January 2011 Hunger Alert
1. Volunteers Needed for Lobby Day, General Hunger Action Work
2. Come to Albany on March 1st for Legislative Education and Action Day
3. Send us an article about your program for Hunger Action Network's newsletter
4. Sign on to the Better Choice Budget Campaign (http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/)
5. Vermont Leads the Way with Single Payer Health Care Reform
6. State Legislative Budget hearings have been set
7. Job Creation
8. HANNYS Study on Jobs for Welfare Participants
1. Volunteers Needed for Lobby Day, General Hunger Action Work
Hunger Action is seeking volunteers to help build our annual Legislative Education and Action Day on March 1st. The biggest immediate need is to assist with scheduling appointments with legislators. Phone calls can be made from home or our offices in NYC or Albany. Please contact dunleamark@aol.com.
We will also need volunteers from 8 AM to 1 PM on March 1st to assist with logistics: making lunch, helping with clean up, peace keepers for the noon time march and rally.
Hunger Action Network also need volunteers to assist with general office duties (database entry, mailings, phone calls), outreach, internet activism, video production, special events, etc.
2. Come to Albany on March 1st for Legislative Education and Action Day
This year's state budget is likely not to contain good news for anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates. The state is facing a $9 billion budget deficit, but the Governor not only doesn't want to raise revenues, he wants to give a $5 billion tax cut to the wealthy by allowing the small surcharge in the personal income tax rate for the rich to lapse. We do know that the Governor anticipates major cuts to Medicaid, education and state workers. We assume many human service and housing programs are threatened as well.
The day will start at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 85 Chestnut St, Albany, A half block west of the LOB/Capital Building. 9:30am registration 10am Issue Briefing Free Lunch Noon Rally at the Capitol 1-4pm Lobby Visits
Our issues will include: More Funding for Jobs, Emergency Food; No Budget Cuts for homeless, welfare grant, jobs, education; Single Payer Health Care for NYS; Fair Taxes; Higher Minimum Wage. We are also seeking a $4 million increase in funding for emergency food programs (HPNAP) to $33.9 million.
There will be free buses from NYC. We also expect a van from Rochester and possibly from Buffalo. Please contact us to reserve your space (dunleamark@aol.com). Also contact us if you want to help organize a budget forum in your community.
3. Send us an article about your program for Hunger Action Network's newsletter
Hunger Action will be producing its quarterly newsletter in early February. Please send us stories about exciting events at your program that we can include.
4. Sign on to the Better Choice Budget Campaign (http://www.abetterchoiceforny.org/)
Growing Together NY: A Better Choice for a New NY is a statewide coalition whose members believe our state must not respond with actions that hinder the growth of New York’s economy or hurt the children and families hit hardest by the economic downturn.
New York State is facing massive cuts to vital services at a time when families’ needs are rising and the resources to meet them are falling. Do you believe that NYS spends too much educating our kids, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, caring for the sick and elderly or keeping our environment clean? Do you believe that we should give a $5 billion tax break to the wealthiest New Yorkers while most of us are living paycheck to paycheck? Do you believe we should allow big multi-national businesses to avoid paying state taxes because they take advantage of major loopholes in our tax law? Didn’t think so, neither do we!
The campaign is seeking groups to sign on to the attached statement about fair taxes and reasonable choices. You can also get more info from Ron Deutsch at mkd67@aol.com.
5. Vermont Leads the Way with Single Payer Health Care Reform
The State of Vermont is moving closer to adopting a single payer universal health care system, something strongly championed by their new Governor. Harvard health care economist William Hsiao was hired by the state Legislature to come up with three possible designs for a new health care system. His report found that getting one entity to process claims, reforming medical malpractice and taking other steps would save $2.1 billion in health spending by 2025. Hsiao, who designed Taiwan's single payer health system and has worked on systems in eight other countries, defined single-payer as "a system that provides insurance to every Vermont resident with a common benefit package and channels all payments to providers through a single pipe with uniform payments rates and common claim processes and adjudication procedures."
