The income gap between New Mexico’s richest and poorest households is the widest in the nation, according to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The average income of the top 20% of households is 9.9 times the average income of the bottom 20%.

Veronica C. Garcia, Executive Director of New Mexico Voices for Children, made the following statement regarding the Affordable Care Act in light of the general election outcome: “With the election decided, it is now clear that the nation’s health reform law—the Affordable Care Act—is here to stay. That’s great news for New Mexicans who have already benefited from the law and will see more gains as major provisions take effect in 2014.

Veronica C García, Ed.D., has been asked to co-chair the School Success Advisory Group for the national advocacy organization Voices for America’s Children. Dr. García, who is Executive Director of New Mexico Voices for Children, will co-chair with Robert Sanborn, President and CEO of Children at Risk, a child advocacy group in Houston, Texas.

Unless Congress acts soon, New Mexico will lose $41 million in federal non-defense funding in January 2013. The lion’s share of these cuts will come from funding for public education. Also impacted will be programs to help educate and retrain New Mexicans who have lost their jobs, child care assistance for low-income working parents, Head Start, special education programs, and help for victims of domestic violence, among others.

New data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau is a mixed bag for New Mexico. The bad news: more New Mexicans live in poverty and the median household income has fallen by nearly $2,000 a year. The good news: fewer New Mexicans—particularly children—lack health insurance.

New Mexico ranks 16^th worst in the country in terms of how deeply school funding has been cut since the start of the recession. These cuts put the state’s economy and long-term prosperity in jeopardy. Investment in K-12 schools is almost 11 percent below 2008 levels, which means New Mexico has made deeper cuts than 34 other states, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan policy research organization based in Washington, D.C.

The income and unemployment gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites had been closing in the three years leading up to the stock market crash, but those gains were all lost in the resulting recession. A new report detailing the rise and fall of this gap between 2005 and 2010 points to one major reason: the construction industry bore the brunt of the lob losses when the housing bubble burst and Hispanics are over-represented in that industry. Thus, a higher percentage of Hispanics lost their jobs.

New Mexico can expand Medicaid to low-income adults as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA or ObamaCare) with no net expense. The state’s Human Services Department (HSD) has estimated that the expansion would require between $320 and $496 million in new General Fund spending for the first seven years. But two reports by the child advocacy organization New Mexico Voices for Children show that the state will recover twice that amount because federal Medicaid funds will be subject to the state’s Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) and other taxes.

A cuts-only approach to reducing the federal deficit--an approach that would not include any new revenue--would almost certainly damage New Mexico’s economic recovery and future economic growth by slashing federal investments in schools, roads and bridges, first responders, and disaster relief.

If New Mexico lawmakers were to raise the state’s minimum wage to $7.75, the state would see an increase of some $12.8 million in its gross domestic product, and more than 100 jobs would be created. That’s one of the conclusions in a new report from New Mexico Voices for Children, “How Raising and Indexing the Minimum Wage has Impacted State Economies.” The report also looks at how other states that have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage are faring.