Speaking Out! – 3/29/2010
LEGISLATIVE e-BRIEF
Congress and President Obama Finish Health Care Reform Legislation
With two votes last Thursday, members of Congress closed out the legislative process on the health reform debate. After more than a year of deliberation, Congress passed a reconciliation “fix-it” bill that included changes to the legislation signed into law by President Obama earlier in the week.
For information regarding the health and reconciliation laws, go to www.voices.org.
While parts of the new laws do not take effect until 2014 or beyond, other benefits and protections take effect in the next three to six months, including:
- Ban on excluding most children under 19 from insurance because of pre-existing conditions
- Adult children may remain on their parent’s insurance policy until their 26th birthday
- No more lifetime of annual caps on coverage
- A national high-risk insurance pool will be established in the next 90 days that adults with pre-existing conditions can buy into. This new pool is an interim coverage until the new insurance exchanges come online in 2014
- Additional dollars for Community Health Centers become available immediately
- Effective immediately, rescissions are prohibited. You won’t lose your insurance because you get sick.
- The reconciliation bill sent to President Obama Thursday included a number of critical education provisions:
- Shifts all new federal student loans to the Direct Loan program, beginning July 1, 2010
- From the savings in shifting loans, the maximum Pell Grant is increased from $5,550 to $5,975 in 2017
- Provides $2.6 billion for minority-serving institutions, $500 million annually for community colleges, and $750 million for a college access program.
Regrettably, the reconciliation measure did not include the Early Learning Challenge Fund program recommended by the president and passed last year by the House of Representatives. Funding for that program would allow many states to build high-quality systems to serve very young children. Voices and other children’s advocates will continue to work with the Obama administration and Congress, however, to find other funding and another way to enact this measure.
Senate Agriculture Committee Approves Child Nutrition Bill
Last week, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved the draft bill proposed by Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). Along with an additional $4.5 billion (over 10 years) in new spending for nutrition programs, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act would also give the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) the authority to regulate food sold in schools across the country. Currently, USDA has some authority over food available in schools, but the bill expands the agency’s authority to all food sold, including for fundraisers and vending machines.
Although the $4.5 billion is short of the $10 billion (over 10 years) the president requested in his fiscal year 2011 budget, advocates consider it an important first step in securing a robust reauthorization of child nutrition programs.
The offsets associated with the bill will likely be controversial, including $1.2 billion from SNAP (formerly food stamps) nutrition education funding. Time will tell if these offsets are likely to shift, particularly given the committee’s reluctance to include already agreed upon spending from the 2008 Farm Bill.
The committee accepted the following amendments to the bill:
- A proposal to spend specific funding to research child hunger, obesity and Type 2 diabetes on Indian reservations (Senator John Thune, R-SD);
- The establishment of an organic food school pilot program (Senator Sherrod Brown, D-OH);
- The creation of a competitive grant programs for states for summer food programs program (Senator Sherrod Brown, D-OH); and
- A study that includes best practices of states that participate in the after-school supper program (Debbie Stabenow, D-MI).
Click here for a child nutrition brief by Voices for America’s Children.
Click here for an analysis of the bill written by the Food Research and Action Center.
