Millennial Pulse

Millennials Are on the Frontlines of Social Innovation to End Discrimination

Apr 3, 2012May Mgbolu

money-justice-scalesYoung people have long been involved in social justice movements, and today's Millennials continue that legacy by tackling today's issues.

money-justice-scalesYoung people have long been involved in social justice movements, and today's Millennials continue that legacy by tackling today's issues.

The quest for equal justice has sparked movements and empowered youth across the nation for decades. Reports of racism, discrimination, sexual harassment, disenfranchisement, and LGBTQ hate crimes continue to appear in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Today, Millennials continue to engage in equal justice policy and are committed to tackling the structural barriers and institutional inequities that prevent the full realization of equal opportunity and rights in the United States.

Youth have long been on the frontlines in of the social justice movement, actively participating in redefining civil liberties, inspiring progressive politics, and mobilizing young people across the country in an effort to end social injustices. The Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network continues that legacy through our 10 Ideas for Equal Justice publication.

For Millennials to shape the future we will inherit, we must effectively voice our needs and priorities and assert ourselves in all conversations involving equal justice. While some policymakers express concern about the future of equality in America, few have effectively addressed the harsh conditions that shape people's lives. Millennials must continue to focus on the policies that exclude some and marginalize others. For example, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965 once outlawed discriminatory practices and made great strides in America, but today these laws exclude millions of marginalized Americans through criminal history checks or other determinants.

The failure of our current policies to address the importance of equality highlights the need for Millennials' vision and impact. While equal justice is both one of America's firmly embedded principles and widely disputed topics at all political levels, Millennials remain on the frontline, challenging congressional debates and policies on immigration, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice, and various topics that represent a threat to the advancement of equality in America.

Join the conversation about the Roosevelt Institute’s new initiative, Rediscovering Government, led by Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

Readers and politicians will hear from Millennials motivated to solve the problems of yesterday and promote the progress of all people in the future. This year's 10 Ideas of Equal Justice represent some of the most innovative ideas being put forward to end discrimination and advance equal justice across the nation. These proposals represent the urgency of restoring progressive values and principles that once aimed to confront unfair practices and standards in America, while focusing on future obstacles and trends.

Marielle DeJong and Katherine Reilly, students from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, are challenging the communication between tribal and federal law enforcement and their practices in investigations in order to address the unprecedented rates of violent crimes and sexual assaults on Native American women. They outline policies necessary to effectively combat the assault on Native America women and restore justice on tribal lands for all victims.

Emily Apple, a student at Hunter College, proposes a plan to bridge the poverty gap for vulnerable communities in New York City by making healthy food accessible to all. She insists that all New York residents should have an agricultural community garden within a one-mile radius of their homes where they can purchase low-cost fresh fruits and vegetables. She writes that all communities have the right to healthy, affordable food, and aims to eliminate disparities and inequities by encouraging large community garden programs to participate and the usage of EBT cards.

Erik Lampmann, a student at the University of Richmond, exposes the tax inequities between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples. Lampmann is interested in encouraging employers to change their LBGTQ priorities to include the absorption of an added tax on transfer of health benefits among domestic partners while advocating for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage act (DOMA). Thus far, 80 businesses have committed to "tax equity" to place pressure on officials to legislate for the repeal of DOMA.

Although these are a just few of the many Millennial voices featured in the publication of 10 Ideas of Equal Justice, Millennial across the country continue to be deeply involved in developing social innovation to end discrimination. Students are addressing structural and institutionalized inequities, social norms, and unjust practices in our society in order to create equal opportunities and uphold basic human rights for all.

May Mgbolu is the Senior Fellow for Equal Justice at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at the University of Arizona.

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Watch the Court, Epilogue: It's All Over But the Ruling

Mar 30, 2012Rajiv Narayan

health-care-money-150The Supreme Court subjected the new health care law to harsh interrogation, but they overlooked the human questions.

health-care-money-150The Supreme Court subjected the new health care law to harsh interrogation, but they overlooked the human questions.

Supreme Court proceedings on the legal challenges facing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are over after three days of oral argumentation. But the Court commentary did not end with the proceedings. As the justices are likely to hand down their opinion in June, speculation is rife -- and varied -- on how the decision will lean. Until then, it is worth reflecting on this week's proceedings.

Given my youth, I am first concerned with what seems to be a kind of chasm between young people and the Court. At multiple points in the oral arguments, justices brought up hypothetical examples in which young people would be forced to pay for insurance when they otherwise wouldn't. The assumption here is that we are healthy, so we should not be required to pay the same premiums others must pay. This assumption bothers me in two ways.

Primarily, it is a myth that young folks like myself neither want nor need health insurance. Organizations like Young Invincibles and the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network are frequently showcasing projects and findings that show the opposite. When we worked together to build and extend a health care toolkit to graduating college students, the response was always positive. If there are young people who don't want or need insurance, we haven't found them. Indeed, Young Invincibles just recently unveiled a their "Meet a Young Person" campaign to debunk these myths.

