7/24/08 - Does a "Generation Gap" = a "Voting Gap" July 24, 2008 10:02 AM
The most recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 55% of voters aged 18 to 34 prefer the 46-year-old Sen. Obama, while 31% favored Sen. McCain. That 24-point edge is up from a 13-point advantage for Sen. Obama in last month's survey. The question is whether this apparent voting gap will be replicated on Election Day. More importantly, how will the candidates react to the gap; will they assume this segment of the voting population is locked up and can be ignored or will they attempt to increase their current numbers by speaking to the issues that concern young americans (see AYA's National Issues Survey for wht you have said are your top issues). Talk about how you're making your voice heard in this election cycle in our open forum.
-- Association of Young Americans
Gore: carbon-free electricty in 10 years July 17, 2008 4:17 PM
In aspeech today in Washington, D.C. former Vice-President Al Gore issued a challenge: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." In his speech Gore stated, "Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness." A full text of the speech is available here.
-- Association of Young Americans
Medicare Bill - UPDATE July 15, 2008 4:18 PM
Following up on our 7-7-08 post, the Congress passed, by veto-proof majorities, a bill that blocked a 10% decrease in Meicare reimbursements to physicians. The Christian Science Monitor quoted White House spokesman Tony Fratto as saying "There's unquestionably a bigger-picture issue here: Congress refuses to look at ways to rein in costs to the Medicare program, and any single effort to do so they choose to turn into partisan fight. The Democrats will try to paint [Republicans] as people who want to cut health costs for seniors, so people trying to reform the program are left in this very dangerous situation."
The article went on to note the opposing positions on the bill:
"'Without a legislative fix, many doctors currently in the Medicare system would probably opt out of it, say lawmakers who backed the bill. "The California Medical Association tells me that if those mandated cuts [in physician fees] took place, we could lose 60 percent of doctors who currently take Medicare patients,' says Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California.
"But critics say that view ignores a longer-term entitlement crisis. 'Congress is preventing what would otherwise be a significant reduction in fees paid to Medicare to go into effect, but it in no way solves the fundamental problem of Medicare in general or the very significant problem of how we reimburse physicians and the perverse incentives of the current system,' says Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project Hope in Bethesda, Md., and former chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission from 1997 to 2001."
Share your thoughts on healthcare and the national budget in our Forums.
-- Association of Young Americans
Dealing with Medicare Costs July 7, 2008 12:23 PM
In the next few weeks Congress and the President will be forced to face the increasing Medicare costs, is only in the short term, as scheduled cuts to physican compensation went into effect on July 1. "How to pay doctors through the federal health insurance program is an issue that lawmakers are forced to confront every year because of what is widely agreed to be an outdated reimbursement formula. [...] Just before the Fourth of July recess, the House passed a bill to prevent the Medicare pay cut by a vote of 355 to 59. In the Senate, Republicans blocked efforts to take up the bill, so the cut took effect on July 1, as required by the formula. But the Bush administration has delayed processing of new claims to give Congress time to come up with a compromise," reports the New York Times. "[T]he Medicare issue has been a sticking point for years. The question is how to rein in the rapidly rising cost of the federal health program. Members of both parties say they want to change the formula, which defines a "sustainable growth rate" for spending on doctors. But Congress is nowhere near agreement. The pending bill offers a short-term fix. It would reverse the 10.6 percent cut and increase Medicare payments to doctors by 1.1 percent in January. Under the current formula, doctors would still face cuts of more than 5 percent a year from 2010 to 2012."
Reforming medicare and medicaid was one of the issues taken up at the Youth Entitlements Summit (YES) a few weeks ago in DC. AYA's president participated as one of the youth panelists at YES, which culminated in the bipartisan panel authoring a Declaration for addressing entitlement and budget issues. Share your thoughts and questions on Healthcare costs and the federal budget in our forums.
-- Association of Young Americans
Budget, Deficits and Debt, Healthcare
Progress on Iraq Benchmarks July 2, 2008 4:11 PM
A recent White House 'report card' to Congress on progress in Iraq apparently finds "satisfactory" progress on 15 of 18 established benchmarks. "The White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq's efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are "satisfactory" almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by the Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues are unsatisfactory," reports the USA Today. "In the May progress report, one benchmark was deemed to have brought mixed results. The Iraqi army has made satisfactory progress on the goal of fairly enforcing the law, while the nation's police force remains plagued by sectarianism, according to the administration assessment."
Learn more about the situation in Iraq here on our website. What is your assessment of the situation in Iraq and the US presence there? Do you think keeping significant US troop levels in the country is necessary for the stability of Iraq? Do you think keeping significant US troop levels in Iraq is in the best interests of the United States and our national security? Share your thoughts in our Iraq forum.
-- Association of Young Americans
Al Qaeda's Growth in Pakistan June 30, 2008 12:35 PM
Almost 7 years since the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania, Osama Bin Laden remains at large and Al Qaeda has apparently reconstituted itself in Pakistan. A detailed article on the front page of today's New York Times states the following:
- Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
- Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.
- Even critics of the White House agree that there was no foolproof solution to gaining control of the tribal areas. But by most accounts the administration failed to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem there, and never resolved the disagreements between warring agencies that undermined efforts to fashion any coherent strategy.
The full article is available here, on the NYTimes website, and is worth reading for those concerned about the threat Al Qaeda poses to the US. Are you concerned that a terrorist group will launch another attack on the U.S.? What do you think we should be doing as a nation to prevent such an attack? Share your thoughts and concerns in the Terrorism Forum.
-- Association of Young Americans