Massive cuts are being proposed which will impact the way in which Social Security and Medicaid are allocated in the United States. The Obama administration has floated a plan known as chained Consumer Price Index (CPI) along with a goal of trimming healthcare funding for the poor and elderly by $400 billion.

These efforts are purportedly connected with the need to trim the federal budget deficit. A “sequester” was imposed earlier this year which is already resulting in furloughs for government workers, lay-offs in the healthcare industry and the elimination of programs which have benefitted low-income people for decades.

The chained CPI will lead to severe reductions of the limited increases in payments based upon the rise in inflation and the cost of living. These reforms, if instituted, would also be applied to benefits received by retired government employees, veterans and recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

In a recent study released by the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS), the research institute placed the Obama administration proposals within a broader sociological context where the historic national oppression of African Americans has rendered this community to lower-wages and accumulated household wealth. Compounding this centuries-old reality, the economic crisis of the last five years has also disproportionately driven down the living standards of African Americans and other peoples of color.

After retirement African Americans face even lower incomes through pensions and social security payments which are based on earnings during the last few years of their employment. Any cuts to the incremental increases in monthly payments for retirees can only result in deeper economic challenges and poverty.

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With specific reference to Medicaid, the Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies (JCEPS) wrote over a year ago that reductions in funding for this program would cause tremendous suffering among the African American and Latino populations. The same research institute argues that these cuts would in fact increase costs for healthcare companies since people would still need care whether it is funded by the government or not.

The report, Medicaid: A Lifeline for Blacks and Latinos with Serious Health Care Needs, published by Families USA, “reveals that making cuts to Medicaid fails to reduce costs, instead it shifts the burden to states, families, hospitals and the uninsured. In fact, in some cases, the report notes, cutting assistance for treatment can actually increase costs over the long run.”

JCEPS continues pointing out that “As policymakers consider sharp cutbacks in the Medicaid program, this report brings an important potential consequence of their actions to the table – that cutting Medicaid will likely hit hardest at communities of color and, in particular, those who depend on the program to manage and treat their chronic illnesses,” said Ralph B. Everett, president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. (October 2011)

Read more at Global Research.

Minorities clinging to the middle class have come out of the Great Recession at a higher risk for falling into poverty during the next economic crisis, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

The report titled, Making Sure Money Is Available When We Need It, noted that over the past 30 years, household risk exposure increased for many Americans, following the crash of the saving and loan industry in 1989, the rise and fall of the tech bubble in 2000, and most recently the collapse of housing market in 2007 that led to the Great Recession.

Households have experienced more wealth volatility since the late 1980s because there has been more risk in the market and because they have been increasingly exposed to those risks, said the report.

The study found that was 27 percent of non-White households were at “very high risk” of exposure compared to 22.7 percent for Whites. The report also said that: “The risk exposure for nonwhite households, has grown faster than the risk exposure for white families.”

Household wealth — a family’s asset-to-debt ratio — was a determining factor on a families’ ability to weather the next economic disaster and limit their exposure to financial ruin.

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For many American families, homeownership had been the key to gaining a strong foothold in the middle class and for many families in the Black community its still one of the safest assets to own. The deluge of subprime mortgages, not an inability to afford a home, changed that.

“African Americans were targeted more for subprime loans they didn’t do anything risky like start buying stocks instead of mutual funds but they wound up holding what were riskier investments by virtue of the way the housing market works, said Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a group that works to improve the socioeconomic status of African Americans and other people of color.

Read more at BlackVoiceNews.com.

Dr. Brian Smedley spoke on the effect a federal government sequestration can and will have on health and other programs that assist a large number of people of color during a Joint Center panel discussion on February 28, 2013.

One day before $85 billion worth of automatic, across-the-board cuts to domestic and defense programs kicked in, a panel of five policy experts painted a dire picture of the effects on communities of color, including Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and African Americans.

One specialist, Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president for Government Affairs at the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities in Northwest, said sequestration could have been avoided.

"This is absolutely a man-made creation. We didn't ever foresee sequestration which is the victory of their goals," she said of the Republicans in Congress who refused to come to an agreement with President Barack Obama and their Democratic counterparts. "Everyone agreed to 10 years with a hammer. But the hammer is so attractive to some representatives."

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At an event hosted by the Northwest-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, titled, "The Impact of Sequestration on the Health and Well-Being of Communities of Color", panelists said minority communities who depend on federal assistance programs will be disproportionately affected.

"While most Americans will feel the impact of the sequestration, it will have a devastating effect on communities of color as the budget axe falls on programs that many low-income people rely upon to stay healthy," said Ralph B. Everett, president and CEO of the Joint Center at the March 1 discussion. "To pull the rug out from under them would not be wise. Without investment today, we will pay a higher price down the road."

Read more at The Washington Informer.

Roland Martin talks to Dr. Brian Smedley and Rep. Marcia Fudge about the effects of the sequestration on minorities.

A transcript of this interview can be found at Roland Martin Reports.

Dreaded automatic federal spending cuts, otherwise known as “sequestration,” swept into Washington on Friday. Eleventh hour meetings were hastily scheduled, yet players on both sides of the aisle seemed resigned to the reality of $86 billion suddenly snatched from the federal budget.

Opposing sides argued all week over how severe the cuts would be and whose idea it was in the first place. However, the stubborn resolves of Democrats and Republicans on and off Capitol Hill offered little hope of any foreseeable compromise.