The second issue with this view of healthful indiscretion is that it mischaracterizes the relationship between health and health care. Often in legal challenges the opponents of health care reform will allege that people should not have to buy health insurance if they are properly healthy, by which it is usually meant these people eat a healthy diet, exercise frequently, and follow a balanced lifestyle. That is indeed a healthy lifestyle; no one would argue otherwise on this point. But the purpose of health care insurance is not redundant with a healthy lifestyle. Health can deteriorate despite good habits in all manner of ways, including accidents, unexpected or unknown conditions, and the loss of income requisite to remain sufficiently healthy. We don't enroll in health insurance solely because we are sick (though that can be the case), but because we recognize the realities of health.

Join the conversation about the Roosevelt Institute’s new initiative, Rediscovering Government, led by Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

To extend this concern, my next issue with this week's proceedings is that this case was not about health. While Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. struggled to introduce the realities of health on the ground at the beginning of his argument Tuesday and the end of his arguments Wednesday, a series of questions from the bench and the structure of the oppositions' arguments shifted the discourse toward markets, insurance mechanisms, and legal questions of accountability rather than what it means for millions of Americans to gain previously denied coverage, medical counsel, and treatment.

In some sense this is not surprising. The proceedings are not set up to pull at the heartstrings of justices so much as they are to rigorously debate the conflicting obligations of law. Unless a clear line could be drawn from the human condition under the ACA to the questions of constitutionality, the Court is unlikely to turn on sympathy. For better or worse, the Supreme Court is not Court TV.

How this decision will come down is anyone's guess. Legal scholars and court watchers previously confident in their affirmative prospects for the ACA backtracked from their speculation after the unexpected level of skepticism displayed Tuesday. Those sure that the entire law would be struck down are now unsure given the Supreme Court's perceived hesitance to scour through 2,700 pages of legislation with a surgical scalpel. However the Court turns, we can be sure that this case has lived up to its coverage.

Rajiv Narayan is the Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of California, Davis.

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Watch the Court, Day 3: Health Care Reform's Goldilocks Dilemma

Mar 29, 2012Rajiv Narayan

health-care-money-150A final day of arguments that many expected to be purely hypothetical could decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act.

health-care-money-150A final day of arguments that many expected to be purely hypothetical could decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act.

On Wednesday, the last day of oral argumentation in the case against the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court once again brought Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. and former Solicitor General Paul Clement to the lectern for two oral arguments. The first part considered the legal question of severability -- what happens to the ACA if the individual mandate is struck down. The second part considered the legal question of whether the ACA's Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional.

The question of severability has garnered much more attention ever since Tuesday's oral argument. Had this case proceeded as court watchers expected, yesterday's arguments would likely have been perceived as after-the-fact hypothetical decision-making. But with the Court seemingly skeptical of the individual mandate, the third day of the proceedings was as critical as ever.

Clement took to the lectern to argue that an ACA without the individual mandate is no ACA at all. He reasoned that because parts of the law are so interconnected, this part falling necessitated the implosion of the entire legislation. His line of argumentation found it better for Congress to begin anew than to give it a mangled shell of a law to work with. While some justices expressed skepticism at this all-or-nothing take, it was Justice Kagan who asked explicitly, albeit rhetorically, "Isn't a half loaf better than no loaf?" From her analogy, it appears Justice Kagan believes in the ability of the ACA to grant at least some benefit worthy of keeping intact.

Justice Kagan (as well as other justices) also expressed concern that the Court would be overstepping its bounds to strike so many provisions that Congress could have passed without the individual mandate; she asked Clement why the task of sifting through the provisions worth keeping couldn't be left to Congress. This question becomes a key theme for the narrative of the ACA's supporters: if the law is too messy to take apart, it may be better to keep everything. This theme, in turn, gives those eager to sever the individual mandate some misgivings about the consequences. In answer, Clement argued that it is unlikely Congress will actually perform this task. Supporting Clement's response, Justice Scalia asked (also rhetorically) whether there was "such a thing as legislative inertia."

Join the conversation about the Roosevelt Institute’s new initiative, Rediscovering Government, led by Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

H. Bartow Farr, another counsel brought into the oral argumentation, attempted to persuade the justices that the entirety of the ACA could survive if the individual mandate was struck down. Justice Scalia once again scrutinized clean severability and made the case that health insurance would collapse if the insurance companies lacked the premiums of healthy individuals to balance the risks and costs of the less healthy. Where Farr argued that there were other incentives to enroll the healthy to balance costs, some justices expressed further skepticism. What one could take away from the proceedings was a kind of Goldilocks dilemma: The justices do not seem to believe that the individual mandate can be struck down in isolation, but they also do not seem to buy the argument that the whole legislation must go. The charge of the Court, then, is to find out what is just right.

The second segment of oral arguments concerned the ACA's expansion of Medicaid.

Clement sought to ask and answer two questions in his argument: First, whether the Medicaid expansion is coercive, and second, whether that coercion matters. Right from the get-go Justice Kagan presented Clement with a hypothetical situation to zero in on his sense of coercion. When Clement said even a full gift of $10 million could potentially be coercive, Justice Kagan's flabbergasted response drew laughs from the crowd.

