American Forum

TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By Don Baylor and Chuck Stokes

This week, Texas is one of many states celebrating America Saves Week, a national week to promote personal savings and encourage individuals to take financial action. American Saves Week couldn't come at a better time, with so many Texan families struggling. To strengthen our communities, Texas needs to adopt a new blueprint for helping families save.

As noted in Why Thrift Matters: 20 Propositions, a report recently released by the Institute for American Values, Americans are rediscovering the  thrift of our forefathers and mothers, who worked hard, saved their money and shared their wealth with those in need. The recipe for building financially strong families and communities remains the same today. Texas Saves Week reminds us that we need only look back to find a wiser way forward. We need to work together, not just for individual change, but to create a culture that values hard work, planning ahead and the importance of community.

Creating a college-going culture is widely acknowledged as the best way to secure a better future by increasing the earning potential of tomorrow's labor force. In Texas, we need to direct similar energy to creating a savings culture. Like a good education, household savings - regardless of family income - is a sound predictor of whether a child who grows up poor will become part of the middle class. The association between savings and future financial security is even more pronounced when savings are targeted toward college. Academic research has found that a child with a dedicated savings account is seven times more likely to attend college than a similar child without such an account, even when controlling for race or income. In essence, savings represent hope and opportunity.


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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM
By F. Scott McCown

When the legislative session began in January, Texas faced a crisis. The state was short roughly one-fourth of the money needed simply to do what it was already doing. The Center for Public Policy Priorities was part of a broad coalition that pushed for a balanced approach to the problem -- one that used the Rainy Day Fund in combination with targeted cuts and new revenue.

Others pushed for a cuts-only approach that slashed things like the number of teachers and payments to nursing homes. Initially, the House proposed a devastating cuts-only budget. In the end, with a slightly improved revenue projection and various one-time measures, the Legislature largely funded the Senate’s modestly better, but still damaging budget.

Texas is growing twice as fast as the nation. In the most recent decade, Texas’ child population growth accounted for over half of the child population growth in the entire country, making our state’s education system critical to our country’s future.

Contrary to any spin you’ve heard, the Legislature actually cut spending on public education. And the money the state is spending won’t go as far because of enrollment growth and higher costs.

How does Texas turn this around? We’ll need more than a stronger economy to solve our revenue problems.

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Anne Dunkelberg

Robert Restuccia

Medicaid’s federal and state partnership also protects Texas jobs. Clinics, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health care businesses count on Medicaid for a dependable source of revenue that supports local jobs.

But Congress is considering proposals that put our families, friends, neighbors and local jobs at risk. Making Medicaid a fixed pot of money that doesn’t grow with need -- commonly referred to as a block grant -- or imposing an unrealistic health care spending cap would set arbitrary limits on federal Medicaid investments.

These proposals do nothing to bring down health care costs. Instead, they just shift costs from the federal government to states, and then on to taxpayers, families and charities. They leave states few choices. States can cut off coverage and make kids, seniors, families and people with disabilities uninsured, which is proven to raise premiums for everyone who has insurance and drives up costs when the uninsured are forced to seek expensive emergency room care.

They can cut payments to doctors’ offices, hospitals and nursing homes, but this puts care and jobs at risk. Congress shifting costs to states is just like an employer shifting more of the premium to the worker. Neither really reforms health care costs, they only push the costs to someone else. Either way, we pay.

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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By Scott Chase

As a small business owner, I am worried our Legislature is going to make unnecessary and deep cuts to public services that local businesses and all Texans need. Yes, our state has a revenue shortfall, but we also have choices about how deal with the shortfall. We can take a balanced approach that uses our Rainy Day Fund.

My fellow business owners in the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce are concerned about unnecessary cuts too. Our chamber includes over 600 small business owners in the Dallas area. We were the first local chamber in Texas to call for the State Legislature to use the Rainy Day Fund to help balance the budget instead of the irresponsible “cuts-only” approach that the Legislature is considering.

