My Response to the Biden-Harris Plan

 

November 7, 2020

 

My Response to the Biden-Harris Plan

 

My name is Alberta Parish, and I read the Biden-Harris plan, which addresses the health and economic impact of COVID-19 on the African American community as well as the wealth and income disparities. The plan also proposes to close the wealth and income gap for African Americans and ensure access to capital for minority and black business owners, particularly women of color. There are a few key points I would like to highlight from the Biden-Harris plan relating to student loan forgiveness, wealth and income disparities, access to affordable and high-quality health care during the COVID-19 crisis as well as protection of essential workers on the frontlines of the pandemic, and the racial, gender and income-based disparities in the criminal justice system. In the Biden-Harris plan, the new administration’s proposal, which addresses the student debt crisis includes the following:

1. Forgiving all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges for debt-holders earning up to $125,000. This will also apply to individuals holding federal student loans for tuition from private HBCUs and MSIs.
2. Forgiving loan payments for individuals making $25,000 or less per year and capping loan payments at 5% of discretionary income for those making more. 
3. Fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and forgiving $10,000 of undergraduate or graduate student debt for every year of national or community service, up to five years.
4. Cracking down on private lenders profiteering off of students by empowering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action against private lenders who are misleading students about their options and do not provide an affordable payment plan when individuals are experiencing acute periods of financial hardship.
5. Permitting the discharge of student loans in bankruptcy.

I am a student loan debt-holder, and forgiveness of loan payments or forgiveness of federal student debt would immediately alleviate a lot of stress that I brought upon myself by acquiring this debt. Forgiveness of my federal student debt or loan payments would give me the peace of mind that I will truly need as I continue to age. Let’s face it: aging in America sucks when you don’t have millions of dollars in capital, land ownership, and some sort of financial inheritance or even a decent retirement pension fund.

As a younger woman, I could not afford college. I never should have attended college immediately after graduating from high school. Not everyone needs to go to college. There are many students that already know their true passion(s) before graduating high school. Certain jobs do not require a four-year degree. Many jobs and/or careers only require certification programs, or trade school. Before I attended a trade school in 1993-94, I should have waited just to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The logical thing would have been for me to major in Writing & Literature at a four-year university or state college. I have been writing since the age of 13. By the time I entered high school, I was getting straight A’s in my English classes. I had one English teacher that didn’t like some of the things I was writing. But he still gave me an A for much of my work. I was always curious about people, places, certain historical figures—primarily ancient and medieval. I read a lot of books when I was in high school. I read classical literature, historical works, autobiographies, biographies, and works of fiction by Stephen King, R.L. Stine, and many others. I loved history, especially ancient and medieval history.

By the time I figured out that writing was the ultimate career for me, it was already too late. I also could have taught English Literature in school. I could’ve majored in Journalism & TV Broadcasting. Instead, I’d accumulated thousands of dollars in student debt for a low-quality, undergraduate education in a field of study that I had absolutely no passion for, and it was truly a waste of my life. Furthermore, I never worked in the field on which my degree was based.

I thought by attending trade school, I would achieve more than what my mother and her mother achieved during their lifetime. I didn’t want to feel like a loser anymore, so I went back to school in 2014 and acquired additional student debt. I aspired to be somebody in life and hoped that things would work out for me this time. I just knew that I was going to be successful based on my college education. Unfortunately, life did not turn out the way I planned. I had high hopes for a successful career as a paralegal after completing my program at Atlanta Technical College in 2017. However, hope does not pay the bills or keep a roof over your head. I was the victim of workplace discrimination and bullying at a Black-owned law firm and lost my job as a paralegal. It was my first job as a paralegal case worker at the Atlanta firm. I was devastated, and if I’m being truly honest, I had not yet gotten over that.

Today, I am an essential worker in retail, but I am also a published author that has written my latest book entitled, “God is on Trial: How Religion Keeps Humanity Under Mind Control & Fear.” Writing books, and also writing essays online for my news magazine is my real passion. The only problem is my passion is not generating consistent revenue that I need to survive without having to work in retail as an essential worker where I am constantly at risk of contracting COVID-19.

