Grading the Administration 26

Weekly Grades of the Administration on Poverty: A-

Sometimes a great many small things get the job done. This week there was not one huge undertaking, but many small items that got the Administration into the A territory. So, for the week of July 20 to July 26, I have to give the administration an A- for the following reasons:

1. As we have seen the administration is making a full court press on changing the health care system. These included a trip to Shaker Hts to conduct a town hall. A speech by Peter Orszag on financing health care reform helped, and President Obama used the weekly address again to talk about health care reform and insurance companies.
2. There was the release of a school funding challenge called "Race for the Top," which seems to be a competition among the nation's schools for federal dollars. It may turn out to be a policy in which the rich get richer, but any change in direction is worth the risk after the 30 year decline in the state of education in America.
   
3. One help for privacy is that it was announced no federal website is allowed to put a "cookie" on a user's computer when visiting any executive branch website.
   
4. There were more "Recovery in Action" stories on the White House website including a story about a new workforce development program in Pennsylvania.
   
5. Vice President Biden wrote an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times about the progress made in the rebuilding the economy. I suspect that this is to stem the slow decline in popularity for the Obama administration, but I think that it helps.
6. The HUD budget passed the House with much of what the administration wanted including increases in HOPE VI, CDBG, HOME, homeless assistance, and public houisng funding. All these will be helpful to shore up budgets that were slashed over the last few years.
   
7. The reform of Section 8 passed the House committee with the addition of 150,000 new vouchers. The only Democrat voting in the committee against this proposal was Rep. Driehaus from southern Ohio.
   
8. HUD announced $100 million for Native American housing.
9. HUD also announced a plan to supplement the Low Income Housing Tax program because there are so few taxes to credit businesses. The problem is that with the financial difficulties of major corporations, they are not paying taxes like they had in the past. Therefore they do not really need a tax credit, and so those credits were going unsold in many states. The federal government has stepped in to try to stabilize this program.
   
10. The Administration announced that they continue to support the National Housing Trust and want to see funding added to the Trust Fund this year.
    
11. A bill was introduced this week (HR 1675) to begin to build new housing for the disabled again.
    
12. A group of activists have begun talking to HUD about the timely release of REAC scores. These are the grades for the subsidized housing in the United States. HUD sends contractors out to review every single publicly subsidized housing in the United States, and we have tried to get these scores released on a regular basis. At this time, Congressman Kucinich's office has to request the scores every month in a Freedom of Information request. We pay for the scores and we pay for the housing; why can't we have the scores automatically posted?
    
13. The Administration is talking about fair housing. This forgotten issue is intended to push the goal of integrating neighborhoods and protecting the rights of the disabled, minority populations, and gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing. This law was dusted off from years of inactivity, and a $26 million dollar grant was announced by HUD. Also, the Department announced that they would begin discussions on how fair housing laws could be strengthened so that local jurisdictions would work to prevent discrimination instead of waiting for complaints to come in to address the problem.
14. The Department of Health and Human Services is not concentrating all their time on health care reform. They did some upgrade on their website to include information on the flu pandemic, and the community health initiatives.
    

All of these items together move the administration to the A territory. They have not seen an A for two months. Overall, a good week.

Brian
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