer named Rob Long, writes that young people are being ripped off thanks to a "a vast, Madoff-like Ponzi scheme," in which payroll taxes are immediately shuffled off to help seniors pay their medical bills. He can't believe that young people are letting this go and are not more alarmed, Glenn Beck style.

And yet: no protests in the streets. No marches. No student sit-ins. No youth agitation at all, really, except for a couple of College Republicans in blue blazers. What? Are they stupid? After all of that college tuition? Are young people in their 20's just dumb?

I appreciate your phony concern, Rob. But if you're truly advocating for a strong quality of life for Millennials, you'd come to terms with what must be a painful truth for you. Your party, while railing against imaginary deficits in the future, blatantly ignores the fact that many of us are struggling to make end's meet today. One of your party's governors, in the name of fiscal responsibility, cut $30 million from childcare centers. And "after all that college tuition," the Republican House proposes to balance the budget by taking Pell Grants, and therefore the prospects of higher education, away from us at the worst possible time. This is at the same time that we're being crushed by trillions of dollars worth of student loans. Fellow FM writer Karlo Marcelo used a great analogy to frame this reality back when we were debating the stimulus.

Millennials will face new challenges when caring for the Baby Boomer generation as they near towards retirement. What they don't need are unnecessary financial burdens that make it difficult for them to succeed early on in their adult lives. Young people are already saddled with a "burden", and the GOP needs to recognize and respect that reality.

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to traverse a hill. The hill represents how much taxes you expect to pay over your lifetime. One end of the hill is the start (the beginning of your life), the top of the hill is middle-age, and the other end of the hill is, well, six-feet-under. At both ends of the hill, you pay relatively little in taxes, and the top of the hill is when you pay the most in taxes. This is what tax-paying looks like throughout the course of one's life. For some generations, traversing this hill was made easier (but not faster), because the government helped invest in the well-being of the tax-payer very early on in life.

This is not the case with Millennials. The rising cost (PDF) of college and beyond has not resulted in a proportionate increase in services or resources. When you place this fact of rising costs into the context of rising college attendance, the effect is magnified. The share of young people that have attended college has increased 21 percentage points from the 1970s to the present (PDF, pg. 5). What's more is the fact young people with post-graduate degrees on are on the rise, too. What all this amounts to is a more difficult (but not slower) journey over the hill. It's almost as if Millennials have to carry a heavy backpack (read: student debt) and still keep pace with everyone else. Now add to that the fact that the end of the hill for Millennials is much farther away than it is for previous generations due to longer life expectancy.

So, if you're seriously concerned about our collective future, do us a favor: get off your high horse and hop on a time machine back to now and start working on these problems.

Mr. Long, you're not done. Please sit back down. Let me explain another thing. And I'll go slowly, because this might be hard for you to understand:

Millennials. Like. Government.

Seriously, we do. You can see that here, here, here, or even here. According to NDN, a Washington think tank, 58% of Millennials actually favor larger government, as opposed to one that “stays out of society and the economy.” It might be surprising since we've been let down by government so often (especially from 2001-2006 when the GOP ruled Washington), but it's the truth.

And we do protest. Your fellow unknown Ted Nugent also made the mistake of assuming young people don't get mad and act on it, and we provided these examples (these just being a few that one simple Google search turned up):

Students across USA protest over college funding, tuition
March 4, 2010

Dickinson College students protest school's handling of sex assaults
March 3, 2011

Cerritos College students protest proposed summer cuts
May 18, 2011

Half-naked college students protest coal
April 15, 2011

‘Students are not ATMs'; college students protest budget cuts
March 15, 2011

College students, staff protest budget cuts
April 13, 2011

College students protest higher fees
January 12, 2010

Three Arrested at Hunter College Protest
March 4, 2010

College students protest death penalty
March 27, 2010

College students protest PA budget cuts
March 30, 2011

'Ramen' protest highlights community college fee increases
March 2, 2011

California college students protest higher ed budget cuts
April 13, 2011

High school, college students to protest state education cuts
March 19, 2011

PSU students, State College mayor protest funding cuts
April 5, 2011

College students protest HOPE cuts outside State Capitol
March 2, 2011

Vt. college students protest planned cuts
March 16, 2011

Phoenix high school, college students organize Capitol protest
March 4, 2011

Michigan College Students Protest Higher Ed Cuts
March 24, 2011

College Students Protest Voter ID Bill
April 4, 2011

Allegheny College students protest education cuts
March 18, 2011

College students protest strip mine plans
September 14, 2010

Carthage College students protest anti-gay speaker
February 24, 2010

College students protest HB 176
February 24, 2011

Emory protesters arrested during student protest
April 26, 2011

TUSD on image control after student protest cancels meeting
April 27, 2011

Supporters rally for students arrested at SB 1070 protest
November 16, 2010

Thousands of students flock to Capitol to protest SB1070
April 22, 2010

Wisconsin Students Protest Governor's Attack on Unions
February 15, 2011

Zombie protesters lurch for voter, student rights
June 8, 2011

Based on the list above and the little we do know of you, it would appear you're merely grumpy because we don't protest the same things that your Tea Party friends do.