This exchange seemed to draw the line in the sand between Clement and Verrilli as they made their appeals to the bench. Where Clement was surgical in his defense of states' rights from the Medicaid expansion, Verrilli appealed to sympathy for the poor who would stand to benefit the most from the expansion.

Much of this segment centered around the theory of coercion -- the case in which the federal government places such burdensome conditions on taking its money that states are functionally forced into compliance. While Verrilli argued that this wasn't the case at hand, the debate took coercion as the key issue. But while coercion dominated the discussion, the discourse was not always in Clement's favor. Between hard-hitting hypotheticals from Justice Kagan and the heated exchange Clement shared with Justice Breyer over whether the statute applied strictly to formal coercion, the left side of the Court arrived at its main concern, expressed by Justice Sotomayor: A strong ruling in favor of Clement's petitioners would irreparably "tie the hands of the federal government" to enter into cooperative ventures with states.

If only because Justice Kennedy is so often the swing vote, his comments are worth noting. During Solicitor General Verrilli's time at the lectern, Justice Kennedy assumed coercion theory to be fact and asked who individuals in states could hold accountable if the state lost funding for its refusal to adopt provisions in the ACA. In some ways, the issue of blame here harkens back to Justice Sotomayor's concern. However, Justice Kennedy seemed not to be looking for a reason to strike down the law because the federal government would bear blame. Instead, Justice Kennedy seemed more concerned to find a "clear line of accountability so the citizen knows it's the federal or the state government should be held responsible for the program." This decision could turn on what Justice Kennedy finds to be proper in his view of federalism.

Rajiv Narayan is the Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of California, Davis.

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Watch the Court, Day 2: A Skeptical Court Confronts the Individual Mandate

Mar 28, 2012Rajiv Narayan

health-care-money-150The Justices discussed a mere nine pages that could make or break the entire health reform effort.

health-care-money-150The Justices discussed a mere nine pages that could make or break the entire health reform effort.

Yesterday the Supreme Court grilled Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, and National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) lawyer Michael A. Carvin. Verrilli represented the Obama administration via the Department of Health and Human Services, Clement represented the 26 states challenging the law,  and Carvin represented the NFIB's challenge to the law.

The controversial individual mandate, which comprises all of nine pages in Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), requires (beginning in 2014) every American to secure the minimum essential health insurance coverage, or they face a penalty. While the legal questions at play delve deeply into nuance, the basic point of controversy yesterday was whether this penalty violates the powers granted to Congress in the Commerce Clause. (The law professor most frequently cited as the generator of this critique was profiled yesterday morning in the New York Times.)

A New York Times/CBS News poll released recently indicates that 29 percent of adults want the individual mandate declared unconstitutional but would prefer to have the rest of the ACA operational. Yesterday's proceedings suggest the Court is not as big a fan.

Near the opening of Solicitor General Verrilli's argument, Justice Kennedy interjected, "Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?" Justice Kennedy's attitude is crucial, as many view him as the potential swing vote in this case should the decision come down to the ideological leanings on the bench. When the Solicitor General began to clarify that this is not the argument the government is using to defend the legislation, that health care insurance is an already established market in which nearly every American already participates, Justice Scalia interrupted to ask whether the "failure to purchase something in that market subjects [him] to regulation." Once again, Solicitor General Verrilli sought to clarify the precise position of the administration.

At this point Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether the government can require us all to buy cellphones because that would better facilitate the delivery of emergency services. When the Solicitor General disagreed that this hypothetical constituted a similar market, Chief Justice Roberts pushed back to claim he didn't see the difference. But what came as of the most concern to court watchers supportive of the ACA was Justice Kennedy's ominous statement that the federal government has a "heavy burden of justification" because the legislation changes the relationship of the individual to government.

Check out the new special issue of The Nation, guest-edited by Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

Not all Justices were as skeptical. Justice Ginsburg challenged a claim that requiring Americans to buy health care is akin to requiring them to buy food with the observation that a refusal to purchase health care places a greater burden on those who do. When Justice Alito likened requisite healthcare purchase to requiring Americans to pre-emptively purchase burial services, Justice Breyer retorted that perhaps it wouldn't be so outlandish to require purchase of burial services if its market structure more closely resembled the architecture of health insurance.

When former Solicitor General Clement rose to the stand, his main line of argumentation alleged the ACA dangerously lacks a "limiting principle." Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan inquired when exactly the Commerce Clause violation is triggered, whether at the point of sale of health insurance or at some other point. Clement argued that the legal tradition is to regulate commerce at the point of sale, but the law in question goes awry in its move to regulate commerce before the point of sale by requiring the individual to purchase insurance.

In further questioning, Justice Ginsburg seemed to express skepticism that the individual mandate should be deemed unconstitutional if Social Security does the same thing. Then Justice Breyer took the Court through the legal history of the Commerce Clause to note that it was indeed used to create and regulate commerce when it created the national bank.

