It seems like this election season young Hispanics like me hear over and over again that we should vote to protect our “economic self-interest.” But what exactly does that mean?
Big-government politicians and interest groups think they have all the answers, promising tuition-free college, tax credits for companies that hire us, and billions of dollars in other government spending programs that will supposedly help our communities.
Yet if we’ve learned anything under the Obama administration, it’s that more government won’t help. That’s the conclusion of a recent report by my organization, The LIBRE Initiative, which shows how the policies of the last seven years have resulted in fewer work opportunities, limited education options and increased government dependence for millions of Hispanics.
We’re open to and ready for new solutions: A recent Univision poll showed that 64 percent of Hispanic millennials consider themselves persuadable and willing to embrace new ideas. That’s exactly why we must reject the stale, big-government promises we’re continually hearing about today.
The picture is bleak, thanks to policies that discourage job creation. Hispanics are currently twice as likely as non-Hispanics to work part-time, even when we would prefer full-time employment. It’s little wonder we can’t find it: The burden of regulatory costs dragged down our economy nearly $2 trillion last year, costing companies nearly $10,000 per employee. That’s nearly $10,000 per employee that could have gone to higher wages or new jobs. And while politicians claim policies like minimum wage hikes will soften the blow, the Congressional Budget Office shows they’re just as likely to kill valuable entry-level jobs.
Our children are also losing out in education. Many policymakers and supposedly pro-Hispanic groups are actively trying to eradicate school choice options such as charter schools and Educational Savings Accounts, which are lifelines to low-income children stuck in failing schools. That’s especially the case in states like Nevada and Arizona, where Hispanic children are among the largest populations in the local school systems and have much to gain from access to alternatives.
That is wrong, and it flies in the face of our community’s strong support for school choice, as well as evidence that school choice improves educational outcomes. With the Hispanic high school dropout rate still the nation’s highest, at 10.6 percent as of 2014, we desperately need these new options to better prepare our children for the rest of their lives.
Government programs are also doing more to make our community dependent on federal spending than to protect our health and well-being. A goal of the Affordable Care Act was to help Hispanics acquire affordable, high-quality private insurance. Instead Obamacare has left many Hispanics continuing to rely on the federal government. In fact, Kaiser Family Foundation data show that 29 percent of the non-elderly population on Medicaid are Hispanic as of 2014.
Policies like this, unfortunately, lead some people to pass on climbing the economic ladder if it means losing out on government benefits. A higher-paying job with more responsibilities, for example, may no longer be desirable if accepting it reduces one’s federal insurance subsidies. Even though in the long-run a new job would be more helpful to a family’s economic security, poverty traps like this are hard to escape.
These outcomes show why our community needs to be skeptical when someone purports to defend our “economic self-interests.” Big-government advocates have for decades claimed to know what works best for Hispanics, but it’s clear their goal of giving more power to government has done more to drag down our progress than to protect what matters to us.
And just what is it that matters to us?
We want to improve our lives and those of our children so they are better off than we are now. For that, opportunity is the best way forward. We want more than to be herded into one-size-fits-all government programs of dubious effectiveness. What we want is to know that we’ll be able to start businesses, find jobs, work hard for our families and get our children an education that doesn’t depend on their ZIP code.
We’re working hard and are willing to do more to achieve the American dream and we’ll listen to new ideas about how to do this. But when somebody says that giving more power to the government will help our community succeed, it’s up to us to remember that we’ve heard it all before — and to demand more opportunity instead.
Marilinda Garcia is the national spokeswoman of The LIBRE Initiative. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