Do us a favor and can the fake outrage. If you're genuine, you'd be doing what you could to keep conservatives from defunding our collective future so that fat cats can keep flying their corporate jets.

The United States Conference of Mayors met in Baltimore last week, and the topic? American cities are under continuous attack from our poor economy.

Providence and Hollywood, Fla., issued layoff notices to police officers this month that will cut jobs in the coming weeks unless the cities get more union concessions. Lansing, Mich., and New York are threatening to close fire stations. Teachers are getting pink slips in Philadelphia, and schools in Montgomery, Ala., are being closed. Libraries are open less. And potholes are staying unfilled longer in cities like Minneapolis.

Local governments shed 28,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor reported, and have lost 446,000 jobs since employment peaked in September 2008.

Because of rampant foreclosures, many cities don't have the tax base to take care of the issues above. As cities continue to make cuts, the quality of life in the present--and most likely the future--deteriorates. Commitments to education, jobs, public safety, libraries, and basic infrastructure are all receding at a time they should be increasing.

As the Times story indicates, most of the mayors at the meeting targeted the Defense budget, specifically the money being spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So when downturn-weary mayors from around the country gathered here on Friday for the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, they decided to make a statement: they introduced a resolution calling for the speedy end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and calling on Congress to use the $126 billion a year the wars cost for urgent domestic needs.

The resolution, which will be decided Monday, seems likely to pass. “There are so many better uses for the money,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore. Mayor R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis lamented that cities across the nation were being forced to make “deeply painful cuts to the most core services while the defense budget continued to escape scrutiny.” And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said that the idea “that we would build bridges in Baghdad and Kandahar and not Baltimore and Kansas City absolutely boggles the mind.”

At what point do we start to view this as an attack on our generation? And at what point does this begin to spark more visible outrage?

Student Activism provides some good context for the student activism breaking out in California this weekend.

The UC Regents, as expected, voted to impose huge fee increase on undergraduate and graduate students in the university. These new fees represent a tripling of undergraduate costs in the last decade, and a 50% jump since 2007.

After the vote students at UCLA surrounded Covel Hall, where the meeting had taken place, trapping the regents inside. When a group of regents tried to leave campus students surrounded their van, forcing them to retreat to a nearby building. It would be nearly three hours before they, and UC president Mark Yudof, were able to make their escape.

Even before the vote students had occupied two buildings in the UC system, and the afternoon saw two more takeovers.

Fifty-two students were arrested Thursday night at Mrak Hall, the UC Davis administration building, after they defied police orders to clear the building. One local media source said this morning that “dozens” of those arrested were held overnight.

Students at UC Santa Cruz had occupied Kresge Town Hall, an auditorium, on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday they expanded their action to include Kerr Hall, an administration building. Students in Kerr released a 35-point list of demands on Thursday night, and both occupations were apparently still ongoing as of early this morning.

As we continue to get more updates, I'll try to post them. I'll have something more substantive up in a bit. For now, stay tuned to Student Activism, as they're covering everything. Follow their Twitter account here.

CNN Money published a story this week on a subject we are familiar with here at Future Majority: youth, jobs, and the economy.

CNN reports that about $1.2 billion of stimulus funding is supporting efforts to train and employ young people over the summer.

The funds are aimed at providing disadvantaged 14-to-24-year-old youth with job training skills and schooling to better prepare them to continue their education or enter the workforce.

States are now implementing summer work programs to put their funding to use. Some are devising brand new efforts to train young adults, while others are expanding existing initiatives. The workers, who must be low income and meet certain at-risk criteria such as being a dropout or disabled, will be paid at least minimum wage.

The youth training program is getting a considerable portion of the $4 billion in stimulus funds set aside for job training. The rest of the funds are going to help unemployed adults get back to work.

"We also have to invest in our young people to make sure they gain work experiences for the future," said a senior Department of Labor official. "Hopefully it can put them on the path to working or returning to school better prepared."

One good thing: with the new Obama administration now making decisions, youth are suddenly important enough to consider while making important decisions. As the excerpt above notes, youth are getting a significant portion of this funding, with a senior Labor official using words like "invest," "young people," and "future." In fact, this funding reverses a long decline in similar funding. Eight years ago, at the end of the Clinton presidency, the amount of funding committed to a similar program was $1.5 billion, not too far off the current line of funding.

One bad thing: "The workers, who must be low income and meet certain at-risk criteria such as being a dropout or disabled, will be paid at least minimum wage." The working poor, who are usually neglected when it comes to these programs, appear to be shut out once more. While the program helps quite a few deserving people, there are also many more that can't catch a break; the resulting lesson is that it might be better to drop out than continue forward, get a degree, and be shut out from any help.

The piece sorts through a few programs supported by the funding, such as the Young Hoosiers Conservation Corps, which will pay participants $8.50 per hour over sixteen weeks to construct trails and restore state park properties.