Arguments next came from Michael A. Carvin, who spoke on behalf of the NFIB. At the outset of his argument, Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Ginsburg, Justice Kagan, and Justice Breyer came down hard by  interrupting with questions and disagreements. Justice Ginsburg asked Carvin the same question regarding the constitutionality of Social Security. Toward the end of the proceedings, Justice Kennedy appeared newly interested in whether the health insurance agency is sufficiently different from other industries in the manner in which costs unpaid by one group are foisted upon another.

The final arguments came in the form of a rebuttal from Solicitor General Verrilli, who seemed to be speaking directly to Justice Kennedy when he said getting rid of regulation at the point of purchase does nothing to address the grave problem of cost-shifting between those who don't buy insurance and those who bear the burden.

Today the Court will examine the question of severability, as well as other technical provisions in the ACA.

Rajiv Narayan is the Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of California, Davis.

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Watch the Court, Day 1: The Health Care Case That Can't Be Dismissed

Mar 27, 2012Rajiv Narayan

health-care-money-150The first day of the Supreme Court's oral hearings didn't feature any fireworks, but the stage is set for their biggest ruling in a decade.

health-care-money-150The first day of the Supreme Court's oral hearings didn't feature any fireworks, but the stage is set for their biggest ruling in a decade.

The biggest Supreme Court case since Bush v. Gore began oral arguments yesterday morning. Starting a little after 10 a.m. Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts and his Associate Justices opened the floor to the case that will determine the fate of Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida. Like Bush v. Gore, this case is inseparable from both its politicized ascendance through the courts and its potential to sway the November election.

This case is notable in other ways too. It will feature the Supreme Court's longest oral argumentation in 45 years. Unlike past cases where all proceedings are withheld for a long while, audio clips of the proceedings will be available at the end of each day in Court. As 60 people from the general public are allowed entry into the Court gallery, some folks have camped outside since Friday. Protesters of all kinds are drawn to the Court for this case, including the perplexing presence of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

At issue are a panoply of legal questions. Over the course of three days the Court will listen to (and more often cut off) the lawyers presenting oral arguments on whether the Court should even take up the challenge (Monday), whether the infamous individual mandate is unconstitutional (Tuesday), whether the individual mandate can be severed from the legislation (Wednesday), and a handful of technical provisions (also Wednesday). Once oral argumentation is over, the Court may take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to arrive at a decision.

Check out the new special issue of The Nation, guest-edited by Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick.

Yesterday the Court began with Counsel Robert Long, who argued that the Anti-Injunction Act requires the Court to dismiss the challenge on the basis of its "Pay Now, Litigate Later" language. The argument here is that the Court ought not rule on legislation if the challenged component of the legislation in question has yet to take effect. This refers to the penalty of the Affordable Care Act. When it fully comes into effect in 2014, individuals who refuse to purchase insurance face a monetary penalty. According to Long, so long as it's not 2014, so too should there be no interest from the highest Court in the land.

The Justices would have none of that. Early on Justice Scalia asked how the ACA could be within the Anti-Junction Act's area of effect if the former charges a penalty and the latter specifically refers to revenue-raising taxes. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsberg, and Breyer agreed with similarly incisive (seemingly rhetorical) questions. At one point, Justice Kagan outright asked Counsel Long whether he was "trying to rewrite the statute in a way."

None of yesterday's proceedings were terribly juicy. At the outset of the case, we already knew the challengers (represented primarily by the state of Florida) wanted the case to proceed. We also knew that the Obama administration was pushing for a decision well in advance of either the 2014 implementation or the November 2012 election. Finally, one could make the argument that the Court itself implicitly signaled a willingness to proceed by working with the Obama Administration to consolidate the challenges to the ACA into one case, an act that would make the whole endeavor easier to take up. So it's unsurprising that the Court did indeed take it up.

Today we'll be moving into what is likely to be the main attraction of the case, the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

Rajiv Narayan is the Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of California, Davis.

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Reforming the Education System from the Bottom Up

Mar 20, 2012Grayson Cooper

<br />Millennials are committed to providing all children with quality educations by empowering the communities they live in.

<br />Millennials are committed to providing all children with quality educations by empowering the communities they live in.

Though many of us are still in the midst of completing our own educations, Millennials are engaged with education policy and dedicated to ensuring quality through accountability for all. In an era where employment opportunities and the vitality of the nation depend on access to quality education, schools cannot be left to chance, nor can just a few be burdened with the responsibility of high performance. Rather, a diversity of stakeholders must be held accountable for ensuring improvements in educational opportunity and access.

Even with loud calls for educational reform, we've seen few improvements at the federal level. Perhaps the most influential initiative in the past few decades was No Child Left Behind. It introduced accountability based on student performance on standardized tests, with corresponding repercussions for schools including school choice provisions and restructuring models that require actions like firing half the staff or closing the school entirely, even in the face of parent protest.

