Not all students have the means or good fortune of attending a four-year institution. To that end, community colleges are a place of learning ideal for individuals on tight budgets in search of more academic opportunities.

The Obama administration is continuing its pledge to reach out to these higher education institutions in New Mexico with a $2 million grant to three community colleges to focus on green jobs training as part of the the State Energy Sector Partnership Program (SESP), a three year, six-million dollar bundle of funds established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Here’s the story from New Mexico Business Weekly:

The grant, funded through a $6 million award from the U.S. Department of Labor  will allow Mesalands Community College   in Tucumcari, Central New Mexico Community College   and Santa Fe Community College   to expand or develop occupational training programs in the wind, solar biofuels, green building and energy efficiency sectors.

Those colleges have been designated “centers of excellence” by Workforce Solutions. They will develop statewide green training programs for their local communities, and for other communities through a “train-the-trainer” approach that will help other New Mexico colleges set up energy-related curricula and courses, said Workforce Solutions Secretary Celina Bussey in a news release.

“The centers of excellence will assist in meeting the training needs for these emerging industries in New Mexico,” Bussey said. “The green energy curricula will be available statewide and will bring training to the areas where the work is taking place.”

Targeting New Mexico for green jobs training could not only good stimulus, say some economists, but targets an industry that’s growing in the Land of Enlightenment.

The solar industry alone employs nearly 100,000 workers, and New Mexico is near the top of the list of where green jobs can be found.

The New Mexico Independent previously reported on several large solar panel farms slated to offer thousands living wages.

The New Mexico state government operates a website where job seekers can link up with green employers, which can be found here. The site includes a listing of colleges that offer green jobs training, as well.

At the heart of the problem with NCLB is its rigidity: The law does not take into account school progress in improving the academic performances of students. Instead, the nine-year-old legislation judges a school, and a state, for its ability hit annual benchmarks called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

“I don’t think when we started this, it was about catch n’ kill,” begins Bill Bosher, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who served as superintendent of public instruction for the state from 1994 to 1997. “The intent was to have feedback on the performance of young people against a set of knowledge and skills.”

And though the original purpose of the law was to compel states to find innovative ways to have children learn more, the results have been less than sweeping.  The U.S. Department of Education released this National Center for Education Statistics report (PDF) that calculates from 2005-2009, there were 39 instances of states upping or maintaining the intensity of state standardized exams, and 40 in which the rigor of those tests decreased. That’s not the race to the bottom Dept. of Education Secretary Arne Duncan portrayed NCLB to be, but the record hardly lends support to the idea the law was effective in having all states expect more from their students by issuing harder exams. Observing alterations that only occurred in 2007-09, 28 were deemed improvements and five appeared to have had a watering-down effect.

That ratio looks better, but still, for an administration that went on the offensive calling out educators who don’t meet expectations, it’s no surprise a revamping of the law has become President Obama’s priority. After all, the law states that by 2014, nearly all schools will have total proficiency; as of 2010, only 62 percent of schools have met their states’ benchmarks.

And then there’s the separate matter of what state tests even reveal. “I think the idea is that the standards aren’t increasing fast enough,” says Jennifer Cohen of the New American Foundation. “It is one thing to have a set of standards made in a vacuum -– they may be getting harder but there is nothing to suggest that they are at all attached to what students need to know to succeed in college and career.”

Some education policy writers even wonder whether NCLB is receiving unfair blame for causing disruptions to schools and staff. Alexander Russo, a former Senate staffer and author on education, recently wrote, “[t]he reality is that firings, removals, and shutdowns are neither common, or widespread…and to the extent that they are happening, it’s the Obama administration’s own SIG school turnaround program that’s the cause, not NCLB.”

SIG, or school improvement grants, are awards given to local education authorities to intervene at schools languishing in the bottom rung of performance measures.

Anne Hyslop, a policy analyst at Education Sector, says the numbers tell a different story to Russo’s. In the first round of grants issued through the SIG program in 2010, 843 schools received (PDF) up to $6 million over three years to support school improvement efforts. Schools could choose from one of four models. One of these models was to close the school, but only 17 of the 843 schools chose that option. A second option was to restart the school under charter management. However, Hyslop says this option was also an unpopular choice -– just four percent (34) of SIG schools were reopened as a charter school. So only 50 schools were closed or reopened as a charter school in the first round of SIG grants.

