| Abortion 3 | Jul 13, 2009 | Administration 6 | Aug 25, 2009 |
| Agriculture 8 | Oct 06, 2009 | Civil Rights 10 | Oct 28, 2009 |
| Criminal Justice 10 | Oct 19, 2009 | Defense 26 | Aug 26, 2009 |
| Diversity 1 | Jun 15, 2009 | Economy 7 | Jul 31, 2009 |
| Education 27 | Aug 16, 2009 | Energy/Environment 27 | Oct 05, 2009 |
| Ethics Reform 13 | Jul 28, 2009 | Foreign Policy 28 | Aug 26, 2009 |
| Government Spending 6 | Jun 23, 2009 | Health Care 12 | Sep 09, 2009 |
| Housing/Urban Policy 10 | Aug 26, 2009 | Infrastructure 6 | Sep 03, 2009 |
| Labor 14 | Mar 16, 2009 | Miscellaneous 2 | Jun 19, 2009 |
| Public Service 8 | Apr 21, 2009 | Science/Technology 5 | Aug 20, 2009 |
| Social Security/Medicare 3 | Oct 15, 2009 | Taxes 15 | Aug 19, 2009 |
| Veterans 14 | Oct 22, 2009 |
As part of a defense spending bill, Obama signed into law stronger protections from hate crimes for gay and transgendered people. Obama said the bill will "help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are."
At the signing ceremony was the mother of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man whose beating death in 1998 became a rallying point; the bill is named for him. It took more than a decade after the murder before Congress could pass legislation that President Clinton had originally pressed and that later gained little traction under President Bush, who had suggested he might veto it.
"I promised Judy Shepard, when she saw me in the Oval Office, that this day would come," Obama said.
Obama signed the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 into law, allowing advance appropriations authority for certain parts of the Veterans Affairs budget.
Medical marijuana users who are following state law are no longer a federal law enforcement priority, the Justice Department announced today. The department said it would still go after related offenses in the 14 states with medical marijuana provisions on the books, including weapons charges and illegal trafficking.
Because there will be no cost-of-living raise in Social Security benefits in 2010, Obama announced plans for seniors to recieve an extra $250 check sometime next year. The White House did not say how the program would be funded, but said it would keep benefits going in a year when they were not scheduled to increase due to inflation.
By Emily Vaughan
In early September, the Obama administration released a series of draft reports about restoring the Chesapeake Bay. Largely overlooked, these reports could serve as a blueprint for tightening regulations on farms across the country.
Federal agencies tasked with helping restore the Chesapeake Bay drafted the reports following a May executive order. The Environmental Protection Agency, given the goal of defining "the next generation of tools and actions" to improve water quality, set its sights in one of the reports on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs): large-scale animal farms that the Clean Water Act regulates as a point-source for pollution.
As much as 25 percent of all pollution in the Bay originates at CAFOs in the form of animal waste runoff, said Chuck Fox, the EPA's senior adviser to the administrator for the Chesapeake Bay. Agricultural practices are the largest contributors of the nutrient and sediment pollution that makes it into the Bay, the EPA report says. Excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, the main pollution culprits, wash into waterways and cause destructive algae blooms that create dead zones, areas where there isn't enough oxygen in the water to support life.
Excess manure at CAFOs is the source of the problem. Current federal regulations require farmers to outline how they will deal with animal waste. But the regulations only cover what happens in the production area at the farm, a big loophole for farmers who can escape federal oversight by taking the manure off-site.
It's no surprise that the EPA's recommendations include tightening restrictions on factory farms. Currently, many such facilities must obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. The EPA's plans in the Bay hinge on expanding the number of legally defined CAFOs so they fall under this permit system.
The EPA also recommends revising the definition of CAFOs to cover smaller operations, and wants to institute "next generation" nutrient management plans and better recordkeeping of the waste farmers move off their property. Fox anticipates that federal rulemaking would take two to three years, though if the recommendations were implemented through individual states in the watershed, all of which currently have stricter standards than the EPA, the time could be cut in half.
"Unlike past documents that focused on goals, this one focuses almost entirely on actions," said William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, in a statement the day after the release of the reports.
Thus far, the recommendations remain local. "We got very direct directions from the president with respect to the Chesapeake, so we're focusing a lot of our attention on the Chesapeake," said Mike Shapiro, deputy assistant administrator for water at the EPA. "And we're also still in the process of implementing our new CAFO regulations nationally."
Just because specific policies would work in the Chesapeake "wouldn't necessarily mean that the same requirement would be justified or necessary on a national basis," Shapiro said. But he conceded that with additional study, some of the practices could be put in place in other areas. "I can't exclude the possibility that we may be modifying our national regulations as well," he added.
