Politics

5 Things to Know Before Obama Rolls Out His Budget Monday

Published

10 years ago

January 31, 2015

In this March 4, 2014 file photo, copies of President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget are set out for distribution on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Connie Cass, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — A quick quiz:

Monday is —

a) Groundhog Day

b) Budget Day

c) A day for repeating the same old arguments over spending and taxes, only louder.

d) All of the above.

If you picked “d,” you’re in the proper spirit for federal Budget Day, which appropriately falls on Groundhog Day this year. It’s safe to predict we’re in for way more than six more weeks of Republicans and Democrats fighting over how to spend our money.

Here are five things to know before President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget fully emerges Monday:

___

IT’S JUST AN OPENING BID

Despite all the hoopla surrounding it, a president’s budget is merely a suggestion. That’s especially true this year, with Obama delivering his multi-trillion-dollar wish list to a Senate and House run by the opposition.

The Constitution gives Congress power to decide how to spend taxpayers’ money. After lawmakers get the president’s budget, they’ll set about coming up with their own, very different, spending plan. There’s a hitch, though — their legislation needs Obama’s signature to become law.

If the president and Congress can’t compromise on spending, that’s how we end up with a partial government shutdown. Republican leaders and Obama say they don’t want that to happen this year.

Still, the usual big disputes loom: Obama wants more spending and higher taxes on the wealthy. Most Republicans want to spend less — except on the military — and resist tax increases.

Plus, this year Republicans are promising to use spending bills to attack Obama’s signature health care law and to roll back his order giving some immigrants relief from deportation.

___

OBAMA WILL BID HIGH

The president will call for increasing spending on agency operating budgets by 7 percent next year, blowing through limits set in an earlier bipartisan deal.

Previewing the detailed document to be released Monday, the White House said it would call for spending about $74 billion more next year than the painful automatic cuts Obama signed into law in that 2011 deal commonly known as the “sequester.” Those harsh automatic cuts were originally set in motion as a threat that would force bipartisan agreement to replace them with something more sensible, but it didn’t work.

Obama would roughly divide the extra money he seeks between the military and domestic programs, such as college aid, medical research and child care.

The White House, without giving details yet, says Obama would offset his spending increases by cutting inefficient programs and closing tax loopholes. In that way, he could continue the recent trend of shrinking the nation’s annual budget deficits.

Republicans say that’s no good. They prefer to tackle the deficit by holding domestic spending in check, or trimming even more.

___

A BIG QUESTION: HOW MUCH DOES THE MILITARY GET?

The military brass has been pleading for relief from their automatic spending limits. Many lawmakers in both parties, eyeing terror attacks and trouble spots around the globe, are anxious to help.

Obama’s proposal to raise the defense budget by $38 billon would allow for more ships and fighter jets. By bundling the military increase with more domestic spending, Obama will pressure Republicans eager to boost the military budget to give in to some of his priorities.

Will Republicans insist on holding the line on spending, even if it means the Pentagon has to go without, too? And how far are Democratic lawmakers and Obama willing to go in using national defense as a bargaining chip?

___

DETAILS MATTER

If Congress is sure to reject and redo Obama’s budget proposal, you might wonder: Why does he bother?

For one thing, the law says he has to submit a budget to Congress by the first Monday in February, although Obama has sometimes missed that deadline.

Plus, the federal budget is a big deal. It’s expected to be in the vicinity of $4 trillion — that’s trillion with a “t” — for the fiscal year beginning in October.

It goes much deeper than political rhetoric about ending big government or boosting the middle class.

The budget carries thousands and thousands of decisions about concrete things the government does — like paying park rangers, Border Patrol agents and workers who answer IRS help lines. Spending money for air traffic control, medical research and food inspection. Weeding out ineffective programs and launching new ones that, hopefully, work better.

The exercise has gone awry over the last few years, leading to showdowns and a 2013 shutdown and failure to complete the normal budget process in a gridlocked Congress.

But the budget minutia that federal agencies sweat over and congressional committees are charged with overseeing is what keeps the U.S. government running.

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MOST OF THE BUDGET IS ON AUTOPILOT

Running federal agencies isn’t even the half of it.

The biggest share of the budget goes to what’s called “mandatory spending” — ongoing payments that don’t need annual approval by Congress. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the biggies. Others include unemployment checks, food stamps and pensions for veterans and government retirees.

To take on the nation’s long-term debt problem, lawmakers and the president would have to deal with these growing costs.

So far, attempts to reach this sort of “grand bargain” have failed, repeatedly.

____

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

Follow Connie Cass on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ConnieCass.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas Honors California Women in Construction with State Proclamation, Policy Ideas

“Women play an important role in building our communities, yet they remain vastly underrepresented in the construction industry,” Smallwood-Cuevas stated. “This resolution not only recognizes their incredible contributions but also the need to break barriers — like gender discrimination.