The Obama administration has released its proposal for reforming No Child Left Behind, but no forward progress has been made on the legislative level. In the interim, the Department of Education offered waivers from performance standards in exchange for enacting prescribed reforms, such as lifting limits on the number of charter schools and instituting teacher evaluations based at least in part on student test scores. This action echoed Race to the Top, a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided money in exchange for reforms. Yet Race to the Top and the waiver program were both criticized for their lack of research justification and adoption of special interest driven ideas.

Equity, in addition to quality, has also come under attack in recent years, with Supreme Court decisions prohibiting race-based desegregation efforts, effectively undoing the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In the process, courts have been stripped of the power to desegregate their schools. Without the protections of the Brown decision, and with local school elections that are increasingly dominated by special interests but garner low voter turnout, there has been a resurgence of segregation in American cities.

Buy a copy of The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women’s Rights, featuring a chapter by Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Ellen Chesler.

Meanwhile, our education system is threatened by slashed state budgets, requiring teacher layoffs and cuts to programs like guidance counselors and public higher education. Quick action is needed to prevent a deterioration in the quality of education that America currently enjoys while simultaneously building accountability, the impetus to sustain and continuously improve.

The Campus Network has re-defined educational accountability in our 10 ideas for Education, going beyond the simple set of sticks and carrots for teachers and schools to also focus on college students, elected officials, and higher education institutions as driving forces in educational improvement and opportunity. Reflecting our belief that education is a local issue (even with its national implications), most proposed accountability measures are targeted at engaging local stakeholders, rather than federally mandated measures. This year's 10 Ideas for Education represents the thought leadership of our organization on the future of education. This week, on New Deal 2.0 the authors of three of our most forward thinking pieces will offer an inside look at their ideas.

Seth Taylor, a student at the University of Georgia, challenges Georgia lawmakers to look beyond test scores in evaluating teachers. By creating an independent body of teacher evaluators, Seth aims to simultaneously improve teacher quality, meet the requirements of Georgia's Federal Race to the Top Grant, and preserve teaching as a profession.

Angela Choi, a student at CUNY City College, describes a plan to engage college students in work-study outside of the university in a service-learning program that provides mentoring high school students. Her mentoring program leverages federal student aid to increase high school completion and college attendance.

Jessica Morris, a student at Mount Holyoke College, proposes sexual orientation sensitivity workshops for high schools across the country, as well as a national bill to protect LGBT students at school, to make sure that students don't have to wait for their lives to get better. Her suggestions create a comprehensive response to the recent rash of suicides among gay teens.

These state and local solutions sustainably protect the progress of education improvement efforts by reinvesting power at the local level. They target those most affected by educational quality and those most empowered to improve it. Rather than reforming from the top down, an approach dominated by special interests, these students have identified implementable reforms.

Grayson Cooper is the Senior Fellow for Education Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Millennials are Speaking Health to Power

Mar 5, 2012Rajiv Narayan

health-care-money-150Millennials don't see health policy as a side issue. They want to extend quality care to all Americans, and they have bold ideas for how to do it.

health-care-money-150Millennials don't see health policy as a side issue. They want to extend quality care to all Americans, and they have bold ideas for how to do it.

Health policy is an issue that provokes strong sentiments -- and often, great controversy -- by bringing questions of body, mortality, disease, and wellness into the public arena. For a recent example we need only look to the 2010 midterm elections, when House Democrats lost their majority to a wave of Tea Party Republicans in what many attributed to blowback from the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The dispute over health care reform, like many issues in health policy, concerns the nature of paternalistic public health. Policymakers and their constituents review the (often conflicting) evidence and ask themselves to what extent they are comfortable with the level of government involvement in their personal health. Where the benefits of public intervention outweigh the intrusion of government into our individual choices, we accept policy.

At the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, we contend that health care is not only a choice, but a fundamental right of every American. It may surprise some to see the Millennial generation so engaged in issues of health care. After all, this is an arena that many seasoned policymakers find too byzantine to approach. In my role as the Senior Fellow for Health Policy at the Campus Network, I've learned that our approach to health policy is reflective not just of the timeliness of the issue but of the core values and principles of my generation.

Last year, we worked on a project that built a "health care toolkit" for college students. This year, we're pleased to see a rapid expansion of health coverage for young people. According to a recent revision of official estimates, 2.5 million young Americans aged 19-25 have gained health care coverage since September 2010. A little over a year ago, 64.4 percent of young Americans had health insurance; since then, that proportion has risen to 72.7 percent. Known collectively as the "invincibles," Americans aged 19-25 are accustomed to being left in the blind spot of health coverage. Those days are now largely over.

Among the many projections made by the president's Council of Economic Advisers, the ACA is estimated to "increase net economic well-being by roughly $100 billion a year" and increase real GDP by 8 percent through 2030 relative to the no-reform baseline. The Congressional Budget Office also links a "net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period" to the ACA.

This year, you can find our values and belief in the power of health care policy front and center in the pages of our 10 Ideas for Health Care series. The 10 Ideas series is a flagship publication of the Campus Network. In the fall, each of the six policy centers submits a call for submissions to thousands of students. Of the hundreds of submissions we receive, only the 10 best are included in each journal. These journals provide not only valuable academic experience for students, but a springboard for our advocacy. It is not uncommon for the ideas in our journal to jump from the page to a floor debate in a state legislature, or a grant-winning project. As such, 10 Ideas for Health Care represents the very best of the Millennial paradigm and the future of health policy. This week, New Deal 2.0 will offer a sneak peek at the best of the best.

