Last Tuesday, President Obama talked about his plans for 2014, which were ambitious but also based in reality. The president has to work with a Congress that hasn’t done much in the past few years if he wants to get anything big done. His message was clear: If Congress won’t act, he will.
We were glad to see the president bring attention to inequality in this country by taking administrative steps to deal with problems like the minimum wage and retirement savings. The president also talked about growth and opportunities. He touched on important topics that people all over the country talk about at their kitchen tables. Many Latinos strongly believe that taking responsibility and working hard will help you get ahead in life, so the president’s call to restore that promise is good news. Every Latino neighbourhood, family, and community has stories about people who beat the odds and made a difference.
Even though the president’s executive power can be used to do good things, the simple fact is that Washington has to work together to have a more meaningful and far-reaching effect on our most important social and economic problems. We need our government to work together to really close the income gap, reduce big differences in health, fix our immigration system, and make sure that all children have access to a good, affordable education.
How can Congress and the president make the American people trust them again this year? Here are some ways that come to mind:
Pass laws like the “Pathways Back to Work Act” that not only help to create jobs but also invest in job training and jobs for our young people.
Follow the president’s lead and pass laws that will raise the minimum wage for all workers to $10.10 per hour.
Change the tax code to reduce poverty, help people move up the economic ladder, and help low- and middle-income families build assets while protecting the refundable Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.
Invest in and change policies and programmes for early childhood education to make them more accessible and reach a larger number of young children.
Reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make sure that all students succeed by giving more help to teachers who do a good job, improving teaching services, making tests better for English language learners, and keeping strong accountability rules.
Reauthorize the Higher Education Act to make college more affordable by holding colleges and universities accountable for rising tuition costs and student debt.
Make sure that LGBT applicants and employees in the workplace can’t be left out of the applicant pool or fired because of their sexual orientation or gender expression. This can be done by passing laws that protect them.
Get rid of the rest of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which makes it illegal for states to recognise same-sex marriages that happened in other states.
Make a law that stops all students from being bullied or harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression.
Pass laws to restore protections for voting rights.
Tens of millions of Americans could benefit from the above bills, and Congress should make good progress on them this year. Still, our hopes for passing important laws this year are highest when it comes to reforming immigration as a whole. Both the president’s speech and the Republican response talked about immigration reform, which shows that the question is no longer “if” reform should happen, but “how.” Thousands of families are still being broken up, and people who want to be Americans have to live and work in the shadows. Lack of reform is hurting the country’s economy and, when combined with a record number of deportations, is destroying communities’ social fabric. This problem can be fixed in 2014 by Congress and the president:
Getting a full immigration reform bill passed Using the bipartisan bill in the Senate as a model, we can create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and get legal traffic off the black market.
To avoid making a second class of citizens, the final agreement should include a plan for how the 11 million undocumented immigrants can become citizens.
These plans show how much we want Congress to do good work this year. But people don’t have high hopes for a reason. Just a few months ago, Congress shut down the government for no reason other than to try to hurt the president politically. This hurt the economy and the country’s reputation around the world. Congress has also let millions of people lose their unemployment benefits and is about to pass a Farm Bill that cuts food aid to poor families by $8 billion. This year, anyone who wants to help people should look for ways to work around Congress. Even though the president has taken some important steps, there is still more that can be done.
First, the Obama administration can do a better job of using prosecutorial discretion and putting government resources toward deporting dangerous criminals instead of those who don’t pose a threat.
Second, the government can work with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make a housing finance system that stays true to the core values of access and affordability and helps families build or keep their wealth.
Third, health care reform, the president’s biggest accomplishment to date, is on track, but there are still problems with how it will be put into place for families with eligible immigrant parents and children. Even though a lot is being done, the administration can spend more time and money this year to make sure that Latino families get the reforms they were promised.
Lastly, the president can try to set more clear and ambitious goals for his administration so that it better reflects the country’s growing diversity and has more Latinos working for it. As the administration looks at how agencies hire people to make sure that long-term unemployed people or veterans get a chance to serve, which is a good and necessary thing to do, they can also look at diversity.