There seems to be a better recognition of the compounding problems young Americans are facing as a result of the sour economy. More solutions are needed now, though, and those solutions should at least acknowledge the working poor in addition to the youth facing even more challenging obstacles. Lucky for us, 80 Million Strong has stepped in to this void, committing itself to organizing powerful players in the economy in order to create "new jobs for a new economy." If you haven't already read about the organization, do so now. We've been told as Millennials for a long time now that it is going to be our duty to clean up this mess we've inherited. 80MS is a big step toward doing that.

At 2:30 this afternoon, the Student PIRGs will hold a rally in the "Senate Swamp" next to the Russell Senate Office Building. The rally will be in support of Obama's 2010 budget, highlighting the investments it makes in priority youth areas including energy, education and health care. They will be joined by Senators Durbin, Whitehouse, Casey and Cardin. Here's a preview of the statement that Laura Kim, National Student Forum Chair, will make at today's event:

Statement of Lauren Kim, PIRG National Student Forum Chair

April 1st ‘Rally for the Budget’

Hi my name is Lauren Kim. I’ll be graduating in a few short months from the University of Maryland College Park. I’m going into community organizing when I graduate. But I’ll face a huge barrier, and that is my student loan debt.

The vast majority of college students across the country now graduate with enough loan debt that we are being squeezed out of careers and getting married and having kids. Worse, qualified high school graduates are dropping out of the college application process due to cost. As states have cut college budgets and grant aid has decreased, students like me are shouldering massive loans to pay for our education.

I wonder if the loans are worth it as I look at the financial uncertainty and shrinking job market. But I know our country needs us to get educated. The problems of the 21st century require solutions that my generation is getting trained to deal with in college.

So that’s why the budget plan being put forth by President Obama, Senate Leader Reid, and the House is crucial. It reinvests billions of dollars in student aid so we can have higher Pell grants and less loan debt. And the plan pays for this reinvestment by cutting excessive subsidies used to support banks like Sallie Mae. This money should go toward supporting students like me, who plan to make a difference, rather than supporting the banks, which seem to have different plans.

Let’s increase student aid! Let’s pass this budget!

As advocates for youth in the political process, one thing we should all be aware of is the budget process. Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics, has repeatedly labeled a budget as a "moral document," a list that telegraphs to outsiders and our progeny what we considered to be priorities.

David Waldman, at Congress Matters (a spin-off of Daily Kos), has provided a list of various tools we can use to look into the budget process, as well as a reference guide detailing its flow.

As this blog seeks to further youth progressive politics, I think it's important that this list be shared with you, our readers. We all have the right to know, and an obligation to follow, how our government is allocating our tax dollars. Thanks to the internet and the resurgence of an emphasis on civic responsibility in our government, the process is more accessible than ever. It's up to us to take advantage of it.

In reading some of the coverage of Obama's budget, it appears that while health care and energy reforms both received a large, and expected boost, the surprise story today is how much support Obama included for education. Here's some info on what's included from a backgrounder put out by the Education and Labor Committee:

FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS: There are two types of federal student loans: the Direct Loan Program (where loans are made directly to students by the government) and the Federal Family Education Loan Program (when loans made by private lenders are guaranteed by the federal government). Both types of loans carry the same interest rates and terms for students, but the Direct Loan program is less expensive and yields significant taxpayer savings.

President Obama proposes that, beginning in 2010-2011, all new student loans would be originated through the Direct Student Loan program. The Office of Management and Budget estimates this would save taxpayers $24.3 billion over five years and $47.5 billion over ten years by making the program more efficient.

PELL GRANT SCHOLARSHIPS: The President also proposes to index the maximum Pell Grant scholarship award to the Consumer Price Index plus one percent, which will better reflect the economic realities students and families face.

President Obama has already enacted a substantial investment in k-12 and higher education in his economic recovery plan, including a significant $500 increase in the Pell Grant scholarship for students next year. When combined with other increases enacted during the 110th Congress, by 21010 the maximum Pell Grant award will have increased by $1,500 – or 37 percent – since Democrats regained control of the Congress.

cross posted on the College Democrats of New York blog: http://collegedemsny.com/...

I just received an email from the President of Binghamton University in upstate NY, asking for help in fighting the budget reductions. President Lois De Fleur writes:

I am writing to you about Governor David A. Paterson's proposed budget reductions for this year and the impact on you and the University. Currently, the governor proposes for the state to retain 90 percent of the $310 tuition increase you just paid and to implement additional cuts to SUNY's budget. Similarly, the governor's 2009-10 budget proposes to take 80 percent of the $620 tuition increase and to implement even more budget reductions for SUNY. If these budgets are approved, it will mean larger class sizes, fewer class sections, the loss of courses critical to degree programs and fewer full-time faculty due to hiring freezes. This is unfair to you and your families.

During the next two weeks, the legislature and the governor will be negotiating issues for the 2008-09 budget followed by considerations of the 2009-10 budget, so there is still time to voice your concerns and try to change these proposals. We need your help.

It basically is going like this: To make up for some of the budget gap, SUNY tuition is being raised and the state is taking a cut of it. This creates a tax on students to go to SUNY. So 10% of the increase will be going to the state this year and 20% next.

Students across the state need to contact their local representatives to fight this and tell the legislatures that all of the increase needs to go to SUNY.