Check out “The 99 Percent Plan,” a new Roosevelt Institute/Salon essay series on the progressive vision for the economy.

Kate Lawrenz, a student from the University of Richmond, is writing about payment reform for Accountable Care Organizations. Highlighted in the ACA, Accountable Care Organizations seek to coordinate health care among Medicare recipients, calibrating services and payments with metrics to reduce redundancy and error. Kate is looking at ways to make their payment schemes even more effective.

Rahul Rekhi, a student of Rice University, is applying the lessons of emergent technologies to biomedicine. While medicine benefits tremendously from the application of new technologies and advances from research, we're slower to apply the paradigm of the Internet Generation to health care. Rahul seeks to extend the benefits of open-access computing to open-access health care.

Paul Wilson Parker, a student of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is engaging an issue of surprising interest to the Millennial generation: Medicare reform. His interest in expanding the choices available for comprehensive care and creating public competition for private insurers reflects Millennials' belief in the importance of longstanding health care programs in addition to the new and emerging trends.

But we are not stopping at writing policy. The Health Policy Center of the Campus Network is also engaged in a policy project this year. With the Farm Bill slated for reauthorization in the coming months, we believe there's a special opportunity for the Millennial generation to engage in a debate that will shape America's eating habits and access to healthy food.

Containing 10 titles ranging from funding and regulation for conservation programs to commodity futures markets, the Farm Bill was last reauthorized in 2008 at the cost of $283.9 billion. Of the $283.9 billion appropriated in 2008, $188.3 billion went to just one of the 10 titles -- nutrition. This title, which accounted then for two-thirds of the bill and is now estimated to occupy a 70 percent share, consists largely of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (what is formerly known as food stamps), food and nutrition guidelines under the purview of the FDA and USDA, and school meal programs.

The Campus Network Health Policy Center will be spending the coming months building a coalition of think tanks, food organizations, and youth groups to take a stand on our nation's largest food-based legislation. Modeled after the Network's Blueprint for a Millennial America, we aim to present a Millennial Farm Bill.

Through each of these efforts, from our projects last year to our policy journal and Farm Bill Blueprint this year, it's clear that my generation is engaging the strong sentiments of health policy with strong proposals. We're informed by our values, the privileges and responsibilities that come with higher education, and the drive to detail the change we see necessary. We're here to speak health to power.

Rajiv Narayan is the Senior Fellow for Health Care Policy at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a graduating senior at the University of California, Davis.

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Honoring Black History by Fighting for Today's Second-Class Citizens

Feb 21, 2012May Mgbolu

prison-wall-150Ex-felons -- who are disproportionately African American -- still struggle to find jobs and obtain equal justice.

prison-wall-150Ex-felons -- who are disproportionately African American -- still struggle to find jobs and obtain equal justice.

Every year, Black History Month celebrates the contributions of African Americans that have broken down barriers and made great strides. The civil rights movement in particular has become a large focus, with people reminiscing about civil disobedience, acts of non-violence, and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But many have a distorted image of the progression of African Americans, assuming that civil rights struggles are a thing of the past. Though African Americans have struggled to gain access to full rights as American citizens, a new generation of second-class citizenship has developed. What was once a category based on race has now transformed into a classification associated with those who hold criminal records. And the biggest barrier they face is the ability to get a job after being released.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was the largest full-scale response to decades of Jim Crow laws that limited African American participation as citizens. This system of segregation was designed to ensure that black people would continue to be oppressed after the end of slavery and was reinforced through fear, skewed policies, and force. Although these archaic laws have been removed from the books, today's policies have resulted in a new system of mass incarceration that is replicating the second-class citizenry of the Jim Crow era.

Just as Jim Crow once directly targeted African Americans, mass incarceration continues to fall disproportionately on communities of color. Those arrested and incarcerated due to drug offenses are overwhelming African American. As a result, Africans Americans and other minorities are sentenced to incarceration at rates significantly disproportionate to whites. However, this system doesn't just focus on ethnic background -- it also affects low-income communities across the nation at a similar rate.

Although white-only signs and lynch mobs may no longer strike fear into black communities, these Americans with criminal records are faced with the daily fear of being stopped and frisked by officers and the anxiety that the prison door can re-open repeatedly -- not for committing a crime, but for simply missing an appointment with a parole officer or the failure to pay a court fee. While Jim Crow deliberately disenfranchised blacks through literacy tests, today we openly deny ex-felons the right to participate in the democratic process. Voting rights have yet to be formerly restored for all second-class citizens in America.

But the greatest struggle this oppressed community continues to face is the inability to obtain legitimate work due to the negative stigma of criminal records.

