May 10, 2014 - May 16, 2014, The Afro-American
COMMENTARY
A7
Standing Up For Those Who Stand Up for Us
During “Public Service Recognition Week,” observed each year during the first week in May, we come together to honor the women and men who serve our nation at all levels of government. Almost without exception, they are proud of their service – and so should we be. Their dedication, talent and tireless efforts have made our government among the finest in the world. They protect us and our way of life, Elijah Cummings educate us and do everything within their power to assure that each of us is treated fairly. Standing up for us every day, it is only reasonable and right that we stand up for them. I share this observation because, all too often, public servants are not being treated respectfully and fairly by those who make it more difficult for government employees to perform their jobs – while at the same time criticizing these same public servants for delays. In broad terms, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has observed, the House Republicans’ budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2015 and beyond would cut $3.3 trillion over 10 years (2015-2024) from programs that serve people of limited means – 69 percent of their proposed nondefense budget cuts. This, in a nutshell, is the long-term vision of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the Republicans’ 2012 Vice-Presidential nominee who may have his sights on a presidential run in 2016. It is a perspective with which I strongly disagree. The “Ryan Budget” unfairly blames and burdens those of us who did not create our nation’s fiscal challenges – as well as those in government who, even now, are seeking to protect us and reduce the pain of our current economy. Consider the Social Security Administration – the federal agency that, as much as any other, directly serves us all. The women and men at Social Security who have dedicated their careers to serving us have undertaken the profound duty of assuring that we receive the retirement benefits for which we have worked all our lives. They seek to determine and help us if we have become too disabled to work, and they stand up for our survivors when tragedy strikes.
We may be less aware that the public servants at SSA also provide essential support to Medicare, SSI, our Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Department of Homeland Security. In meeting all of these responsibilities, they are facing challenges that, increasingly, are becoming more difficult as our population ages, we baby boomers retire, and our economy resists full recovery. Placing those challenges in every-day context, the Congressional Research Service has concluded that approximately 80 million Americans will file for retirement during the next 20 years, an average of 10,000 of us every day. According to the Social Security Advisory Board, “Challenges such as shifting demographics, growing workloads, changing customer expectations combined with an aging workforce, deteriorating systems infrastructure, and chronic under funding have pushed SSA’s ability to deliver high quality service to the brink.” Even now, the SSA is struggling. A significant reason, I would submit, is because the Congress has failed to provide the funding to assure the staffing levels and training that the analysts would consider adequate to the growing demands that SSA personnel face. While “budget hawks” decry those relative few Americans who inappropriately obtain Social Security Disability Income, far more Americans, who legitimately deserve this help, have been encountering unacceptable delays. Under the revitalized leadership of Acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin, the Social Security Administration is working hard to address these challenges. The federal employees at SSA are professionals. They are determined to perform their duty as well as they can. To succeed – at SSA and throughout our government as a whole – our public servants need and deserve adequate
funding. In this, I am forced to agree with American Federation of Government Employees President David Cox Sr., when he observes that some in the Congress are failing. “Not content with the $138 billion already taken from this modestly paid [federal] workforce in the form of a three-year pay freeze …,” Mr. Cox has declared, “the 2015 edition of the Ryan Budget would maul the federal workforce with a new ferocity.” Our Democratic response is based upon reality, as well as fairness. Federal workers did not cause our budgetary imbalance – and they should not be unfairly and irrationally burdened in fashioning the solution. This is why I have joined Virginia Congressman Gerald Connolly and 12 of our House colleagues in proposing a modest, 3 percent pay raise for federal workers in Fiscal Year 2015 [the FAIR Act, H.R. 4306]. This week, and every week, we should stand up for those who have been called to public service. We should stand up for them, even as they stand up for the rest of us every day. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.
Indifference of State Elected Officials to HBI Decision Shifts Attention to Next Election The 2014 legislative session represents a missed opportunity for Maryland officials to address the constitutional violations cited by Federal District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake in an October 2013 ruling on the Historically Black Institutions Coalition case. The case was not among Gov. Martin O’Malley’s legislative priorities and discussion in the legislature was limited to the debate surrounding the defeat of separate bills A. Dwight Pettie advanced by Baltimore Sen. Joan Carter-Conway and Prince George’s Del. Aisha Braveboy. Sen. Conway’s bill would have provided a mechanism for avoiding future instances of the illegal practice of unnecessary program duplication. Legislation proposed by Del. Braveboy would have provided funding support for making the HBIs unique and competitive with other public institutions in the state. It now appears that the constitutional violations found by Judge Blake are unlikely to be resolved before Gov. O’Malley leaves office in January 2014. That is certain to be a millstone around the governor’s neck as he runs for higher elected office.
