The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-27)

A24 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27 , 2021

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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D

EMOCRATS RUSHED Tuesday

to finish a massive spending bill

before President Biden leaves

for international meetings later

this week. As they approached a deal on

the outlines, they appeared to be at risk

of producing legislation that is so

compromised and slapdash that it

would amount to a tragic missed oppor-

tunity. On the spending side, Democrats

might skimp on permanent structural

reforms so they can fund more pro-

grams that are smaller or short-term.

On the revenue side, their plans might

easily result in massive new debt. This is

not what Mr. Biden promised.

Democratic holdouts Sen. Joe Man-

chin III (W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema

(Ariz.) demanded a s maller bill than

most in their party favored. In response,

Democrats have struggled to prioritize.

They should have forgotten about

spending yet more money on already

highly subsidized senior health care,

focusing instead on permanently shor-

ing up the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

and Medicaid programs for working-age

people who would otherwise struggle to

get even basic coverage. Yet some form

of Medicare expansion for retirees is still

on the table, while Democrats are dis-

cussing ACA and Medicaid fixes that

might run only a few years.

Similarly, Democrats might expand

the child tax credit for perhaps only a

single year. The expanded credit could

halve child poverty. A long-term expan-

sion should take precedence over a

federal pre-kindergarten program or

expanded housing aid.

If temporary benefits expire as writ-

ten, the nation will derive little long-

term good for its money. Democrats

might bet that future Congresses — even

those run by Republicans — w ould not

want to revoke popular benefits. If that

is so, the Democrats’ bill would effective-

ly write a suite of expensive new pro-

grams into the law without long-term

revenue streams to back them. Ms.

Sinema compounded the funding prob-

lems by derailing Democrats’ plan to roll

back President Donald Trump’s ruinous

tax cuts, which were massive giveaways

to the rich at a time of high wealth

inequality and big budget deficits. Rath-

er than modestly raising the individual

and corporate tax rates, she appears to

have forced Democrats into embracing a

complex billionaire tax that the Supreme

Court might well strike down. Another

big revenue source, pumped-up Internal

Revenue Service tax enforcement, may

well fail to bring in the massive amounts

Democrats claim it would. These squishy

pay-fors seem designed to provide an

illusion of fiscal integrity that could

quickly evaporate after the bill passes.

Meanwhile, Mr. Manchin appears to

have forced the Democrats to drop their

central climate change policy, a s tandard

that would have pushed utilities to

steadily adopt clean energy, leaving only

a laundry list of expensive green subsi-

dies in the bill. This would not and

should not impress other nations that

have adopted real carbon caps to guide

their economies.

D emocrats should cut more programs

and make the ones they embrace effec-

tive and durable. They should find more

believable pay-fors. And they should try

again to develop a strong climate policy

that Mr. Manchin can live with.

A missed opportunity

Democrats are at risk of watering down Build Back Better in a slapdash fashion.

“W

e weren’t going to say you

are not good enough, not

smart enough.... Every

child should be helped.”

That is why t he nonprofit that Argelia

Rodriguez was asked to head 22 years ago

to encourage D.C. public high school stu-

dents to go to college set no eligibility

requirements. Nothing was disqualifying:

not grade-point average or family income,

not citizenship status or juvenile criminal

history. The result has been thousands of

children having an opportunity they

might never have had to build better lives.

Ms. Rodriguez will step down as presi-

dent and chief executive of the District of

Columbia College Access Program

( DC-CAP) at the end of the school year.

She has been the program’s only leader

since its start in 1999, when a group of

local business executives decided to do

something about the dismal number of

D.C. students going to college. Fewer than

1 in 3 D .C. high school graduates enrolled

in higher-education institutions, and only

15 percent would graduate college within

10 years. The business executives, led by

Donald Graham, then the publisher of

The Post, established the privately funded

nonprofit DC-CAP and laid down a c hal-

lenge to double the rate of D.C. students

who enroll in college and triple the num-

ber of those who graduate.

To say that Ms. Rodriguez rose to the

challenge is an understatement. Two dec-

ades on, about two-thirds of D.C. gradu-

ates go to college — close to the national

average — and about half of them gradu-

ate within six years. The program has

enrolled more than 35,000 students in

college and awarded nearly $55 million

in scholarships. Ms. Rodriguez persuad-

ed a hesitant D.C. public school system to

partner in allowing the placement of

counselors in schools to encourage stu-

dents — mostly Black and poor — to apply

to college, winning over their parents

and guiding them through the process.

“We had to get families and guardians to

understand that to move the family gen-

erationally, they had to support the edu-

cation and higher education of the kids,”

Ms. Rodriguez told The Post’s Vanessa G.

Sánchez.

Central to instilling a c ollege-going cul-

ture in D.C. was congressional enactment

of the District of Columbia Tuition Assis-

tance Grant program, which allows

D.C. high school graduates to pay in-state

tuition rates at state colleges outside

Washington. “DC-TAG put students in a

new world,” said Mr. Graham. “They really

could afford college, and DC-CAP counsel-

ors were there to offer advice on how to

pay for it.”

