Now, that Barack Obama is officially the 44th President of the United States of America, he faces the prospect of addressing several important issues, and he will undoubtedly have to make difficult choices while doing so. The Queens Courier asked leaders in five of those areas, Economy, Health, Education, Energy and Immigration to share their thoughts on what they would like to see President Barack Obama and his administration address during their first 100 days in office.
Immigration
BY GABRIELA VILLAREAL
Wednesday, January 21, marks the first day of President Obama’s administration and a new day for the country. As one speaker and singer after another at the inaugural festivities attested, change has indeed come.
For the nation’s immigrants, it couldn’t have come soon enough. Immigrant and Latino voters, who turned out in record numbers and played a decisive role in the Presidential contest, are now looking to President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to fix our broken immigration system and reverse the increasingly punitive and divisive policies that have held sway in recent years.
As President Obama works to build support in Congress for just and humane immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented, brings our visa policies in line with our labor needs, helps families unite and upholds the workplace rights of all workers, he must also act immediately to bring an end to the discredited and destructive practice of workplace raids and the terrifying use of federal agents brandishing weapons in the middle of the night to separate husbands from wives and parents from children. He can do this with a stroke of the pen.
The first 100 days of the Obama administration is the time to set the tone for the next four years. There is no time to waste, and on the new President’s first day in office, immigrant communities will mobilize in Washington, D.C. and throughout the United States, celebrating a new day in America and pressing for real solutions to our immigration quandary.
Immigration is an issue that President Obama can address, but only if he leads. As he demonstrated during his campaign, it is possible to overcome obstacles when genuine leadership and political will unite. President Obama, we ask you to create change that all of us can believe in. A good start would be to put an end to raids, and to find practical solutions that uphold our nation’s highest values and are informed by generosity, compassion and recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of all people.
Gabriela Villareal is Policy Coordinator for The New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella policy and advocacy organization for more than 200 groups in New York State that work with immigrants and refugees.
Economy
BY JOSEPH R. FICALORA
The first priority for the new administration - and by this I mean not only President Obama and his cabinet, but also Congress, the SEC and the regulatory agencies that provide oversight to the financial industry - is to instill confidence and stability in the United States economy.
While it was inevitable that a downturn would follow the robust economic cycle that began in the late 1990s, no one envisioned a decline as severe, rapid or far-reaching as the current cycle turn has been. The systemic inability of our nation to withstand the impact of a decline in the credit markets is evident in the widespread deterioration and vulnerability of the U.S. economy today.
Of course, several factors contributed to the current situation, beginning with the fraud and imbalance that occurred in the credit markets as more than half of all loans produced since the late 1990s were generated not by regulated financial institutions, but by unregulated hedge funds, mortgage brokers, Wall Street conduits and most significantly, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
While the decline in the U.S. economy began with the excesses in the credit markets, the fear that destroyed the financial markets during 2008, and exacerbated the crisis, can be attributed to accounting rules that were put in place by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). In its attempts to create greater visibility on corporate balance sheets for potential investors, the FASB essentially created instability instead.
The requirement that companies re-value their assets on a quarterly basis - as if those companies were being liquidated - has resulted in trillions of dollars of assets being marked down to levels that actually are well below their intrinsic values. The requirement that companies mark their assets to speculative “fair values,” has exaggerated and accelerated losses, engendering fear and confusion and charges to capital that cannot be restored by government, dilutive stock issues, divestitures of assets or profitable lines of business. The result has been an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
So what can the new Administration do to address this situation and repair people’s confidence - and trust - in the U.S. economy?
First, the administration needs to recognize the economic risks posed by fair value accounting, and the very real likelihood that it could lead to greater distortion of loss in 2009 than in 2008. By reversing these misguided accounting rules and restoring the far more realistic rules that were in place in the last credit cycle turn, we can immediately restore and recapitalize the financial sector in the United States. There is a systemic need for accounting rules that reflect risk and loss over time, or when actually realized.
Secondly, the government’s use of public funds should be directed toward increasing the number of eligible homebuyers. One way to do this is to insure down payments, thus making it more plausible for a consumer to obtain a mortgage for a new home. Another is to offer tax incentives to both lenders and homebuyers. Tax-incented lending will increase the number of lenders and borrowers, as well as property values - all essential to decreasing housing inventories, losses and illiquidity. The stabilization, and ultimately, appreciation of home values that follow will restore American’s confidence in the economy and spark an increase in spending - a progression that will have a favorable impact on all sectors of our economy.
The administration also needs to put in place policies and regulations to ensure that the excesses of the past decade will not be repeated in the decades ahead. There is a need to focus regulation where it is non-existent or less effectively present. We do not need more regulation of banks; we need equivalent regulation of non-bank lenders, hedge funds, conduits and short traders.
I wish President Obama and the Congress, as well as those who guide them in their decisions and actions, all the best as they face the enormous challenges that our current economy presents.