Any future effort to address the court’s finding now shifts to the various candidates for governor and attorney general. None of these candidates has, to date, indicated how he or she would respond to the HBI Coalition court ruling. The three democratic candidates in particular, are currently serving as elected officials and bear some responsibility for the state’s present attitude toward the Blake ruling for the HBIs. Candidate Anthony Brown currently serves as Mr. O’Malley’s lieutenant governor. It would be interesting to know if he agrees with the findings of the court and intends to mediate a meaningful settlement or will he seek to maintain the state’s discriminatory higher education system by appealing the case? Will he commit to eliminating historic academic program duplication by transferring programs back to the HBIs and creating other new unique and high demand programs at HBIs as suggested by the court? Equally significant, would Mr. Brown revise state policies and practices to preclude program duplication? The same questions must be asked of the other candidates. Attorney General Douglas Gansler probably has expressed more concern about the plight of HBIs than any other gubernatorial candidate. During forums on the Mark Stiener radio show, before audiences visiting Annapolis, and most recently, at a Montgomery College appearance with other candidates, Gansler pledged repeatedly to provide increased funding to the Historically Black Institutions. He also released a statement at the outset of the HBI Coalition case saying that as attorney general he is obligated by state law to represent Maryland in litigation, regardless of whether or not he
Fighting for Their Families “I am fighting for my father. He is undocumented. I am fighting for all of the children who don’t have their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters.” That was the speech I heard last Wednesday from Yahir Servin, an 11-year-old who participated in a civil disobedience on Capitol Hill with the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. Yahir was one of seven kids between the ages of 11 and 17 who joined 20 adults in a Benjamin T. jail cell all afternoon to draw Jealous attention to the need for immigration reform. As rain poured down, the protestors sat resolutely in the middle of the street outside Capitol Hill while police handcuffed them one by one. A few blocks away, the U.S. House of Representatives was in session but immigration reform was not on the agenda. Even though every day of inaction means that more immigrants are evicted and more families broken up, the House has still not taken up the comprehensive reform bill that passed in
the Senate, or offered an alternative of its own. Meanwhile, although President Obama has been an outspoken supporter of reform, deportations have risen significantly over the course of his presidency. Immediately before the protest, a 16-year-old named Talia Gonzalez told a heartbreaking story about her family’s situation. Her father had returned to Mexico in order to get the necessary documentation to become a citizen. The U.S. officials at the Mexican border told him that he could not return. For the past four years, Talia and her father have only seen each other a handful of times, a mountain of paperwork separating father and daughter. She is not alone. According to a 2012 report by the Center for American Progress, one out of three U.S. citizen children of immigrants live in mixed-status families, and tens of thousands of parents are deported each year. This has a devastating impact on families, forcing children into foster care or leaving single mothers who struggle to make ends meet. I stood with the protestors on Wednesday because I believe that immigrants of all colors deserve to be treated with dignity and fairness. This has been a priority for the civil rights community for a very long time. It was a priority for Frederick Douglass when he opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in the years after the Civil War, arguing in effect that he did not intend to watch the government brutally exploit workers in the Southwest just after ending slavery in the Southeast. It was a priority for civil rights leaders in the 1960’s, who, immediately
personally agrees with the state’s position. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has since issued an advisory indicating that attorneys general are not obligated to defend laws they believe to be discriminatory. The attorneys general of seven states relied on that advice in declaring that they will not defend their states’ ban on same sex marriage in pending and future litigation. To do otherwise, these chief legal counsels say, would amount to their defending discrimination. If the mediation process now underway is not successful in negotiating remedies for dismantling Maryland’s segregated system of higher education, Holder’s advisory poses a special test for both Gansler as the sitting legal counsel for the State and those individuals who wish to succeed him. Would he or she follow the example of attorneys general in Kentucky, Virginia, California, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Illinois in refusing to represent their states in cases that would result in discrimination against certain individuals or groups of individuals? Conversely, would he or she defend Maryland’s current system of higher education notwithstanding its discriminatory effects? The primary election is on June 24. Voters must insist that candidates for governor and attorney general immediately declare their intent to bring the HBI Coalition case to a close or to make clear their intention to defend the existing system of segregation and discrimination. Attorney A. Dwight Pettit is a former member of the Board of Regents, Universit
after passing the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, pushed through what historian Taylor Branch has called the “third pillar” of the civil rights revolution – ending the racist Europe-only preference for immigrants in this country. As Douglass, Ella Baker and Roy Wilkins understood, our communities are strongest when we are willing to stand up for our neighbors’ families with the same passion that we fight for our own. By going to jail for their cause, Yahir, Talia and the other young protestors took a page from the Birmingham Children’s Crusade of 1963. We all know the iconic images of children locking hands, marching in step and singing “We Shall Overcome” as Bull Connor’s deputies blasted them with fire hoses. Fewer may remember that some of the children’s parents had second thoughts about letting their little ones out in the charged Birmingham streets. In a speech that week, Dr. King was able to put the situation in perspective, in words that called to mind the actions of Yahir, Talia and the other young activists half a century later. “Don’t worry about your children,” he said, “They are going to be alright. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail, for they are not only doing a job for themselves, but for all of America and for all of mankind.” Jealous is the former president and CEO of the NAACP. He is currently a Partner at Kapor Capital and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.