Vote For Me!
If you're signed up at http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov and have few spare seconds, vote up or comment on my ideas.
They're too focused and specific to make it into the finals, and I also stuck to creating ones that hadn't already been mentioned. However, the site is going to give them a LOT more exposure than they would have had otherwise.
Encourage Foster Care Adoption - End Tax Credit For Private/International Adoption
I am an adoptive parent of an older child from state foster care. Our adoption costs nothing, and he will receive a subsidy until he is 18 and I will also get a one-time $10,000 tax credit.
This is a good incentive for people to adopt from foster care. There are many older children in the system waiting to be adopted. In the case of my son and many others, the option of placing him with birth relatives was explored for many years, but it did not happen because they were not willing.
The incentive makes sense because if these children are not adopted, the government will spend even more money maintaining them in foster care. The outcome is worse for the child and for the taxpayer.
However, what doesn't make sense is that private adoption (people who pay adoption agencies money for infant adoption from birth mothers) and international adoption parents also receive this $10,000 tax credit.
I am not against these forms of adoption, although I do think they need to be regulated more. However, I don't think they should be subsidized by the government, especially when there are so many older children in state systems waiting to be adopted. The money would be better spent improving and reforming our foster care system.
The private adoption agencies that charge money for adoption just pass the cost of the tax credit on to the parents anyway. They may market babies to parents by saying, "oh, this adoption is going to cost $25,000 but since you get the tax credit it's really going to be 'only' $15,000". Without the tax credit, maybe they would just charge $15,000 anyway.
This tax credit is only a sop to the adoption agencies. It should be ended, and this will save the government money. It should also encourage people to look into FREE adoption of waiting children from the foster care system who might not otherwise have an adoptive home.
Standardize College Accreditation and Regulate "Rip-Off" Colleges
College accreditation in the U.S. is a confusing mix. The highest standard is actually regional accreditation*. Six regional agencies establish accreditation of every school from Harvard to two-year community colleges.
National accreditation is something quite different, and regionally accredited schools usually won't accept nationally accredited credits. Many diploma mills and for-profit schools take advantage of this situation to rip off students.
Many for-profit technical colleges are owned by corporations who spent most of their money on marketing and advertising, not on teachers and students. Their targets are working-class and minority and military and immigrant students. They promise that they can help get student loans to pay the overinflated tuition (when the student could go to a less-flashy, government-subsidized community college for 5% of the tuition). They use “hard sell” tactics, walk the students through taking out large loans telling them they are guaranteed to get some wonderful job with NASA if they sign on the dotted line. Once in, they will attempt to pass you through even if your work is not up to college level. Teachers are encouraged never to fail students in order to keep the tuition stream (composed mainly of student loans) flowing. If students graduate, they graduate with a substandard education that many employers don’t even respect, plus crushing student loans. Many default.
College accreditation needs to be tightened up, federalized and made simpler. And then higher education marketing should be much more regulated. You shouldn’t be able to promise some of the crazy stuff those people promise.**
I suggest that the regional accreditors should be combined into a new federal standard. No matter whether you are studying for a PhD in Philosophy or a community college certificate as an Automotive Technician, you should be guaranteed a minimum standard of education.
All for-profit colleges should be required to provide students with impartial information about tuition, college budgets and probability of credit acceptance. If they make claims about future employment, they must be able to back up these claims. Any college making outrageous promises or using "hard sell" techniques should be fined out of existence.
America is falling behind in many educational areas, and improving our accreditation system should be a low-cost, high-benefit element of any higher education plan.
* read more about accreditation at http://distancelearn.about.com/od/accreditationinfo/a/regional.htm
** Here is one example, among many, of a lawsuit involving such false claims.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DR
Fully Fund Efforts to Combat the Hepatitis C Epidemic
Hepatitis C is the most common blood-borne chronic viral infection in the United States. Once exposed, most individuals remain persistently infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), with 70% developing chronic liver disease and its often life-threatening conditions. At least 4 million Americans currently have chronic hepatitis C, with 25,000 new infections occurring every year. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the death rate from HCV-related liver disease will triple by the year 2019. No other disease burden is expected to increase as rapidly as that of hepatitis C in the coming decade.