Two years ago NYS funded a similar study which concluded that a single payer system would reduce overall annual health care spending by $20 billion by 2019 - and by $28 billion compared to the insurance mandate that Congress passed. Hunger Action is working with single payer New York to get state lawmakers to take single payer seriously.
Medicaid is the biggest part of the state budget - around $53 billion. Medicaid’s high price tag is directly related to the high overall costs of health care. The best way to control Medicaid costs is to control health care costs, both with a single payer system and more emphasis on primary care. The Primary Care Coalition in NY estimates that overall state spending on health care could be reduced by $10 billion (or 6% of the total bill) through enhanced access to modern, coordinated primary care. Much of the spending on expensive in-patient care and medical treatments could be reduced or eliminated if robust primary care was available in every community.
6. State Legislative Budget hearings have been set
The State legislature has set the dates for the joint hearings on the state budget. The hearing on human services will be Feb. 16 at 9:30 AM in hearing room B of the Legislative Office Building in Albany; Housing is the same day and location at 1 PM. Health and Medicaid will be at 10 AM on March 1st. Taxes is Feb. 14th at 1 PM. Written testimony can also be submitted.
7. Job Creation
Hunger Action Network supports a WPA style jobs program to give a job to every New Yorker who wants one. A new study by Prof. Phil Harvey of Rutgers estimates the cost of providing 500,000 jobs in NYS would be $14.3 billion - about the amount that NY annually rebates to Wall Street traders from the stock sales tax. The national cost of a full employment program would be far less than the $900 billion Congress recently spent on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy - or the bail out of Wall Street.
What type of jobs would be created? Some would involve the delivery of services to program participants themselves—such as the provision of child care. Other community needs would involve construction work (e.g., the rehabilitation of abandoned or sub-standard housing), conservation measures (e.g., caulking windows and doors in private dwellings), the construction of new affordable housing units, the improvement of existing public parks, and the construction of new parks. The program also could expand and improve the quality of public services in areas such as health care, child care, education, recreation, elder care, and cultural enrichment.
Hunger Action is also calling for NY to directly link job training and job placement for low-income and unemployed people to transportation, housing and other capital construction programs. This could include a set percentage goal of hours worked on the construction project going to local residents and establishing pre-apprenticeship and union apprenticeship programs connected to the new jobs. This would provide jobs in the building trades industry, along with vocational training, for the unemployed, welfare recipients and other poor New Yorkers. NYS should ensure that a minimum of 15% of labor hours and job training hours connected with the Green Jobs, Green NY program are targeted to welfare participants and other low-income people.
At the federal level, Rep John Conyers has introduced "The 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act." The Act includes (i) funding for jobs; (ii) allocation of monies raised by the funding mechanism; (iii) job creation targets (who and what types of jobs); (iv) mechanisms for implementing the Act; and (v) a definition of the economic situations under which the Act would come into effect. Funding for the Act is provided by a tax on the trading of financial assets (FTT). This levy is on trading of stocks, bonds (debt) and currencies.
8. HANNYS Study on Jobs for Welfare Participants
Hunger Action will soon release a report on the state's implementation of the recent federal funding for various jobs programs for welfare participants - transitional jobs, green jobs, health jobs, wage subsidy. Unfortunately, NY lawmakers allocated only a tiny fraction of the $1.2 billion provided by Congress for such initiatives. States like Illinois, California, Texas and Pennsylvania invested enough of the federal funds to create between 27,000 and 46,000 job positions; New York only funded 4,200, less than the state of Kentucky.
The federal government has consistently rated NY among the worst performing states in the country in moving welfare participants in to jobs. This is largely because NY invests heavily in "make work" programs such as workfare. We want the state to do a cost benefit analysis of workfare vs. jobs programs. OTDA and state officials claim they avoid jobs programs, despite its much higher success rate in job placement than workfare / WEP, due to the higher upfront costs. But a paper by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that since much of the upfront costs are merely diversion of PA benefits and jobs programs do a better job of keeping people employed and off of welfare. Jobs programs pay for themselves within three years.
