This Jewish Life: Time Travails and Issue Overload
Posted By James BesserThis Jewish Life: Time Travails and Issue Overload
With a portfolio of upwards of 15 legislative issues, it's often difficult to determine how to allocate my time. And with there only being 24 hours in a day, some of my issues are inevitably put on the back burner or deemed momentarily "less important."
In general, I accept this reality and work on the issues that are moving quickly in Congress or those that become priorities in our office for one reason or another. But recently, I realized that I have temporarily lost sight of some of the issues that I was excited to work on when I came to Washington.
My lack of background in policy meant that my attraction to specific issues was largely driven by my academic and direct service interests. So, in August, when the issues I'd be working on this year at the RAC were decided on, I was incredibly excited to have both mental health and education in my portfolio because these were issues I was already involved with and passionate about . But almost immediately, these two issues were forced to take a backseat to the immediate pressures of the SCHIP battle and our various fights to preserve First Amendment rights.
While I have loved the new knowledge and insight that working on health care and church/state separation have provided, I feel a little bit like I have lost my roots.
For example, my passion for education led me to apply for Teach for America last year, but I gave up a job with them to work at the RAC. Part of my justification to myself while making that decision was that I would still be working to provide students with better, more effective schooling (an interest I was not willing to forfeit), but I would simply be doing so from a new, different, and hopefully more effective angle. This hasn't exactly been the case-largely because advocates for education reform seem to be waiting until we have a new President to fix the No Child Left Behind Act, but also because I have not actively pursued opportunities to be involved with education reform.
Similarly, in the interview for my position at the RAC, I remember saying I was most excited to work on mental health issues because I wanted to apply my academic background in psychology to politics. So, I was excited to have mental health issues in my portfolio until I realized that the lack of moving legislation about this issue would force it to be low on my list of priorities.
I came to this realization this week because, for the first time in a while, information about legislation related to mental health came across my desk. I was excited to hear about the passage of legislation that will create a limited extension of the ban on health plans setting stricter lifetime or annual dollar limits on mental health care than on care for other illnesses. This step in the right direction will hopefully open the door for members of Congress to push more comprehensive parity legislation, namely the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007.
Hearing of the recent successes has reminded me how much I want to be involved (and get the Reform Movement involved) with the fight for parity. I had forgotten how much I wanted to work on mental health care until I was reinvigorated by this exciting news.
I also received an email about a coalition meeting to discuss the effect of Bush's budget and State of the Union proposals on our educational system. Despite previous commitments, I am hoping to move my schedule around and attend because education is such a personal priority and something that I truly miss focusing my energy on.
So, this week may be the start of some new priorities… or at least, a re-adoption of some old ones.
