Max Smith, (212)558-5371
msmith@nul.org

STATEMENT BY NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S ADDRESS TO THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS

New York, NY, Feb. 28, 2001–The National Urban League– the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream–is pleased to see that a number of issues central to the American people and the Urban League movement are priorities of the President’s. These include education, racial profiling, social security, health care for low-income families, a tax cut and election reform.

The League will now await the details on how the President’s proposals will be funded and what cuts in other areas will be required to pursue his agenda. For now, our positions on the priorities announced by President Bush last night are as follows:

1. The Proposed Tax Cut: Most disturbingly, the League believes that the centerpiece of the President’s budget, his targeted tax cut plan which benefits the wealthiest one percent of Americans who get 43% of the proposed tax cut, remains patently unfair.

• First, make ensuring that low-income, working families see their after-tax income rise a priority.
• Second, make the proposed child credit refundable.
• Third, extend the tax form simplification to low-income families.
• Fourth, correct the marriage penalty built into the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), not just for the middle class, but for low-income married couples who, in fact, have a much higher correlation between husband and wife earnings than do the high-income families the President\\\'s proposed marriage penalty reform proposal addresses.
• Fifth, extend the benefit of the Earned Income Tax Credit to low-income families by raising the phase-out point for the EITC and lowering the marginal tax rate. And increase the number of children that parents can claim for EITC from two to three children.

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2. The Lack of An Urban Agenda: Glaringly absent from the President’s proposal was a mention of the many urban and rural communities collapsing under the burden of government abandonment. The President must develop a coherent agenda that provides direct investments and tax incentives to spur economic revitalization and job growth in these communities where unemployment and poverty rates are substantially higher than the national average. The 107^th Congress and the Bush Administration can build upon the comprehensive bipartisan New Markets and Community Renewal Initiative enacted last year at the close of the 106^th Congress. Enterprise zones, affordable housing, and programs like the E-rate Initiative must become a priority.

For more on the League’s position about creating opportunity in urban areas, visit the organization’s Web site at //www.nul.org/econsummit.html to view Hugh Price’s Opportunity Agenda.

3. Criminal Justice: The criminal justice system is riddled with racism and urgently needs attention. President Bush said last night that he had directed Attorney General Ashcroft to develop specific recommendations to end racial profiling. The Urban League is encouraged by this directive but will wait to see what those recommendations will be and how the details will be filled in. We recommend: First, Congress pass, and the President sign the Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act. This legislation would require the attorney general to gather data on law enforcement practices at traffic stops to determine how, and to what degree, traffic stops are racially or ethnically motivated. Second, the President should also sign the Senate’s updated version of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, which provides incentives for local police organizations to voluntarily adopt performance-based standards against misconduct and to investigate such misconduct when it occurs. Third, the President should direct attorney general Ashcroft to overhaul federal and state laws that result in unnecessary incarceration of nonviolent offenders.
4. Social Security: The President spoke repeatedly of his goal to overhaul social security via privatization. Missing from his remarks was any mention of the 3 million low-income children and 7.6 million disabled Americans who depend on social security benefits. A National Urban League study conducted last year on the impact of social security on child poverty, found that social security rescued one million children from poverty, and kept another million from extreme poverty. Any plan to reform social security must not diminish or undermine the extraordinary benefit that social security provides to these two vulnerable groups in our society. For more about the League’s position on this issue, visit the organization’s Web site at //www.nul.org/socialsecurity.html.
5. Education: The Urban League has long been active in the fight to overhaul our nation’s public schools and we support the President’s emphasis on reading and early literacy, and his proposed increase for the training and recruitment of new teachers. The League remains opposed however, to any remedy for school failure that would transfer public funds or tax expenditures to non-public schools. For more on the League’s position on the President’s education plan, please call 212-558-5319 for a copy of the League’s assessment.
6. Health Care: The President’s decision to provide quality health care in low-income neighborhoods and extend health coverage to those who lack health insurance is commendable. However, we are concerned that the proposal leaves too much to the whim of market forces. A tax credit alone, even if refundable, would not necessarily address the market’s failure, and the desire of insurance companies to avoid customers they perceive to be high-risk clients. We recommend extending the existing CHIPs program and increasing eligibility to cover the children\\\'s parents.

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7. Faith-Based Charities: The National Urban League has drawn on the importance of faith based organizations within black communities to help us carry out our mission since its founding ninety years ago. We agree with the President that government shouldn’t fund religious activities and reiterate our support for the many good works performed by faith-based organizations. Further, to ensure the relationship between the federal government and faith-based organizations preserves the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, faith-based organizations that receive funding from the government to render social services must, as do secular organizations, observe all laws forbidding discrimination by race, religion, gender or sexual preference.
8. Election Reform: The President made a glancing mention of campaign reform but failed to provide details. Our recommendations: First, direct a thorough and vigorous investigation of the local election processes that combined to suppress the black vote; Second, appoint an emergency task force to spearhead the long overdue modernization of America’s electoral system and create a uniform, contemporary state-of-the art system in time for the midterm contests of 2002.

The President spoke of America as a ‘nation with great challenges, but greater resources.’ We agree. The challenge lies in using those resources equitably and to the benefit of all Americans and not just the wealthiest few.