Wealth and Income Disparities

The Biden-Harris plan includes the following related to closing the racial wealth and income gaps:

    1.     Invest in African American Businesses and Entrepreneurs

    2.   Ensuring equal access to credit and capital

a.      To increase investment and access to capital, Biden will:

·       Double funding for the State Small Business Credit Initiative. The Obama-Biden Administration created the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) to support small businesses, driving $10 billion in new lending for each $1 billion in SSBCI funds. Biden will extend the program through 2025 and double its federal funding to $3 billion, driving close to $30 billion of private sector investments to small businesses all told, especially those owned by women and people of color.

·       Expand the New Markets Tax Credit, make the program permanent, and double Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) funding. The New Markets Tax Credit has helped draw tens of billions of dollars in new capital to low-income communities, providing tax credits to investors in community development organizations that support everything from supermarkets to real estate projects to manufacturing plants.  As part of his plan to reinvest in communities across the country, including in rural areas, Biden will also double funding for the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, which supports local, mission-driven financial institutions in low-income areas around the U.S. This builds on Biden’s proposal to support entrepreneurs in small towns and rural areas by expanding both the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program and the number of Rural Business Investment Companies, to help rural businesses attract capital.

·       Improve and expand the Small Business Administration programs that most effectively support African American-owned businesses. The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) programs have been and remain one of the most effective ways of accessing capital for African American-owned businesses.

     3.    Increase opportunities for African American-owned businesses to obtain or participate in federal contracts. 

     4.  Increase funding for the Minority Business Development Agency budget. MBDA plays a critical role in supporting the development and growth of minority-owned businesses around the country, as well as providing needed assistance to federal and state agencies so that they award minority-owned businesses procurement contracts. The Trump Administration has pushed for a 75% cut in MBDA’s budget. Biden would protect and call for increased funding for it.

Closing the racial wealth and income gaps is not impossible. However, this remains to be seen during the Biden-Harris administration.

Universal Basic Income

As an immediate response to the economic disparities that are so glaringly obvious due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a stimulus proposal of $2,000 per month, up to 12 months or beyond would put cash directly into the hands of millions of people who have either been laid off or lost their primary source of income due to the pandemic. The House and Senate leaders should also propose a universal basic income for life because millions of jobs have already been lost and are never coming back. There are thousands of small businesses around the country that are lost forever.

Access to Affordable & High-Quality Health Care

Obamacare ensures health care coverage to millions of people who previously could not afford to even visit a medical treatment facility for health conditions—either pre-existing or unexpected. According to the Biden-Harris plan, he will help address racial disparities in the health care system in the following ways:

• Reducing the uninsured rate for African Americans by creating a public option health plan. Nationally, 11% of nonelderly African Americans are uninsured, compared to 8% of white people. This disparity is far greater in states with Republican governors who have not expanded Medicaid. Biden will give all Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option like Medicare. And he will ensure the individuals who would be eligible for Medicaid but for their state’s inaction are automatically enrolled on to the public option, at no cost to the individual.
• Improving care for patients with chronic conditions, by coordinating among all of a patient’s doctors. This is particularly important for patients with chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, which disproportionately impact African Americans.
• Lowering costs for African Americans enrolled in Obamacare plans by increasing the value of tax credits to lower premium and lowering deductibles by making other changes to how the tax credits are calculated.
• Lowering drug prices, by allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug prices and stopping drug companies from price gouging on new drugs.
• Reducing our unacceptably high African American maternal mortality rate. African American women are 2.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than non-Hispanic white women. California came up with a strategy that halved the state’s maternal death rate. The Biden plan takes the California strategy nationwide.
• Expanding access to reproductive health care, including contraception and protecting the constitutional right to choose. Biden supports repealing the Hyde Amendment. He will also restore funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides services necessary to address health disparities, including breast cancer screenings and HIV/AIDS counseling, screening, and treatment. The breast cancer death rate is over 40% higher for African Americans than white women, and in 2016, African American women comprised 60% of new HIV cases.
• Doubling the nation’s investment in community health centers. Community health centers provide primary, prenatal, and other important care, and their patients are disproportionately members of racial and ethnic minority groups, including African Americans.
• Expanding access to mental health care. African Americans are far less likely to receive mental health services or compared to white adults.  Biden will ensure mental health parity and eliminating the stigma around mental health are critical to closing this gap.
• Tackling social determinants of health. Because racial health disparities are the result of years of systemic inequality not only in our health care system, but across our economy, other parts of Joe Biden’s agenda are also necessary to improve the overall well-being of African Americans. For example, African Americans are more likely to face exposure to air pollutants that cause respiratory illnesses that make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