The cuts-only approach of the Legislature is wrong for many reasons. All businesses, but particularly small businesses, such as the members of the Oak Cliff Chamber, know that spending on education, health care, roads and bridges, job training and the environment is an investment in the economic future of Texas. This investment will result in a more educated, healthier workforce and a modernized infrastructure. The large cuts in these areas being presented by reckless legislators will lead to a less competitive business climate in Texas, lower wage jobs and economic stagnation.


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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By F. Scott McCown

Maybe you’ve heard that our state is short of money because of the recession. Perhaps you think the state can just cut spending or that the problem doesn’t affect you. Well think again.

Our state isn’t just a little short of money. Merely to maintain critical public services, at their current levels, costs at least $27 billion more than we have. In other words, we only have three-fourths of the money we need.

If you try to fill this big of a hole with only cuts in spending, you cut into the state’s muscle and bone.


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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By F. Scott McCown

Congress is now considering two important issues: whether to extend the Bush tax cuts and whether to extend the federally funded Unemployment Insurance program. To extend any part of the Bush tax cuts, particularly the high-end cuts, while cutting off Unemployment Insurance would betray hardworking Texans.

When a breadwinner loses a job through no fault of their own, they and their family are protected by Unemployment Insurance -- a federal-state program paid for by employers. The regular state program provides 26 weeks of benefits. Responding to the recession, Congress provided federal funding for an additional 67 weeks. But federal funding is running out, and if Congress fails to act by November 30, nearly 128,000 unemployed Texans will not get all or part of the additional weeks.

Both the public and history support extending Unemployment Insurance. A recent national survey shows 67 percent of the public are in favor of continuing Unemployment Insurance until the unemployment rate drops. And Congress has never allowed federally funded extensions to lapse when unemployment was over 7.2 percent. With the national unemployment rate well above 9 percent for 18 consecutive months, it’s far too soon for Congress to cut off Unemployment Insurance.


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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By Frances Deviney, Ph.D.

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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM
By Don Baylor

Commercial innovation remains at the heart of the American tradition. However, innovation should be used to increase American wealth, not destroy it.

Leading up to the financial crisis, gaps in our financial monitoring system unleashed a financial virus still worming through the American economy. Products like overdraft fees, payday loans, and “pick-a-payment” mortgages all damaged our economy. The resulting system crash led to historic levels of foreclosures, lost wealth and chronic unemployment.

As new, complex financial products enter the marketplace, our regulatory firewall must be able to detect toxic financial products and safeguard Americans from financial harm. We need a national solution that honors state authority in order to protect American wealth from future meltdowns. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) would help avoid repeat financial disaster by ensuring that all “off-the shelf” financial products can be monitored by one inspector with a clear code book.

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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By Margery Engel Loeb and Camille D. Miller

TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM
By Frances Deviney, Ph.D.

New Census Bureau data shows that for the 10th year in a row Texas has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country, with one of every six kids uninsured. Nearly one of every four Texas kids lived in poverty in 2008 (e.g., $17,600 for a family of three).

As troubling as these numbers are, this data likely under represents the extent of the current problem for two important reasons.

First, the latest Census data does not cover 2009, and unemployment has been rising sharply in Texas this year, from 6.4 percent in January to 7.0 percent in July (the most recent month available). Economists tell us that poverty rises with rising joblessness and that increase is sharper for vulnerable groups like children.

Second, even once the data catches up to the recession, child poverty is likely even deeper than shown in these figures. The federal poverty measure is badly outdated and excludes many families struggling to cover basic expenses, effectively disqualifying them from receiving available food or housing assistance.

The Measuring American Poverty Act would update the poverty measure to include more realistic expenses (including health care and child care) and help us to accurately measure the effectiveness of our poverty reduction programs, such as Food Stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Shouldn’t we know how many people really need help and whether our help does any good?

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TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM

By Rebecca Lightsey

The excitement and optimism that accompany a new school year can fade quickly when a disciplinary problem surfaces at school.

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