Joseph R. Ficalora is the Chairman, President, and CEO of New York Community Bancorp, Inc.
Energy & Climate
BY ANDY DARRELL
President Obama has made an extraordinary pledge to “…mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change…We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 percent by 2050.”
This change will be transformative, for our economy and our environment. It will spur a new generation of jobs: from weatherizing homes to driving hybrid buses and installing solar power. American households with access to transit save more than $6,000 a year in transportation costs, and a green building can cut energy bills in half. That’s good stimulus in bad economic times.
Washington can take three steps to put these savings within reach. First, cap carbon emissions that cause global warming (for a blueprint, see www.us-cap.org). Second, invest economic stimulus funds in transit and energy efficiency. That way, economic stimulus will generate the jobs we need to lead in the green economy.
Third, invest heavily in transit when Congress reauthorizes the federal transportation bill this year. In the 1950s, American built the highway system, now it’s time to build the rest of our transportation network - transit and clean freight.
On a per person basis, New Yorkers’ carbon footprint is lower than the average American’s, partly because we benefit from transit. That’s something to be proud of. But, it’s at risk. The MTA’s proposed fare hike and service cuts are the wrong direction for the environment.
The Ravitch Commission proposes that all sectors contribute to saving transit, including adding a cashless toll to East River bridges (see www.edf.org/transit). Today, those “free” bridges aren’t really free - they add pressure to raise transit fares, the extra traffic increases pollution and bridge repair is a drag on the city budget.
What better economic stimulus than an affordable and sustainable ride to work? More transit and less traffic - that’s a great way to keep New York’s economy strong and help meet President-elect Obama’s energy and climate goals.
Andy Darrell is Vice President for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund.
Education
BY JAMES MUYSKENS
Even though we are engaged in two wars and facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, Barack Obama’s remarkable campaign and election have created great enthusiasm, especially among young people. The president should not miss the opportunity to tap into this spirit by putting in place his community service proposal, which would offer students money for tuition if they volunteer for any of a number of worthwhile causes.
President Obama wants to use his economic stimulus package to finance shovel-ready projects that can put millions of people to work. To find the projects for this, he need look no further than our nation’s campuses, which have been ignored for far too long.
Besides investing in our schools’ infrastructures, the president can do much good by instituting the second part of the Pell Grants program. Originally, this program was supposed to give money both to students and to the institutions that these students attend to defray those institutions’ costs; the latter part of this plan has never been implemented. The amount of money students receive from Pell Grants should also be increased. And, more money must be earmarked for basic research, the kind of research that will keep America competitive with the rest of the world.
The president would also do well to promote some of the things Queens College is doing: Stress the importance of learning another language - an essential skill in the worlds of business, diplomacy and intelligence; and honor those who have been serving overseas with an expanded GI Bill (we offer free continuing education courses to these brave men and women).
Finally, I look forward to President Obama using our country’s finest minds to work on peaceful solutions to our problems, and to his once again making the White House a place where the arts are celebrated.
James Muyskens is the President of Queens College
Healthcare
BY MICHAEL DOWLING
During the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration, our hope is that the president and his leadership team begin laying the groundwork for real and progressive change for healthcare in America. It’s change we’ve needed for far too long.
The challenge, of course, is to determine where healthcare fits among the nation’s top priorities. Many inside and outside the industry believe healthcare should be near the very top for a wide variety of reasons:
1) Healthcare spending nationwide in 2008 was expected to reach $2.4 trillion, representing 17 percent of the gross domestic product, so to effectively address the nation’s economic woes, we need to develop long-term viable solutions for healthcare.
2) Too many Americans lack healthcare coverage, and their numbers have only increased with the recent economic downturn.
3) Far too many hospitals (including several in Queens) are underperforming in terms of quality outcomes and financially.
4) With the aging of our population, there is a real and pressing need to invest in our healthcare facilities to meet patients’ needs.
5) The burden of caring for the growing number of uninsured in this country has shifted to nonprofit hospitals, which are ill-equipped to shoulder the financial burden, particularly in New York State.
While it’s unrealistic to expect great substantive change within President Obama’s first 100 days, it is time to move the agenda forward. For instance, we must make a down-payment on universal health coverage. A good first step, one that President Obama is expected to take within days of assuming office, is to rescind a Bush administration policy that has impeded state efforts to provide health insurance to children from low- and middle-income families.
We also look to the new administration to provide financial incentives to better manage the growing incidence of chronic illness. The new administration must also provide greater clarity on the “quality” agenda by coming up with specific national standards for measuring the performance of healthcare providers. In another move that will enhance quality and improve patient safety, the Obama administration should make a major commitment to investing in healthcare information technology.
In tackling these multiple issues, the administration must maintain a clear vision and understanding of what healthcare means to individual communities and the nation as a whole.
Michael Dowling is the President & CEO North Shore-LIJ Health System.