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), center, is shown with other guest speakers at the Sacramento Chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction brunch held at the State Capitol on March 6, 2025. On the left is Jennifer Todd, LMS General Contractors Founder and President. To Todd’s right is Dr. Giovanna Brasfield, from Los Angeles-based Brasfield and Associates. CBM photo by Antonio Ray Harvey.

By Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌, California‌ ‌Black‌ ‌Media‌

To honor Women in Construction Week, Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 30 in the State Legislature on March 6. This resolution pays tribute to women and highlights their contributions to the building industry.

The measure designates March 2, 2025, to March 8, 2025, as Women in Construction Week in California. It passed 34-0 on the Senate floor.

Authored by Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), another bill, Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 28, also recognized women in the construction industry.

The resolution advanced out of the Assembly Committee on Rules with a 10-0 vote.

The weeklong event coincides with the National Association of Women In Construction (NAWIC) celebration that started in 1998 and has grown and expanded every year since.

The same week in front of the State Capitol, Smallwood, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom), and Assemblymember Maggie Krell (D-Sacramento), attended a brunch organized by a local chapter of NAWIC.

Two of the guest speakers were Dr. Giovanna Brasfield, CEO of Los Angeles-based Brasfield and Associates, and Jennifer Todd, President and Founder of LMS General Contractors.

Todd is the youngest Black woman to receive a California’s Contractors State License Board (A) General Engineering license. An advocate for women of different backgrounds, Todd she said she has been a woman in construction for the last 16 years despite going through some trying times.

A graduate of Arizona State University’s’ Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, in 2009 Todd created an apprenticeship training program, A Greener Tomorrow, designed toward the advancement of unemployed and underemployed people of color.

“I always say, ‘I love an industry that doesn’t love me back,’” Todd said. “Being young, female and minority, I am often in spaces where people don’t look like me, they don’t reflect my values, they don’t reflect my experiences, and I so persevere in spite of it all.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 11.2% of the construction workforce across the country are female. Overall, 87.3% of the female construction workers are White, 35.1% are Latinas, 2.1% are Asians, and 6.5% are Black women, the report reveals.

The National Association of Home Builders reported that as of 2022, the states with the largest number of women working in construction were Texas (137,000), California (135,000) and Florida (119,000). The three states alone represent 30% of all women employed in the industry.

Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) and the California Legislative Women’s Caucus supported Smallwood-Cuevas’ SCR 30 and requested that more energy be poured into bringing awareness to the severe gender gap in the construction field.

“The construction trade are a proven path to a solid career. and we have an ongoing shortage, and this is a time for us to do better breaking down the barriers to help the people get into this sector,” Rubio said.

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.

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Alameda County

Trump Order Slashes Federal Agencies Supporting Minority Business and Neighborhood Development

The latest executive order targeted several federal agencies, including the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, ordering that their programs and staff be reduced “to the minimum presence and function required by law.” The executive order targeted more agencies that Trump “has determined are unnecessary,” the order stated.

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Brandon Patterson

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order slashing the operations of two federal agencies supporting growth in minority business and neighborhoods as he continued his attacks on programs supporting people of color and on the size of the federal bureaucracy.

The MBDA’s mission is to “promote the growth and global competitiveness” of minority business enterprises, or MBEs. In 2023, according to its website, the agency helped MBEs access $1.5 billion in capital and facilitated nearly $3.8 billion in contracts awarded to minority business enterprises. It also helped MBEs create or sustain more than 19,000 jobs nationwide. Similarly, the CDFI Fund supports economic growth in under-invested communities by providing funding and technical assistance to local CDFIs, including banks, loan funds, and credit unions, that support community development projects in cities across the country. In 2023, the fund supported more than 1,400 local CDFIs across the country, including more than 80 in California — among the highest number for any state in the country.

The MBDA has local satellite business centers operated by organizations that support minority clients with services such as business consulting, contract bid preparation, loan packaging, and accessing capital funding. The San Francisco Bay Area business center is San Jose, operated by San Francisco-based organization Asian, Inc. Meanwhile, local Oakland CDFIs supported by the federal CDFI fund since 2021 include Habitat Community Capital, TMC Community Capital, Gateway Bank Federal Savings Bank, Beneficial State Bancorp, Inc., and Main Street Launch.

“It is clear that the hollowing out of the CDFI Fund and MBDA is not being ordered because those programs have failed in their mission,” the CEO of Small Business Majority John Arensmeyer, a national organization that advocates for small businesses, said in a statement on Saturday. “Instead, it is yet another case of President Trump using DEI as a club to eviscerate programs that seek to level our economic playing field.”

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon also slammed the decision in a statement to the Oakland Post. “As a member of the House Small Business Committee who represents multiple CDFIs in CA-12, I believe Trump’s gutting of operations at the Minority Business Development Agency and at the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is a direct attack on small businesses, communities of color and other underserved communities,” Rep. Simon said. “Both the MBDA and the CDFI Fund were created with bipartisan support to help historically underserved communities and small businesses — and both programs have helped to dramatically change the material realities of people and bolster entrepreneurship in the U.S. There is no logic to this decision. The point is discrimination and cruelty.”