Despite these staggering statistics, the federal government has not provided adequate funding or legislation to mount a comprehensive effort against the disease. Only $17 million is spent each year on viral hepatitis programs. This funding is not enough for states to provide testing, surveillance, prevention, and education services – let alone care and treatment for those in need.
My stepfather has lived with this disease for many years. He contracted it as a medic in the Vietnam War. It is estimated that at least 10% of all Vietnam veterans have Hepatitis C. He receives regular monitoring and treatment at a VA hospital, but his long-term future is frighteningly unknown.
I ask that you address this serious public health crisis in three ways:
-- Add language on your website about the hepatitis C epidemic and how you plan to address it.
-- Support a $50 million in Fiscal Year 2009 funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Viral Hepatitis Programs.
-- Support the "Hepatitis C Epidemic Control and Prevention Act *" or similar Act which would create a comprehensive effort by the federal government to address the epidemic.
*http://olpa.od.nih.gov/legislation/109/pendinglegislation/hepatitisc.asp
Foster Care System Perspectives
7 comments:
Thanks for drawing my attention to this site. I voted for your ideas, and I'm totally with you on the first.
FYI - If you finalize your adoption in 2009, the one time federal tax credit is up to $12,150 (if you spent that much on your adoption and fall within the liberal income limits). Georgia also recently instituted a new credit that applies to parents of children previously in foster care. That state tax credit is $2,000 per year until the year the child turns 19.
It is a one time tax credit, however if you do not use it all it will roll over until it is gone.
Wait a minute ... what is this tax credit you speak of? I thought it was not really a credit, but essentially a return on qualified expenses such as homestudies. If the adoption was free -- what qualifies for the credit?
I went through a private agency for my foster care adoption so I did spend close to 5K on the adoption process. (Money well spent, in my opinion.)
I definitely agree with the basic principle, which is to encourage adoption from foster care. Changing the economic incentives seems like a reasonable way to do that, and yet I can't help wondering about the impact on the international adoptions that do happen, sans tax credit. It is so much more expensive to adopt internationally now than in the 1970's, several times more expensive. Will all the international adoptees be funneled to the ultra-wealthy, as opposed to the merely-wealthy like they are now? Are we as a society okay with that?
Adoption is already one more scenario where the rich have a MUCH more likely shot at winning than the non-rich. Scarce resources will always go to the highest bidder unless there is some kind of government intervention, and one of the strongest levers the government has is the tax code. I've always assumed that the government should play a role in evening out the playing field to the extent that it is able... but maybe not? Or maybe through ways other than tax credits?
Anyway, I know that the international aspect is neither your focus here nor your particular interest, but if you have any thoughts on this I'd be interested in hearing them.
@Maerlowe: thanks! @Amy: Thanks, but I don't think that will apply to me since Sunny comes from another state's foster care system. @Sheri: thanks for adding that @Maggie: I hope the NACAC link I just posted should help clear up the issue, and I hope you can get the full credit @Sang-Shil: that's an interesting point and I had to respond to it in my next post.
One argument against the tax credit is that it has actually contributed to an increase in agency fees. People have argued the same about the availability of student loans: The good news? A higher tax credit! The bad news? Agency fees increased the same amount as the tax credit! But at "zero" cost to you! went the argument at a couple years ago, funneling public money into private adoption agencies without changing the numbers of adoption for children who need to be adopted.
HOWEVER -- You should be aware that the tax credit is non-refundable (you must have tax liability in order to apply it) and that it tapers off at the upper end of income, so this is not a benefit to the very rich (or really, the rich at all) or to the too-poor to expect to be able to raise a child.
The credit has nothing to do with people making decisions to parent special needs children and then determining that they don't have the resources to do it. That is indeed poor preparation, but I can't see how it can be reasonably tied to the tax credit. Being eligible for the one time nonrefundable tax credit (essentially being middle and upper middle class) is unrelated to being able to pay 50,000+ for residential care per year. "Can't pay out of pocket? Then you can't afford to adopt" is an argument that certainly could be made (it's the same argument made against adoption fundraising -- parenting a child by adoption is a non-necessity, a "life style choice"), but the tax credit and special needs that follow an international adoption shouldn't be used to make that argument.
This is not a defense of the tax credit, only concerns with the logic.
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