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With our prison population nearly 2.3 million, the number of Americans with criminal records is large and on the rise. A criminal record eliminates someone's access to jobs, housing, education, social services, and voting rights. Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explains that mass incarceration operates as the Jim Crow South once did, creating tightly networked systems of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that reinforce a subordinate status. The civil rights movement and the passage of the Civil Rights Act were once signifiers of the advancement of equal opportunity for everyone, no matter race or national origin. Yet today individuals with criminal records continue to live in a state of segregation from the rest of society.

I spoke with a friend of mine who falls into this category and has been turned away from job after job after serving seven months in prison for a drug-related felony. He participated in one of Arizona's rehabilitation programs that help inmates prepare to find a job after being released from prison. Yet he struggles daily with looking for a job, being unable to qualify for basic necessities such as food stamps, and the constant fear of harassment from officers, all due to his drug felony.

He explained that after applying to six jobs last week, he was hired as a chef. He was ecstatic to have finally found a job. But the next day the company told him that corporate said they could not hire him.

Our policies suppress all individuals with criminal records through one application question: Have you ever been arrested or convicted? While most Americans have the privilege of overlooking this question, it creates barriers for all individuals with criminal histories, particularly with no federal law prohibiting employers for discriminating against individuals with criminal records. Instead, the question allows employers to immediately disregard an application for merely answering yes. KG explained that employers "try to tell you that this won't affect you, but I know it does." Therefore the "first thing I look at on an application is if it asks for a felony or something. If yes, I won't bother because I don't get called back." Experiences like KG's have become normalized, promoting unequal social standards.

This month, Americans across the nation will celebrate the progress of African Americans in the United States. But we can't neglect the caste system that continues to disproportionately affect this community. Mass incarceration has diminished the gains accomplished during the civil rights movement and expanded second-class citizenship to 2.3 million people confined in prisons and millions labeled as criminals, ex-offenders, and convicts. As we remain certain about the great strides of the civil rights movement, we must understand that a new subordinate group has been constructed. Policies and social standards once explicitly targeted African Americans on the basis of skin color; today they creates barriers to employment, education, social services, and voting due to criminal histories.

May Mgbolu is the Senior Fellow for Equal Justice at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and a senior at the University of Arizona.

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Millennial Pulse

The Unprotected Class: Filling the Gaping Hole in Anti-Discrimination Labor Laws

Feb 21, 2012Tyler S. Bugg

genderless-icon-144Ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity will create a fairer society and a more productive workplace.

genderless-icon-144Ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity will create a fairer society and a more productive workplace.

Employment discrimination has a long legacy -- and continues to be a widespread problem -- in the job market. In response, federal legislation has offered what seems a comprehensive body of protections. Among them, the milestone Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects classes of "race, color, religion, sex, and national origin," the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals ages 40 years or older, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 protects qualified individuals with disabilities, among others. These federal laws have also set solid precedent for state-level anti-discrimination laws.

There is a gaping hole, however. Protections for sexual orientation and gender identity are missing in federal legislation and in much of state law, to the detriment of an ever-diversifying citizenry and job market.

The need is clear. Several studies by the Williams Institute have found that as much as 68 percent of LGBT respondents have experienced workplace discrimination. The impact is undoubtedly wide; reports of discrimination based on sexual orientation nationwide are roughly equal to those based on race and gender. Discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity is equally as pervasive as that against classes already protected under federal law. It should enjoy the same protections.

The public is demanding more protections. A 2007 Gallup poll reported that 89 percent of Americans believed gays and lesbians should have equal rights in the workplace. And these protections benefit employers. Human Rights Campaign's "Corporate Equality Index" finds that companies that add anti-discrimination protections into their policies significantly benefit from doing so. Potential employees experience higher security and comfort in their job searches, the careers they choose, and the resources their employers offer -- things like inclusive health benefits, support groups, and diversity councils, among others. Employers, as a result, hire the most qualified people for the job, and the broader economic outlook is positively fostered through effective employee-employer relations.

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The need for adding these protections hasn't gone completely unnoticed. According to the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Project, 21 states and D.C. have added classes of sexual orientation to fair employment law. Fifteen of those states have also instituted protections based on gender identity. A sizable portion of the states are taking initiative and rallying in support of more inclusive policies. Their actions are a running start for what should be a huge leap for a nationwide commitment for broader equality.

Federally, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed in Congress, seeks to add federal protections against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It aims to eliminate the disadvantaging of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in applying for and receiving jobs based on their identity. Guarding against unfair hiring, firing, promotion, and compensation practices, ENDA ensures a greater level of workplace equality.

This would clearly address the need for comprehensive protection. A long history of congressional bodies, however, thinks otherwise. Congress has reintroduced, but never passed, ENDA in each and every year since 1994. And despite White House support, the bill's acceleration towards passage is slow.

Even if ENDA passed, we also need a stronger Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and more proactive, more transparent reporting mechanisms. Effective enforcement policy -- including an expressed maximum number of days that can pass before a filed complaint is heard or a minimum amount of compensatory damages guaranteed to a target of discrimination -- is the most crucial tool of deterrence against future and continuous workplace discrimination.

