Politics
5 Things to Know Before Obama Rolls Out His Budget Monday
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:
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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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Business
Car Wash Workers Cope with Lingering Impacts of ICE Raids
WAVE COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS — Hundreds of car wash workers across Southern California have been detained in federal immigration raids, leaving lingering impacts on families and communities. Mario, a 33-year U.S. resident and father of three, was arrested at a Santa Ana car wash last August and held for two months.
LOS ANGELES — Mario relied on his job in the car wash industry to raise his three children. It was during a shift at a Santa Ana car wash last August that he was arrested by federal agents, taken to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center and held for two months.
“They made me sleep on the cold floor for a week without a blanket, a toothbrush or basic medical care for the injured man next to me,” Mario, a 33-year resident of the United States, said at a news conference earlier this summer at Inglewood’s Crenshaw Imperial Car Wash, which is now closed after being raided by federal agents.
Mario, who is being identified only by his first name for safety reasons, is among hundreds of car wash workers detained across Southern California in the year since the Trump administration began an aggressive immigration crackdown in the region, according to the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center.
News of raids by masked agents has faded from the headlines, but the effects still linger for those caught in the crosshairs. Family members have been deported or left to languish in detention, and many who remain live with the fear of being hunted down by immigration officers.
At least 373 car wash workers have been detained at car washes across Southern California since the raids began last summer, according to figures compiled by CLEAN. The group’s data also shows federal agents raided or attempted to raid at least 106 car washes in communities across Los Angeles, Orange County and surrounding areas, including Inglewood, Culver City, Westchester, Bell and Whittier.
CLEAN, an advocacy group founded in 2007, has been fighting to protect car wash workers from exploitation and unsafe conditions. When the raids began last year, the group sprang into action, working around the clock to help detained workers and provide their families with legal and financial support.
“We gathered our information from workers, managers, and owners of the car washes that were being raided,” CLEAN Deputy Director Andrea Gonzalez said. “We also gathered information from rapid response teams who were on the ground responding to the raids.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the group’s findings.
Mario said he was one of seven workers at the Harbor Blvd Car Wash detained on the same day last August, but the only one who has been released. He said he refused to sign deportation papers and is fighting to stay in the United States, a process that has drained his family emotionally and financially.
“Being released is not the same as being free,” he said.
During Mario’s detention at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, his wife and children struggled to cope with his sudden absence while fighting for his release, his wife Alejandra said.
“The employer gave us a video showing my husband being taken away under arrest, treated worse than a common criminal, with chains binding his legs, arms and waist,” Alejandra said. “It wasn’t right.”
The experience of a car wash worker named José was recounted at the news conference by the Rev. Andy Schwiebert of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, who said agents “took him” from the La Cienega Car Wash last August.
José’s wife is a U.S. citizen, Schwiebert said, and José had a pathway to gaining citizenship before he was detained. By the time a judge ordered his release on bond, the car wash had shut down, Schwiebert said, leaving José without a job.
“These raids did not just target workers; they destabilized families, congregations, workplaces and entire communities,” Schwiebert said.
The administration’s aggressive enforcement operations have continued across the nation in the months since José’s and Mario’s detention, with ICE arrests in July surging to their highest rate so far under President Donald Trump.
Last month, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three in Houston. Less than a week later, an immigration officer fatally shot 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.
Back in Inglewood, Mario said he was grateful to share his story and that, even though he was released, his experience in detention stays with him.
“I still feel frustrated and traumatized,” Mario said, “because my life is no longer the same as it used to be.”
Ernesto Ureño is a Loyola Marymount University journalism major and intern at Capital & Main, a nonprofit publication focused on inequality. It is published here with permission.
Based on reporting by Wave Community Newspapers.
Crime
Congresswoman Simon Demands Investigation into Trump’s Abuse of Emergency Powers for Coal Export Terminal in West Oakland
POST NEWS GROUP — Last week, in a letter to the GAO Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, Simon and her colleagues questioned the Department of Energy’s plan to use up to $425 million in DPA funds to support coal-fired power plants and construct the West Gateway Terminal Project in Oakland.
U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) joined California senators and other members of the California delegation to Congress to call on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the Trump administration’s use of the Defense Production Act and other taxpayer funds to support coal projects, including the proposed coal export terminal in West Oakland.
Defense Production Act funding is for national defense emergencies, such as authorizing private car companies to build parts for tanks or ships.
Since President Donald Trump’s June 4 announcement of $75 million in funding for the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal, Simon has opposed and worked to stop the proposed coal terminal.
She filed an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2027 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that would have prohibited funding for the proposed Oakland coal export terminal project; however, House Republicans blocked the amendment.
Last week, in a letter to the GAO Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, Simon and her colleagues questioned the Department of Energy’s plan to use up to $425 million in DPA funds to support coal-fired power plants and construct the West Gateway Terminal Project in Oakland.
