One year ago our nation, and much of this world, was in a state of panic and turmoil. Companies and industries were shedding jobs faster than we could count. The stock market was tanking in front of our eyes. Waking up every morning to look at the headlines of the newspaper was a daunting task in fear of what a new day could bring to the American people. We needed a lifeline.
And so President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009. Critics have been very vocal at pointing out the persistently high unemployment rate as well as flagrant examples of waste and inefficiency. At the same time, supporters have ample evidence to defend the act—a couple million jobs saved or created, a depression averted, and billions of dollars supporting and aiding colleges and universities to invest in the future of our country. Both sides have valid arguments and substantial verification. Undoubtedly, there have been great benefits from the act, but inevitably there is also vast room for improvement in the second year of the two year plan. With a year behind us, we must look ahead and focus our attention and energy in avoiding past mistakes by demanding greater transparency, and demanding higher quality outcomes. As the White House begins to craft the new jobs bill, we must make sure the bill creates good jobs—jobs that offer living wages, provide benefits, and have the potential for long-term growth and advancement.
We as a nation are at a critical juncture-we are working to re-shape America's role in the 21st century global economy, and to create the jobs and the infrastructure that will help us create equal opportunities for success for all Americans. At the same time, we are living in a moment where our traditional notions of race and how we talk about it are changing. One question keeps coming up: with an African-American President leading our country, do we still need to think about and create solutions for historic barriers to opportunity? The answer? Absolutely.
As we reflect on our first year under Team Obama, and on the one-year anniversary of the historic American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus, our goals must be clear: we need to ensure that all Americans have access to the education, training, and jobs they need to succeed; and we must make every effort to bring opportunity to communities that were already hurting before the economic crisis. Historically, the groups who've been hurting the most are communities of color and women. Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again that access to full and equal opportunity is very much a mixed reality, and these groups are being left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address.
The American Dream is perhaps our most powerful and enduring story. Through booms and busts, we insist (oftentimes in the face of overwhelmingly contrary evidence) that anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed. To the extent that the American Dream is a reality, it is due in large part to our secondary education system and the patchwork of loans, scholarships, and grants available for students. As sky-rocketing rates of student debt show us, though, these tools for expanding access to secondary education need retuning. There is talk of reform in Washington but, in a story that has become all too familiar, large financial institutions are standing in the way, protecting their profits at the expense of young people’s hopes and dreams.
At this moment in our nation’s history, it is important that we close America's gaps in opportunity by ensuring speedy job growth and marshalling the resources of all groups and communities in our efforts to rebuild the national economy.
Three steps we can take to expand opportunity for all people in the United States include: (1) investing in community health centers in neighborhoods with few health providers; (2) supporting formally incarcerated people in their efforts to obtain employment; and (3) assisting skilled immigrants in obtaining jobs commensurate with their qualifications.
I. Invest in Community Health Centers in Neighborhoods with Few Health Providers
Health is central to both opportunity and economic security. In our efforts to rebuild America’s economy, we need to do everything possible to support the health of all people here.
Community health centers are categorically open to everyone—irrespective of income, insurance, ethnicity, or gender, and provide comprehensive primary and preventive health services including physician, dental, nurse, laboratory, X-ray, pharmacy, obstetrics, child and adult medicine, specialty and in-patient referral, and follow-up on a sliding fee scale based on income. For patients covered by private or public insurance plans, community health centers will bill the insurance providers. However, federal, state, and local governments generally will support the health centers by providing subsidies to cover the cost of services provided to the uninsured.
In order to comply with new transparency requirements under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, state governments across the country are scrambling to put up websites that track how they spend recovery dollars. In just the last week, the White House’s count of state transparency websites has jumped from ten to twenty-five. Of all these websites, not one lists the number of jobs to be created by private contractors. Without such data, the sites are close to meaningless.
Fortunately, Oregon is leading a push to require contractors to report the number of jobs they create, as well as the hours worked and wages received by their employees. These requirements, created under Oregon HB 2037, would ensure that Oregonians get a website that doesn’t just make an empty gesture toward transparency but one that ensures their tax money actually goes toward creating quality jobs.
The benefits of such a site are simple. If contractors are creating jobs with recovery money, they can get more. If they aren’t creating jobs, the state can take away their money and target it to contractors that are. If they are serious about using recovery dollars to turn the economy around, Oregon lawmakers should make it a top priority to adopt these new standards
If the country is serious about getting the recovery plan right, they will push their states to follow in Oregon's example. Considering the fact that states are poised to distribute over $300 billion of the $787 billion set aside under ARRA, the transparency standards we adopt at the state level will more or less amount to the transparency standards we adopt as a nation.
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