Universal Health Care

How about the House and Senate creating a law for universal health care in which the government pays the bulk of health care services for its citizens? The United Kingdom has a national health care system. Canada has universal health care. According to the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984, Canadian citizens have access to national health care services. Canada’s health care system may not be the greatest, but neither is the U.S. health care system. The only difference is the Canadian government provides payment of up to 70% for its citizens health care needs while the remaining 30% is taken care of by citizens. The Canadian health care system is called Medicare. Why can’t the United States provide its citizens national health care? The U.S. already has a form of national health care called Medicaid and Medicare. Expand that program.

Protection of Essential Workers In the COVID-19 Crisis

Here are the following proposals in the Biden-Harris plan concerning essential workers on the frontlines of the pandemic:

1. Ensure all frontline workers, like grocery store employees, qualify for priority access to personnel protective equipment (PPE) and COVID-19 testing based upon their risk of exposure to the virus, as well as child care assistance, and other forms of emergency COVID-19 support.
2. Expand access to effective personal protective equipment, including through use of the Defense Production Act.
3. Establish and enforce health and safety standards for workplaces.
4. Enact premium pay for frontline workers putting themselves at risk. There is no substitute for ensuring worker safety, but all frontline workers putting their lives on the line should receive premium pay for their work. This premium pay should be in addition to paid sick leave and care-giving leave for every worker, which Biden called for in his plan, and $15 minimum wage for all workers.

A federal minimum wage of $15 for all workers is a great idea. But if the cost of living increases due to a federal minimum wage increase, homelessness, food insecurity, and income disparities will continue to persist throughout the United States. Universal basic income is a guaranteed check no matter the job or income status of an individual. This is what Congress, and the Senate should focus on—universal basic income for all!

Racial, Gender & Income Disparities in the Criminal Justice System

President-elect Joe Biden says that we can and must reduce the number of people incarcerated in this country while also reducing crime. Unfortunately, people in America are a violent group and I see no possible way that the Democrats in the White House, Congress, or the Senate can ever reduce crime in this country. There are way too many violent people in this country. The people in this country love their guns, and they are not willing to relinquish their right to keep and bear arms for their own protection or for other reasons. Unless the Democrats and Republicans plan to abolish the Second Amendment to the Constitution, there is no possible way that crime will ever be reduced. At least, not during my lifetime. There’s no possible way that gun violence can and will be reduced without abolishing the Second Amendment! The killers and criminals aren’t going to relinquish their firearms. Can the U.S. Government disarm the entire nation without abolishing the Second Amendment?

The Biden-Harris plan states that “African American mothers and fathers should feel confident that their children are safe walking the streets of America. And, when a police officer pins on that shield and walks out the door, the officer’s family should know they’ll come home at the end of the day. Additionally, women and children are uniquely impacted by the criminal justice system, and the system needs to address their unique needs.”