“There’s another huge event that takes place that could be even worse, and that’s when the Continuing Resolution on March 27 takes place,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) told the Tribune. Meeks is holding out hope that a deal can be reached some time before Congress negotiates short-term spending plans by the end of March. Some observers are counting on that moment when House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) can finally sit down and avoid fiscal calamity.

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Experts worry most about the unemployment benefits being reduced by 10 percent – not good for African Americans who are still facing a jobless rate double the national average. And even as local communities fret over struggling school systems, the sequester axe takes no prisoners on education when cutting $3 billion in financial aid for low income students and in desperately needed school programs servicing at-risk youth.

Also alarming is the impact sequestration would have on key public health services affecting people of color, especially women and children. “Sequestration would result in 25,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings, 42,000 fewer HIV tests and 900,000 fewer patients served at Community Health Centers,” says Dr. Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “There are just so many vital programs that detect chronic diseases earlier, and this is critical since we have a higher burden of disease in the community.”

Read more at The Philadelphia Tribune.

The budget cuts known as "the sequester" will hit communities of color particularly hard when they take effect Friday, according to a panel discussion Thursday at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

The sequester, as the cuts are known inside the Beltway, "hampers federal efforts to protect health, prevent disease and disability, and promote opportunity for communities already burdened by risks for poor health," said Brian D. Smedley of the JCPES.

While the poor are shielded from many cuts (Social Security and Medicaid are exempt), the sequester will affect some programs that disproportionately serve people of color. Screenings and tests offered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be cut, according to the JCPES, as will federal funding for community health centers and early childhood care and education programs, as well as WIC, the program that provides supplemental nutrition for women, infants, and children.

In practical terms, that means CDC would provide 424,000 fewer HIV tests and 25,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings for low-income, high-risk women, the JCPES said, citing a recent House Appropriations Committee report. Federal funding for community health centers would be cut by $120 million, which could mean that 900,000 fewer patients would be served. About 70,000 children would lose access to Head Start, and 600,000 low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women and their children could be cut from the WIC rolls.

Because racial and ethnic minorities, who represent 37 percent of the overall U.S. population, disproportionately use those services, panelists worry that those communities will be hit hard by the cuts.

Read more at National Journal.

Scholars gathered for the African American Economic Summit at Howard University on Friday sketched an alarming picture of the financial ills afflicting the black community even as the nation recovers from the recession.

The white-black wealth disparity is more than 20 to 1. Black homeownership has declined. Black joblessness is up. Black income is down.

As the conferees gathered, the government released new figures showing the black unemployment rate at 13.8 percent, nearly double the 7.0 percent for whites. The overall jobless rate is 7.9 percent.

As bleak as the economic picture is for black Americans, the immediate prospects for improving it are worse, many participants said. They agreed that chances are remote for the kind of aggressive, targeted action needed to combat those problems and close the economic disparities that have long separated blacks and whites.

“We are basically talking about an economic system that is shot through with discrimination,” said Bernard E. Anderson, a former assistant secretary of labor.

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During the depths of the crisis, Obama often said he wanted to build a better, more durable economy in the recovery. Conference participants said they are challenging him to live up to his word.

“We would all like to see him pursue that course,” said Ralph B. Everette, president and chief executive of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which co-sponsored the event.

Read more at The Washington Post.

A national summit of scholars from universities and policy think tanks will meet at Howard University on February 1, 2013, for the Fourth Annual African American Economic Summit to discuss and analyze policy options and initiatives they think should be considered during President Obama’s second term. A central theme of the Summit will be the remarkably persistent racial disparities in U.S. society and how policymakers should seek to address them.

Scholars from leading universities (Duke, Howard,  Georgetown, the New School, the University of Pennsylvania, and John Jay College), and think tanks (the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and Brookings Institution) will take a hard look at issues such as wealth and income disparities, unemployment and labor, housing, health, education and treatment of returning veterans.  Congressman Robert (“Bobby”) Scott (D-VA) and  Bernard E. Anderson of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will examine the current economic crisis, especially with regard to its impact on African Americans, and offer policy prescriptions for the President’s second term.

Distinguished scholar and policy expert James (“Jim”) Carr, who has served in senior positions with the Opportunity Agenda, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and Fannie Mae, will speak on the challenges that continue to afflict the housing market.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies will be represented by President and CEO Ralph B. Everett and Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh, an expert on wealth accumulation and housing policy.

Download and read the entire press release by clicking the icon below.

By just about every measure, life is significantly better for African-Americans and Latinos in small and medium-sized cities and towns in the South and West, according to a recently released report by Urban Institute.

The Washington, DC-based think tank found that the "opportunity gap" that separates African-Americans and Latinos from whites is the largest in the Midwest and Northeast and the smallest in the South and West.

Its study examined factors such as residential segregation, the quality of public schools, neighborhood home values, employment rates and rates of home ownership.

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The panel drew its talking points from this exhaustive report "The Black Population: 2010," which aggregated nearly a years' worth of Census data.

"A lot of what that may be showing is upward mobility," said Dr. Roderick Harrison, of the growing number of black Americans moving to the suburbs. Harrison is a demographer who teaches at Howard University and senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, DC.

"The declines in central cities reflect people moving out from cities like DC, from the poorest areas... to suburban communities that people may perceive to offer better education, safer neighborhoods, better amenities, etc."


Read more at WGXA-TV.