But DC-TAG has not kept pace with the

skyrocketing costs of tuition. Annual

awards are capped at $10,000 and lifetime

awards at $50,000; a Democratic-backed

appropriations bill would, for the first

time since the program was created, in-

crease the annual amount, to $15,000, and

the lifetime total, to $75,000. That would

help. Meanwhile, DC-CAP is evolving.

When it was created, D C-CAP staff had to

fill the role of high school counselors, but

that void has been filled so DC-CAP is

putting renewed emphasis on college

completion by pa rtnering with schools

that have shown success in graduating

D.C. students. It is hard to imagine

D C-CAP without Ms. Rodriguez at the

helm, but she leaves the program well

p ositioned to take on new challenges.

‘Every child should be helped’

The secret of a successful D.C. nonprofit

Regarding the Oct. 20 Metro article

“County faces pushback over proposed

mandate”:

I am disappointed in the seemingly

cavalier attitude of members of the fire

and emergency medical services depart-

ments in refusing to get vaccinated and

not complying with the Montgomery

County requirement for testing.

I have always assumed that EMS em-

ployees and volunteers treat patients

with the methods that have proved suc-

cessful after testing by the medical com-

munity. If so, how can they refuse the

vaccines that have proved highly effec-

tive in preventing serious disease?

Likewise, where is the leadership of

these departments in not assuring that

unvaccinated employees are being test-

ed, a requirement since August? Does

that mean that employees are also not

following requirements to stay certified

in other parts of their jobs, such as CPR,

medication administration, etc.?

Carol Whitney, Silver Spring

A cavalier attitude

Regarding the Oct. 19 news article

“U.S. signs accord with Georgia as Russia

tensions flare”:

NATO and President Biden are still

reluctant to admit Georgia and Ukraine

into the alliance under the excuse of

corruption and nontransparency of

many aspects of political and economic

criteria. Georgia and Ukraine are two

special countries, unlike other NATO

members. They are on the front line with

Russia. It is certainly difficult to meet

NATO criteria under this condition at

this time.

Furthermore, NATO requirement is

not a strict rule carved in stone. Each

NATO member country was treated dif-

ferently based on its specific geostr ategic

considerations. Turkey and Greece were

admitted to the alliance even though they

were in conflict with each other.

The keystone of NATO requirement is

democracy. How can you expect total

democracy when Ukraine and Georgia

are constantly under threat from Russia?

Is cleaning the house a priority as Rus-

sian guns loom at the horizon? The NATO

alliance will be much stronger with

Ukraine and Georgia on board. This will

and might deter any future war with

Russia and save the world.

Duy-Tam Tran-Kiem, Potomac

How to make NATO stronger

The Oct. 19 Health & Science article

“Antibody tests can’t give answers you

want about covid-19 immunity” was over-

ly negative about the use of antibody

tests that can confirm immunity to fight a

coronavirus infection. Dozens of coun-

tries, particularly those in Europe, have

rolled out antibody testing for a wide

range of purposes. Some have made

antibody testing a part of their official

framework for determining whether

someone has had the virus recently and

recovered — and can therefore get a

coronavirus passport or certificate. In

Austria, for instance, people can take

official covid antibody tests to determine

if they are deemed “recovered,” and can

get that country’s health pass as a result.

It should be noted that anti-N tests

look for antibodies that recognize a

molecule inside the virus called the

nucleocapsid (N). These are produced

only if you have caught the coronavirus

previously and show natural immunity.

Anti-S tests detect antibodies against the

spike protein (S) on the surface of the

virus. Anti-S tests detect antibodies pro-

duced both through natural infection

and vaccination.

Joel S. Hirschhorn, Chevy Chase

Antibody tests can be useful

Ruth Marcus wrote in her Oct. 20

op-ed, “The Supreme Court gets a second

chance on Texas,” that Texas’s ban on

abortions after six weeks is “patently

unconstitutional.”

Roe v. Wade was admitted by its

author, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, to

simply be a product of his penum-

bra. Roe’s conference of constitutional

“personhood” at birth is absurd because

it’s a v ariable point. As Justice Sandra

Day O’Connor said, Roe is “clearly on a

collision course with itself.”

It is ridiculous to say a child born

prematurely at five months after concep-

tion is a person, but the same child

aborted at five months after conception

isn’t. If one is pronounced dead when the

heart ceases to beat, then one’s life begins

with the onset of a heartbeat. Thus,

Texas’s ban on abortions after six weeks

should be upheld.

Dennis Cuddy, Raleigh, N.C.