The truth of the matter is black people are possibly more fearful walking the streets in their own neighborhoods for fear of assaults, robberies, gun violence, rapes, sex trafficking, etc. committed by members of their own community. As a Black woman, I’ve never feared walking the streets because of a police officer. While I recognize there are racial, gender and income disparities in the criminal justice system, I’ve never spent a day or night behind bars. I can’t relate to being incarcerated or wrongfully accused of a crime I did not commit, ending up falsely convicted and sent to prison for either a false police report or bogus accusation. However, that does not mean I’m naïve to what is happening around me. Human beings are flawed, and unfortunately, there are more bad people in the world than good people.

Biden proposes to strengthen America’s commitment to justice and reform the criminal justice system with these core principles

1. Our criminal justice system cannot be just unless we root out the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system.
2. Our criminal justice system must be focused on redemption and rehabilitation. 
3. No one should be profiteering off of our criminal justice system.

Biden states that “no one should be profiteering off of our criminal justice system.” But many politicians, elected officials in all levels of government, and non-politicians do. How do you stop corruption at the top and mid-levels of the government and in the private sector? Private prison contractors and companies are in bed with government.

Biden’s response to criminal justice reform includes the immediate passage of Congressman Bobby Scott’s SAFE Justice Act, an evidence-based, comprehensive bill to reform our criminal justice system “from front-end sentencing reform to back-end release policies.” The Biden Plan will also go further. Biden will take bold action to reduce our prison population, create a more just society, and make our communities safer. He will: 

•  Expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices. Using authority in legislation spearheaded by Biden as senator, the Obama-Biden Justice Department used pattern-or-practice investigations and consent decrees to address circumstances of “systemic police misconduct” and to “restore trust between police and communities” in cities such as Ferguson. Yet, the Trump Administration’s Justice Department has limited the use of this tool. Under the Biden Administration, the Justice Department will again use its authority to root out unconstitutional or unlawful policing. In addition, Biden will push for legislation to clarify that this pattern-or-practice investigation authority can also be used to address systemic misconduct by prosecutors’ offices. 
• Establish an independent Task Force on Prosecutorial Discretion. The Biden Administration will create a new task force, placed outside of the U.S. Department of Justice, to make recommendations for tackling discrimination and other problems in our justice system that results from arrest and charging decisions.
• Reinvigorate community-oriented policing. Policing works best when officers are out of their cruisers and walking the streets, engaging with and getting to know members of their communities. But in order to do that, police departments need resources to hire a sufficient number of officers. Biden spearheaded the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which authorized funding both for the hiring of additional police officers and for training on how to undertake a community policing approach. However, the program has never been funded to fulfill the original vision for community policing. Biden will reinvigorate the COPS program with a $300 million investment. As a condition of the grant, hiring of police officers must mirror the racial diversity of the community they serve. Additionally, as President, Biden will establish a panel to scrutinize what equipment is used by law enforcement in our communities.

Biden further proposes ending the criminalization of poverty. Homelessness, racial inequities in lending, and income disparities could be ended within two years in this country. Let’s see what the Biden-Harris administration offers and produces within the next four years.

The black community is tired of the excuses we hear every election cycle coming from the Left and the Right. This is how President Donald Trump got fired from the White House. The American people said NO to four more years of a Trump administration. Will Biden be a one-term president? It depends on the next four years. To accomplish the Biden-Harris plan, there will need to be bipartisanship. Hoping that Congress or the Senate will cooperate with the White House can no longer be camouflaged as the go-to excuse for the Democrats.