Aspects of the SIG model were incorporated into the quid pro quo arrangement for states to receive waivers. But by and large, schools should now expect a gentler ride. Looking at data from the first round of SIG awards, the remaining 793 schools chose either the turnaround option, where the principal and 50 percent of instructional staff were replaced, or the transformation option, which allowed for a less-disruptive and rigid set of reforms to improve the school. Not surprisingly, the transformation model was the most popular, with 615 of the 843 signing on.

Even for states that have most of their schools at or exceeding expectations on AYP, Hyslop says swallowing the executive prophylactic to opt out of No Child Left Behind has its advantages. “They will no longer be under pressure to reach 100 percent student proficiency by 2014,” Hyslop says. “Every school in waiver-winning states will benefit from that provision.”

The tougher standards wouldn’t be complete without a call for college- and career-curriculum best practices that would justify a state’s increased cocktail of assessments. But with nearly every state and the District of Columbia likely to seek waivers, there’s a risk the new flexibilities issued by the administration will over-learn the monolithic hazards of NCLB. Hyslop agrees, but sees potential.

“If we have 50 different school improvement systems, let’s at least have one system for measuring whether they work,” she wrote previously. “Duncan’s waiver plan gives the federal government a chance to test these systems and find the most effective version” to incorporate into future law.

And yet, among education veterans, some cynicism remains. Given how much the administration is in need of a political victory, Bosher, the former superintendent of Virginia schools, cautions other states: “be careful negotiating with desperate people.”

This week, the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee released a report on Medicaid that outlines cost-saving measures decided upon by 31 Republican governors. Among the policy recommendations is a proposal to require the federal government to pay for the care of undocumented immigrants.

The report, “A New Medicaid: A Flexible, Innovative and Accountable Future” (.pdf), proposes what the group calls “the best ideas from the states to be considered in reforming the nation’s health care system.” The report includes 31 “solutions.”

One of the policy solutions mentioned was one requiring “the federal government to take full responsibility for the uncompensated care costs of treating illegal aliens.”

This suggestion was added to a Medicaid reform proposal, despite the fact that illegal immigrants are already not allowed to receive Medicaid benefits. However, for some governors, that is beside the point.

The Wall Street Journal reports,

But RGA Policy Chairman and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said illegal immigrants sneak onto the program in his and other states and add to its tab.

 

“Let’s don’t kid ourselves,” Gov. Barbour told reporters during a briefing at RGA headquarters in Washington. “There are people who are getting on the system and violating the law.”

 

Even if they’re not on Medicaid, illegal immigrants cannot be refused treatment at emergency rooms, and hospitals end up absorbing that cost when patients don’t pay those bills, said Bill Hazel, Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources. Neither he nor Mr. Barbour would say how much that actually costs their states, and Democratic governors haven’t cited it as a significant cost.

The bigger point, Mr. Barbour said, is that the Obama administration has sued states to block them from enforcing their own laws to keep illegal immigrants out of the country. So if the federal government is going to insist on being solely responsible for securing the border, it should foot the bill when its immigration enforcement fails and leaves states with stacks of unpaid medical bills.

There are other attacks on health care provided by the federal government to undocumented immigrants.

Rep. Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican who famously yelled, “You lie!” at President Obama during a state of the Union address, is opposed to money that goes to community health centers, which provide services to undocumented immigrants.

Community health centers are currently being strengthened under the new health care reform law because they provide access to health care to underserved populations, which includes immigrants and other people who do not have insurance. Many women and children who would not otherwise receive health care, rely on local community health centers’ services.

Amanda Terkel of Huffington Post reports that Ray Sandoval, the New Mexico director for Organizing for America, sent out an e-mail on August 1 to supporters imploring them to read a blog post criticizing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and the “Firebagger Lefty blogosphere.”

“I know many of you have raised frustrations, but please, I implore you, please take 5 minutes and read the article below. It does a great job of explaining the Debt Ceiling deal,” wrote Sandoval.

The blog post in question:

No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let’s look at the deal again, shall we? [...]
Now let’s get to the fun part: the triggers. The more than half-a-trillion in defense and security spending cut “trigger” for the Republicans will hardly earn a mention on the Firebagger Lefty blogosphere. Hell, it’s a trigger supposedly for the Republicans, and of course, there’s always It’sNotEnough-ism to cover it.