Obama signed an executive order that requires federal agencies to set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target within the next three months. The order adds on to an order President Bush signed in January 2007 that dealt with energy efficiency more generally; it did not include a specific reduction target.
By Emily Vaughan
Likely due to bipartisan concerns about America’s aging farm population, Obama promised in his Blueprint for Change to provide tax incentives that help new farmers. And despite a crowded presidential agenda, farmers advocacy groups are positioning themselves to capitalize whenever they become the next priority.
Last year’s Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, commonly known as the Farm Bill, set federal farm policy effective until 2013. The law includes several loan programs for beginning farmers, but absent from the bill are any tax credits.
“The farm bill doesn’t usually deal with tax issues,” said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Despite the fact that tax changes were included in the Farm Bill, there wasn’t much push to establish tax credits for beginning farmers. “We weren’t really prepared to make a push,” said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director for the Center for Rural Affairs.
Instead, the Farm Bill expanded some loan programs for beginning farmers, including the federal Down Payment Loan Program, which provides capital to new farmers to buy land and equipment -- typically the biggest barrier to opening a new farm. Under the new bill, the interest rate was lowered and the loans are guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture. “The program has just really been going gangbusters in the last year,” Hoefner said. During the first 14 years of the program, about 3,000 loans were issued, but there have been close to 1,500 in the last year alone, he said.
The Farm Bill also included a pilot program that matches up to $6,000 in a farmer’s savings account if the money is used to buy farmland and livestock, make early mortgage payments, or pay for similar expenses.
Still, the success of the Farm Bill’s loan strategy hasn’t made Obama’s promise obsolete, advocates say. “Loans are important, but access to the money does not necessarily get you access to the land,” Hoefner said. “Policy needs to work comprehensively and the tax incentive side is part of that equation.”
By putting cash back in the hands of beginning farmers, the tax incentives are “of a bit more value to the young person who’s trying to make some of their initial investments before they take on any substantial debt to buy land,” Hassebrook said. CFRA is currently working on developing a bill on microenterprise tax credits for small farmers and businesses, which they hope to add to a congressional tax bill. The idea is to be prepared by the time another tax bill goes through Congress.
There are two types of potential tax credits at the federal level, Hoefner said: a federal equivalent of the state tax-supported first-time farmer loans (or “aggie bonds”) and capital gains tax breaks. Currently, an IRS tax ruling makes federal aggie bonds impossible, and there hasn’t been much political will to overrule it. Congress did not include any provisions for changing the ruling in last year’s Farm Bill. But “the White House and Treasury could make the change administratively,” Hoefner said. “The ball is very much in their court, should they want to begin to fulfill the campaign pledge.”
Capital gains tax breaks -- if targeted specifically to beginning farmers -- would also help, Hoefner says. Several bills proposing that have been introduced in the last decade, but none have gone far. Now, it’s not even at the top of NSAC’s agenda, let alone that of any legislators. Hoefner anticipates his organization will start pushing for it next year.
Tax credit programs for beginning farmers exist in two states: Iowa and Nebraska. Under these programs, landowners get a tax credit for renting agricultural assets such as land, livestock or equipment to beginning farmers. CFRA helped with the passage of both programs, which help connect new and retiring farmers, says Traci Bruckner, assistant director for rural policy at CFRA.
Obama is the first president to specifically outline tax credits for new farmers, Hoefner said, but he doubts anyone in the administration is paying attention to it with bigger issues looming. Bruckner calls Obama’s promise a “first step in the process.”
Even if advocacy groups are ready, there’s no guarantee that tax credits will become law, especially given the country’s other economic challenges “We’re facing big deficits right now,” Hassebrook said. “There’s not going to be an immediate opportunity to create new tax incentives, more likely than not. But a lot of the success in passing legislation involves getting ready and prepared so that, when there is an opportunity, you’re ready to go.”
The Environmental Protection Agency announced proposed rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions of the largest industrial facilities, such as coal-fired plants and oil refineries. The rules would require facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year to obtain construction and operating permits covering their emissions. The agency estimates these facilities account for 70 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions coming from domestic stationary sources.
The climate change bill proposed by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., includes a cap-and-trade system that would aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Their cut is 3 percentage points more than the House's version.
Click here for the Environment and Public Works Committee's summary of the cap-and-trade provision. Many key details are not yet included in the bill, since other committees have jurisdiction over certain provisions, such as how emissions permits would be distributed.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced joint regulations that increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards and create the first-ever federal standard to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. According to the two agencies, the new standards will help increase fuel economy by about 5 percent every year.
These standards follow through on Obama's announcement in May calling for an increase in CAFE standards from 27.5 mpg to 35.5 mpg by 2016.
