2/10/2004 - STATEMENT OF RAUL YZAGUIRRE ON LATINO UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE PRESIDENT’S BUDGET

STATEMENT OF RAUL YZAGUIRRE ON LATINO UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE PRESIDENT’S BUDGET

Washington, D.C. - The modest good news announced Friday that the unemployment rate dropped for the month of January with the creation of 112,000 new jobs is tempered by the alarming rise in unemployment among the fastest-growing group of workers in the country, Latinos. The rate for Latinos jumped from 6.6% in December to 7.3% in January. Continued employment woes for the Latino community further exacerbate concerns that have been raised about President Bush’s budget plan, announced this week.

The plan released on Monday of this week, which outlined the President’s major budget and policy priorities for fiscal year (FY) 2005, is perhaps most noteworthy for what it lacks, that is, new and meaningful initiatives that address the challenges facing the vast majority of Americans each day, including the nation’s 40 million Latinos or any serious effort to bring the escalating budget deficit under control.

Each year the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) works with Hispanic-serving organizations, families, children, and workers in neighborhoods across the nation to identify community concerns and share them with decision-makers in Washington. The nation’s 40 million Hispanics look to the President to present an agenda that would create opportunities for hardworking Latino workers to own their own home and save money, help Latino children achieve and succeed in school, give workers a chance to build skills and advance in their jobs, assist families to gain quality health care, and help immigrants to reunite with families and strive to earn United States citizenship. But the President’s FY 2005 budget blueprint has left many Latinos with little to cheer about. For example:

Education. The President’s budget falls far short on education, level funding bilingual education programs, eliminating parent assistance programs entirely, and providing no new funding for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start.
Job Training. The President’s budget slashes funding from existing job-training programs to fund his $250 million Jobs for the 21st Century initiative, a proposal that has yet to be fleshed out by the Administration; for example, there are no details as to how it would meet the needs of this nation’s workers. The President’s budget does allocate $50 million dollars towards his Personal Reemployment Accounts (PRA) proposal, but this idea has failed to gain momentum since its unveiling last year. Lastly, the FY 2005 budget eliminates the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP), the only program dedicated to serving the needs of this nation’s migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
Health Care. The President’s budget does nothing to improve access to and the quality of health care for Latinos. The President’s budget proposal fails to lift the current ban on health care for legal immigrant children and pregnant women, does not provide funding to enhance access to health services to limited-English-proficient individuals, eliminates Community Health Workers Grants, and does not provide funding for a much-needed study of Hispanic health, the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Criminal Justice and Civil Rights. The President’s FY 2005 proposal would provide $300 million to give ex-prisoners an opportunity to turn their lives around and successfully reenter society. However, it is unclear that the money will be used in a comprehensive approach to prisoner re-entry, such as providing for housing, education, and job training needs. Moreover, the budget eliminates Juvenile Crime Prevention Block Grants and slashes the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Program by $34 million. In addition, the President’s budget cuts funding for Election Reform by $84 million.
In other key areas of the President’s blueprint, there are provisions with some merit that simply do not go far enough to help Latinos. For example, while the President’s spending plan did propose an increase of $5 million over FY 2004 for Housing Counseling programs, a major Latino priority, that sum is set aside for another new homeownership downpayment program that has dubious benefits for would-be Latino homeowners. The budget also includes proposals for new savings accounts and tax credits that working families can benefit from, but they are designed ineffectively, give away too much to wealthy taxpayers already saving, and most hardworking low-income Latinos would be ineligible.

Though the President’s plan could have been much more damaging for Latinos, it should have been much more favorable. And where his plan is especially worrisome for is in its long-term economic implications. The plan proposes to cut the budget deficit estimated at $521 billion in half over five years but fails to factor in expenses for activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the President proposes yet again another round of massive tax cuts, this time to the tune of $1.4 trillion over ten years according to estimates from the Budget Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, but much of the cost is not reflected in the budget because it uses a five-year window instead of ten. Taken together with the President’s funding increases for national defense and Homeland Security, the result may well mean deeper cuts in critical areas of the budget which affect Latinos such as education, health care, and job training when the reality of the President’s spending priorities begin to materialize.

As Congress begins to fashion its own budget plan and appropriations bills, the President can and should lead in the fight to protect important areas of the budget that benefit all Americans, including Latinos. In doing so, he can prove his commitment to Latino voters who are awash in election-year rhetoric and short on examples of where this Administration has rolled up its sleeves and fought for this community. What better test than the fight over where we spend our federal dollars?

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