Uphold Texas’s abortion law

ABCDE

FREDERICK J. RYAN JR., Publisher and Chief Executive Officer

ABCDE

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EDITORIALS

M

ONDAY’S APPARENTLY suc-

cessful military coup in Sudan

comes after weeks of spiraling

political tension — and grow-

ing signs of a potential breakdown in that

country’s democratic transition. A popu-

lar uprising toppled the dictatorship of

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in

April 2019, whereupon the country’s

military and civilian leaders formally

agreed to share power until free and fair

elections in 2023. Yet of ficers and militia

leaders, with murky ties to the ousted

regime, have steadily undermined the

process. An attempted coup on Sept. 21

failed, but destabilization of Sudan con-

tinued, through orchestrated protests in

the capital, Khartoum, and strategic Port

Sudan on the Red Sea — until Monday’s

putsch, led by army chief Lt. Gen. Abdel

Fattah al-Burhan.

The military has arrested Prime Minis-

ter Abdalla Hamdok and his cabinet;

shut off the Internet; and, most ominous-

ly, fired on some of the thousands of

civilians who took to the streets in

protest of the putsch. Four deaths and

80 injuries have been reported. All of this

occurred just a few weeks before a Nov. 17

deadline for the military to hand over

control of the civil-military provisional

government to Mr. Hamdok. More blood-

shed can hardly be ruled out, given the

Sudanese military’s record, and that of

allied militias, which includes killing

100 protesters during the 2019 upheaval.

Civil war is perhaps the most extreme

risk; others include deepening economic

hardship and, of course, a permanent

reversion to dictatorship, despite

Gen. Burhan’s promise that the

2023 election will still take place.

For the United States, the coup repre-

sents a d irect challenge. It came just two

days after the Biden administration’s

special envoy for the Horn of Africa,

Jeffrey Feltman, had visited Khartoum to

warn military leaders that they were

risking the aid and diplomatic legitimacy

Sudan had regained by embarking on

democratic change and — after

Mr. Bashir’s ouster — p aying compensa-

tion to American victims of terrorism and

joining other Arab nations in recognizing

Israel. The Trump administration had

removed Sudan from the list of terrorism-

sponsoring nations, removing a key ob-

stacle to international aid and loans.

Transitional authorities in Sudan had

also accepted the jurisdiction of the

International Criminal Court in

The Hague, which accuses Mr. Bashir of

genocide in Darfur, where pro-

g overnment forces killed 300,000 people

between 2003 and 2008, according to the

United Nations. Sudan’s military was

balking at extraditing Mr. Bashir to the

court, in part because of what a trial

might reveal about the officer corps’s

wider culpability in that horrific episode.

That issue might have motivated the

coup on Monday.

All the more reason that the United

States was right to make good on

Mr. Feltman’s warnings by suspending

$700 million in economic aid. In de-

nouncing the coup, the Biden adminis-

tration found itself in sync with top

officials of the European Union, African

Union and Arab League, as well as United

Nations Secretary General António Gu-

terres. This is encouraging, but the Unit-

ed States needs to sustain unequivocal

international rejection of the coup —

including by Khartoum’s erstwhile

friends and sponsors in Saudi Arabia.

Otherwise, yet another democratic

bright spot might be wiped from the

map.

The coup in Sudan must not stand

Washington cannot allow business as usual with Khartoum’s generals.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A Sudanese boy during a protest in Khartoum, Sudan, on Oct. 26.

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Afghanistan, it is irresponsible to call for

yet another military intervention with an

indeterminate ending.

Patrick Flaherty, Bowie

Regarding the Oct. 20 editorial “We

can no longer ignore Haiti’s descent”:

With the kidnapping of 17 missionar-

ies near Port-au-Prince, The Post’s edito-

rial board turned to a familiar routine of

using the jeopardy of citizens of devel-

oped Western nations to call for interven-

tion in the Global South. Recounting

previous U.S. military occupations in

Haiti, 1915 to 1934 and 1994 to 1996, as

well as a 13-year U.N. “stabilization

force,” the board seems unable or unwill-

ing to make an essential connection.

Continuous outside intervention by the

United States, European nations and the

United Nations has handicapped the

Haitian people, not rescued them nor

allowed them to chart their own course.

Brushing away previous human rights

abuses committed against Haitians by

outside forces, the editorial board as-

sured us that this time, intervention will

work. Although given one sentence in the

editorial, the cholera epidemic started by

U.N. soldiers in 2010 resulted in the

deaths of an estimated 10,000 Haitians.

After this same paper spent months

critically covering the failures of the

United States’ longest occupation, in

No intervention in Haiti

Kudos to Karen Tumulty for “The

escaped zebras are not a Disney tale,” her

incredibly intelligent and sensitive

Oct. 22 Friday Opinion column about the

very sad plight of the zebras missing from

a Prince George’s County farm, which has

been cited for cruelty. Hopefully, the

remaining animals have been removed to

a haven where they cannot be exploit-

ed. Ms. Tumulty focused on the fact that

these animals are at great risk for harm

and death, which has already befallen

one of the three that escaped.

These animals should not be treated as

entertainment for humans, but rather as

magnificent creatures who are most like-

ly terrified, confused and in great jeopar-

dy, to say the least.

Susan Nelson, Washington

The magnificent zebras

DRAWING BOARD CLAY BENNETT

B Y CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS

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