This terminal project would primarily serve foreign commercial markets, rather than meet national emergency needs.
“The Defense Production Act was intended to scale up domestic industrial capabilities to meet urgent military or national emergency needs; therefore, its invocation to construct a commercial, civilian export facility intended primarily to serve foreign commercial markets raises profound statutory, legal, and fiscal questions,” wrote the lawmakers, which included Senators Alex Padilla (D) and Adam Schiff (D), Jared Huffman (D-CA-02), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee and Reps. John Garamendi (D-CA-08) and Ro Khanna (D-CA-17).
“We do not believe this satisfies the statutory definition of ‘national defense’ or ‘critical infrastructure protection’ under the DPA and that there is no legally sufficient, data-driven nexus between civilian coal exports and immediate U.S. military readiness or critical infrastructure defense,” the lawmakers’ letter said.
DPA funds are intended for U.S. national security and defense readiness. The Trump administration is instead diverting these funds to support a commercial export project that primarily benefits private industries and foreign markets in East Asia.
“Congress has never appropriated funds to the DOE’s DPA account with the intent of propping up a dying industry or financing a purely commercial project,” continued the lawmakers. “We are deeply concerned that DOE has improperly diverted funds from accounts intended by Congress for the critical modernization and resilience support of our nation’s grid to instead finance a commercial fossil fuel export project.”
Simon and colleagues also raised concerns that the Trump administration has improperly diverted funds designated for critical grid modernization and may be using emergency authorities to circumvent local environmental protections.
“With no clear national security nexus, we question whether the DOE utilized emergency DPA authorities with the intent of preempting or subverting valid local health ordinances and environmental regulations. If so, this would be a gross departure from the intent of the DPA,” concluded the lawmakers.
Commentary
OPINION: The Philippines Isn’t Foreign When Your Family Still Lives There
Americans complain about inflation. Filipinos complain about surviving. That’s not a knock on America. It’s a reminder that for millions of Filipino Americans, the Philippines isn’t some faraway place we visit on vacation. It’s where our parents were born. Where our cousins still
Americans complain about inflation.
Filipinos complain about surviving.
That’s not a knock on America. It’s a reminder that for millions of Filipino Americans, the Philippines isn’t some faraway place we visit on vacation. It’s where our parents were born. Where our cousins still live. Where grandparents are buried. Where every phone call home can begin with, “We’re okay,” or, just as easily, “We need help.”
The Bay Area is home to one of the nation’s largest Filipino communities. California alone has nearly two million Filipinos—roughly half of all Filipino Americans in the United States.
Every year, Filipino Americans send an estimated $17 billion from the United States to the Philippines. Those remittances account for roughly a tenth of the Philippine economy. One wire transfer may keep children in school, put food on the table, pay hospital bills, or help elderly parents make it another month.
That’s why Filipino Americans were paying attention to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address this week.
They were listening for justice.
They were listening for Lyle Prijoles.
Prijoles, a 40-year-old Filipino American from Hayward, was killed on April 19 during a Philippine military operation in Negros Occidental. Also killed was Kai Sorem, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines say those killed were connected to the Communist Party’s New People’s Army.
Their families say otherwise.
Human-rights advocates describe Prijoles and Sorem as labor organizers and peaceful activists working alongside sugar workers struggling under crushing poverty. Prijoles had traveled repeatedly to the Philippines since 2006, documenting conditions in Negros and advocating for farm workers whose lives rarely improve no matter who occupies the presidential palace in Manila.
Those conflicting stories are exactly why members of Congress, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-7), have called for an independent investigation.
After all, two American citizens are dead.
If an ally’s military kills Americans under disputed circumstances, shouldn’t we want to know exactly what happened?
Yet the story barely made news in the United States.
Perhaps because it’s inconvenient.
It’s inconvenient for Manila – and Washington.
Strategic allies aren’t supposed to kill American citizens.
The Philippines isn’t just another country.
It’s family.
President Marcos had bigger issues on his mind this week.
China’s growing aggression in the West Philippine Sea dominated much of the speech. Marcos rightly rejected racist insults aimed at Filipinos and insisted his country would not surrender its sovereignty.
“We are not racists. We are not liars,” Marcos declared. “We are respectful, and we are dignified. We are Filipinos, and we do not yield.”
Strong words.
But patriotism isn’t measured only by how forcefully a government stands up to China.
It’s also measured by how a government treats its own people.
The Philippines inherited many of America’s democratic institutions. Even the “State of the Nation Address” echoes our “State of the Union.” Congress. Elections. Constitutional government. We exported the architecture of democracy.
What we couldn’t export was accountability.
That’s why activists like Lyle Prijoles believed ordinary workers deserved better.
And that’s why his death matters.
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, political analyst and comic monologist. See him on his microtalk show on YouTube at @emilamok1.
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