Saturday, June 27, 2009

Grading the Administration 21

Weekly Grades of the Administration on Poverty: C+

For the week of June 15-21, the administration received a C+. They are still hammering on health care, which they always get additional points for this work. There were a number of other items that the administration undertook this last week:

1. A new office of Consumer Protection was introduced that would help regulate credit, insurance, and lending in the United States.
2. A new fatherhood initiative was introduced by the President.
3. The First Lady kicked off the United We Serve initiative in DC. More volunteers will lead to more people realizing that there is a problem in the country. If people realize there is a problem that is one step closer to finding a solution.
4. More discussions of open government (again there were more hits to transparency last week.)
5. Budget Guru, Peter Orszag discussed the problems with our current health care system.
6. The Prez. went to visit the obstacles to progress in health care reform when he spoke to the American Medical Association in Chicago.
7. The US Interagency Council on Homelessness finally met and they elected the HUD Secretary. Not much happened here, but having all these cabinet secretaries sitting around talking about homelessness is important.
8. Congress hosted a hearing asking HUD to initiate a moratorium on demolition of public housing until a policy can be established.
9. Congress also scheduled a hearing to continue the discussion about the reform of Section 8.
10. Quietly, and without a lot of fanfare there were additional housing vouchers for areas recovering from the hurricanes put into the supplemental defense authorization bill for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Brian Davis
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