A worker's contribution does not depend on any certain notion of sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other identity factor. All people, regardless of how they conduct their private lives, can be valuable assets to the workplace, the economy, and our larger society. In short, broader inclusion is both good business and good principle. It enables employers to recruit the most competitive talent for the job, regardless of an applicant's identity, and allows the workplace to be a rigorous example for promoting principles of inclusion, fairness, and equality.

Labor protections for sexual orientation and gender identity are, most directly, a crucial step for ensuring a more equitable workplace environment. But ultimately, they would set a much broader precedent for progressive inclusion in other areas of discrimination law -- college admissions, health and insurance benefits, and marriage equality, to name a few.

Tyler S. Bugg is an Organizing Fellow with Obama for America and a member of the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network studying international affairs and human geography at the University of Georgia.

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Millennial Pulse

Obama Outlines a Leaner, Cleaner Defense Strategy

Jan 31, 2012Chris Scanzoni

tank-newThe Obama administration's plans to slim down the Pentagon reflect many of the forward-looking defense strategies embraced by the Millennial Generation.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Barack Obama declared:

tank-newThe Obama administration's plans to slim down the Pentagon reflect many of the forward-looking defense strategies embraced by the Millennial Generation.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Barack Obama declared:

The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever. Our ties to the Americas are deeper... Yes, the world is changing. No, we can't control every event. But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs.

To sustain its influence, the U.S. must adapt its defense policies to the changing global arena in ways that are both strategically and fiscally sound. In early 2011, students associated with the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, including myself, collaborated to produce the Budget for Millennial America, a meticulously crafted plan to help the United States meet the challenges of the 21st century in a fiscally responsible but compassionate way. Within this budget lies a compelling vision for a strong foreign policy, emphasizing diplomacy over force. By advocating for a leaner, modernized defense posture, the Millennial Budget would prepare the United States to more efficiently confront the rising threats of the 21st century: transnational terrorism and crime, nuclear proliferation by rogue states, and climate change.

A year later, I'm thrilled to see that many of the proposals that the Campus Network students developed are reflected in the Obama administration's 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance report. In the Millennial Budget, we decried the "misguided, costly" Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. I'm pleased that President Obama has kept his campaign promise of scaling down the wars as well as the size of conventional forces. With reduced U.S. military involvement abroad, the Pentagon now aims to reduce the Army to a pre-September 11 size of 480,000.

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The administration's report also emphasizes the emerging "strategic opportunity to rebalance the U.S. military investment in Europe, moving from a focus on current conflicts toward a focus on future capabilities." The Obama administration and the Pentagon intend to help our European allies pool resources to provide collective European security. The report language implies a low-cost and reduced American footprint on the continent in the future. Our Millennial Budget proposed a cap on U.S. forward deployment in Europe and Asia of 100,000 personnel, which is a 26 percent reduction from current levels. While the U.S. has an obligation to ensure the security of its allies, the threats of the 21st century no longer demand large force structures.

Another common element in both the Pentagon review and the Millennial Budget is a concerted effort to eliminate wasteful weapons programs and to revise a corrupt and broken procurement system. In accordance with the prescriptions of the federally established Sustainable Defense Task Force, the Millennial Budget advocates for the retirement of the MV-22 Osprey and F-35 programs. While these particular programs were not identified in the Pentagon strategic review, many retirements of existing combat ships and cruisers and airlift fleets are planned. Additionally, the Pentagon terminated or proposed a reevaluation of the procurement of the Joint Strike Fighter, Army Ground Combat Vehicle, Joint Land Attack, Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, Joint Air-to-Ground Munition, Global Hawk Block 30, Defense Weather Satellite System, Commercial satellite imagery, and High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. This is an admirable effort to improve the modernity, efficiency, and agility of U.S. weapons acquisition.

The new Strategic Review also prescribes a more concerted focus on nuclear nonproliferation, special operations and intelligence, as well as increased funding for U.S. cyber security, all hallmarks of the Millennial Budget. However, in a sharp departure from Millennial Budget priorities, the Pentagon intends to maintain the bomber leg of the "nuclear triad," which consists of three delivery components for nuclear arms: bomber aircrafts, land-based missiles, and ballistic missile submarines. The Obama administration should end this redundant and expensive component of U.S. strategic deterrence. Millennials firmly believe that substantial cost savings can be found in the antiquated and increasingly expensive U.S. nuclear architecture, whose size and capability far exceed that needed to counter 21st century threats. A responsible scaling back of the U.S. nuclear arsenal will save an additional $11 billion annually.

Ultimately, the Obama administration and the Pentagon deserve applause for a long-overdue strategic reassessment of U.S. military capabilities, ambitions, and resources. Simultaneously, groups like the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network must continue to advocate for prudent reduction in wasteful defense spending and reinvestment in our most promising assets for global influence: diplomacy, foreign aid, clean energy innovation and energy independence, and collective security organizations.

Chris Scanzoni is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying public policy analysis, mathematical decision sciences, and history. He is active on both a chapter and national level with the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network.

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