Economic recovery to headline first 100 days

WASHINGTON (JTA) — War is waging in the Middle East and Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons, but Jewish organizations say they also will be focusing on several domestic items in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.

At the top of the list is the economic recovery plan and the help it can provide for the nation’s most vulnerable. But there are also other domestic items — particularly some pieces of legislation that garnered congressional majorities in the past two years but were blocked by President Bush — that they are hoping to see become law in the next few months, including an expansion of children’s health insurance and a hate-crimes bill.

None of these other bills will come up, though, before the estimated $775 billion economic recovery plan, which is likely to have a number of provisions backed by Jewish groups. One of the most vital to Jewish nursing homes and family services institutions around the country is an increase in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP, the rate by which the federal government reimburses states for Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for poor people.

“The recession is causing an increasing demand for services and a decrease of government funds available,” said William Daroff, the vice president for public policy of the United Jewish Communities and director of the organization’s Washington office. An FMAP increase, he said, “would relieve some of the fiscal pressure on the states” that have already been reducing Medicaid payments in order to cut budget deficits.

Daroff said that the UJC, the North American arm of the network of local Jewish charitable federations, also is urging Congress to modify the provisions in the bill for infrastructure projects, so nonprofit institutions also could receive funding to, for instance, add rooms to a soup kitchen or build an expansion to a nursing home.

Other Jewish organizations pointed to a variety of provisions to help the unemployed and fight poverty, including the extension of unemployment insurance and a hike in the funding for food stamps. And Obama’s emphasis on creating “green jobs” and a “green energy grid” was welcomed.

“Building a smart energy grid is something we need for the environment,” as well as for “our economic and national security,” said Hadar Susskind, the Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a public-policy advocacy group bringing together more than 100 local Jewish communities, the synagogue movements and several national organizations.

After the stimulus package is passed — likely sometime next month — Jewish groups will look to some “unfinished business” from the last administration that has “a real impact on people’s lives,” said Sammie Moshenberg, the director of Washington operations for the National Council of Jewish Women.

Susskind said that with a Democratic administration, a number of pieces of legislation that were opposed by the Bush administration are likely to become law.

High on that list is the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which would permit greater federal involvement in investigating hate crimes and expand the federal definition of such crimes to include those motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.

Supporters have been pushing the bill for about a decade, and even managed to have the legislation — attached to larger bills — approved by majorities in both houses of Congress. But the measure keeps getting eliminated in conference committee.

With a president who backs the bill coming into office, however, “this might be the year,” said Deborah Lauter, the director of civil rights for the Anti-Defamation League.

Obama also would sign an expansion of SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is expected to pass early in the 111th Congress. The legislation, which was vetoed last year by Bush, would add 4 million to 6 million children to the program whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy private insurance, according to Barbara Weinstein, the legislative director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism.

“Health care for kids is a basic value,” Weinstein said.

Another issue widely popular in the Jewish community and likely to garner early attention is federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, although it is unclear whether action will come via an executive order, congressional legislation or both.

Jewish groups, as well as a congressional source, said the “first 100 days” is an artificial measure. They said that while all of the legislation named had a good chance of coming up before the fall, some of it may spill into the second 100 days of the administration depending on several factors, including how long the economic recovery legislation takes to complete.

The American Jewish Committee’s legislative director and counsel, Richard Foltin, said the first few months of the administration will be a critical time for starting to “move items forward” dealing with more complex issues. For example, he is hoping to see Congress begin to work on comprehensive immigration reform.

Nathan Diament, the director of public policy for the Orthdox Union, said his organization will be watching in the early days of the administration to see how Obama sets up his White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, although any change in policy may take a little longer than the first 100 days.

Diament would like to see the head of the office rank high enough to have influence with the president and impact on his policies.

His organization also believes that religious groups that receive federal funding should be allowed to take religion into account when hiring, which Obama has said he does not support and a number of other Jewish groups also oppose.