My Expectations from the Elected Democrats

I expect to see the provisions in the Biden-Harris plan accomplished within the next four years. This will require bipartisanship. Cooperation from members of Congress and the Senate working side by side with the Biden-Harris administration will get these provisions accomplished. As a life-long Democrat, I expect the Democratic Party to honor its arrangement with the black community in America. I did not support Trump in 2016 and neither did I support him in 2020. Biden’s non-endorsement of reparations for black people is a problem. Whether or not Biden will be a one-term president will possibly hang on the fact that there are pockets of the black community that are demanding reparations in return for their vote. This may not seem like a huge problem right now, but four years from today it may be a determining factor in black people who voted for Biden in 2020 deciding not to vote for him again in 2024. Although Biden has publicly admitted that the 1994 Crime Bill was a mistake, there are pockets of the black community that do not believe what he says. Hannah Bleau of Breitbart wrote that “Joe Biden admitted that his 1994 crime bill was a “mistake” during a televised town hall on Thursday.” People will be closely watching to see if there will be comprehensive police reforms, and whether the administration directly puts a halt to disproportionate incarcerations along racial lines as well as gender and income. The violence we see in society is also the result of moral and social decay. Also, poverty produces petty criminals who sometimes turn into violent criminals, depending on the circumstances and opportunities criminals have in committing violent acts. Atlanta gang members have been committing the most heinous crimes in the Atlanta area, many of whom have since been apprehended and sentenced whose crimes extend as far back as the Obama-Biden administration.

In 2019, five gang members were sentenced for killing a father of two named Christopher Dean who showed up at their residence for a drug transaction. He was a father and husband who had lived in California where he was once a police witness. The gang members found out and brutally killed him. They beat him with a crowbar, crushed his skull, sodomized and tortured him for hours.

Black neighborhoods are rife with serial killers, rapists, child murderers, armed robbers, psychotic persons, and pedophiles that wreak havoc upon communities of color and the black community. I’m not making excuses for the mass incarcerations. But there are many black people who have been railroaded by the criminal justice system. We need these jails and prisons for the criminal element, but at the same time innocent people also end up being railroaded for crimes they didn’t commit. In addition, the non-violent element sometimes receives more time in prison for selling crack than for killing someone.

Reparations Need to be Revisited by Democrat-Elected Officials

Reparations are owed to the descendants of American slavery for the mass murder, kidnapping, torture, rape, abuse, lynching, horrendous medical experimentation upon black bodies, enslavement, human and sex trafficking of millions from indigenous Negro, and Native American populations. Neither candidate endorsed reparations for black people, and it could end up being the nail in the coffin for many Democrat officials in two and four years from today. Reparations should be revisited by elected officials. But in the meantime, I expect a federal minimum wage increase of $15 for all, forgiveness of federal student debt and forgiveness of loan payments, closing the racial wealth and income gaps, access to capital and credit for entrepreneurs and business owners primarily in minority and urban communities, more police funding and proper training of new officers, more social programs for mentally-ill persons, access to affordable and high-quality health care although I prefer universal health care, and any provision in the Biden-Harris plan.

I don’t know fully what the future holds in the next two to four years. But what I do know is hope is not going to get things done in Congress or the Senate. I don’t live by hope and faith. I live according to reality. Right now, reality says people need a second stimulus payout. Many families and single individuals in America are struggling to make ends meet and need some monetary assistance. These low-wage jobs aren’t sufficient. People are going from earning $70,000 a year to less than $25,000, which is only enough for a single person. Not an entire family.

President Trump may not want to concede but he has no other alternative but to concede. Despite any suspicions that his campaign and administration have regarding this 2020 Election, it is clear many people around this country doesn’t want Trump as a two-term president. Right now, many people are out of work. Many unemployed. Laid off from their jobs. Furloughed. We all could use a second stimulus check. Universal basic income would be great, too. For the elected Democrats’ sake, they need to start doing what is in the best interest of the people of this nation. We don’t need another Nazi Germany. Neither do we need a Kim Jong-un. We don’t need to go backwards in our thinking and mentality. We don’t need to succumb to our basic animal instincts like Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did throughout Europe and other parts of the world. We do not need another Holocaust on this planet. Neither do we need another French-type Revolution. We must evolve as a species, because if we do not, we will not survive as a species on this planet. Evolve usually connotates positive change and development. Our technology and weapons are going to be the very things that cause ruin to the human family. We need to learn to evolve without technology and weapons, because our way of life is an unnatural way of life. The human being is out of balance with the rest of nature. Until we become one with nature again, we’re not going to see positive evolution of our species.