Krugman has never been particularly keen on Barack Obama, and neither have so-called “Firebaggers,” an apparent portmanteau of Jane Hamsher’s liberal blog site Firedoglake and the derogatory word for tea partiers, “teabaggers.” Krugman preferred Hillary Clinton over Obama in the primaries, and Hamsher opposed the Affordable Care Act, which passed on the ever-elusive Democratic dream of universal coverage.

But are that many liberals dissatisfied with Obama?

Gallup has support among self-identified liberals at 72 percent as of August 1. Among Democrats, his support is at 77 percent. In New Mexico, the president has around an 80 percent approval rating among “very liberal” and “somewhat liberal” voters and a 72 percent approval rating among Democrats, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted in late June.

Krugman has an obviously influential column and Hamsher appears on MSNBC frequently.

A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that more New Mexicans disapprove of President Obama than before, but still favor him for re-election over all Republican contenders. The poll showed that 50 percent approve of the president and 44 percent disapprove, down from a 55/40 split measured by PPP last February.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney does well against Obama, trailing him by a 49-42 margin. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty both trail by 15 points, while businessman Herman Cain is down by 16 points. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin trails by a 56-36 margin. Obama won the state in 2008 by 15 points against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

But the closest candidate in New Mexico is a longshot — Gary Johnson. The former two-term governor would only trail Obama by a statistically insignificant three points, at 46-43.

However, he remains at about one percent nationally in GOP primary polls, if he is even included.

American Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a 501(c)(4) group conceived by former Senior Bush Advisor Karl Rove and former RNC chair Ed Gillespie, is running ads this week criticizing President Obama’s handling of the economy in New Mexico and other swing states.

Obama won New Mexico by fifteen points in 2008 despite the fact that the 2000 and 2004 elections were decided by less than one point.

More from Josh Kraushaar of National Journal on the ad campaign:

The ad will be running on cable nationwide and also in key battleground states that Obama is focused on holding for his re-election. They include: including Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia. It will be running for two weeks.

The $20 million that the Rove-aligned group has committed to the ad campaign – well over one year before the presidential election – is a telling indicator of how much clout it will be wielding in the 2012 campaign. It raised about $70 million for the entire 2010 cycle on Senate and House races. In just one campaign, it’s spending a significant sum of that to attack President Obama at this early stage.

Here’s the ad:

Former governor and 2012 GOP candidate for president Gary Johnson went on the Fox Business Network Thursday night to debate an Obama impersonator, with John Stossel moderating. The weak applause from the studio audience, Stossel’s condescending moderation, the Obama impersonator’s Urkel-esque delivery make this an embarrassing — not to mention unilluminating — segment. It’s too bad that Johnson wasn’t invited to the CNN debate tonight in New Hampshire, but this is a weak stunt. Call me old-fashioned, but how about just an interview?

Amazingly, this isn’t the most embarrassing recent clip on Fox News. That distinction goes to this clip of Fox Business host Eric Boiling meeting with the President of Gabon, a “klepto-crat,” whom he then associates to the rapper Common, saying “it’s not the first time he’s had a hoodlum in the ‘hizzouse.’”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is expected to push for heavy immigration enforcement as chairman of the House immigration subcommittee next session. (Tina Fultz/ZUMApress.com)

During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama made the now-broken promise to Latino supporters that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year as president. But in remarks to the press on Wednesday, after Republicans took control of the House and won back several seats in the Senate, talk of immigration reform was noticeably absent.

Democrats will still hold a majority in both chambers during the lame-duck session, when leaders hope to pass the DREAM Act to give some undocumented young people and military service members legal status. But after January, immigration reform efforts that include paths to legal status for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States seem next to impossible, meaning the next few years will see little progress for immigration reform advocates.

“The new leaders of the House have made it clear that they’re going to continue to push an enforcement-only strategy,” said Mary Giovagnoli, director of pro-reform Immigration Policy Center. “It’s going to be a hard couple of years.”

The Republicans ushered into power in the midterms favor tight border security, strict enforcement and policies that would allow states, along with the federal government, to police immigration. Many campaigned on hard-line immigration positions that cost them support among Latinos, but won backing from the broad segments of the population that approve of illegal immigration crackdowns like Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

In short, Republicans who won on Tuesday hold radically different views on tackling illegal immigration from the president and Senate Democrats. Prospects are bleak for anyone who hopes to see meaningful change on immigration policy: A Democratic Senate will have trouble getting immigrant-friendly measures past the House, while the House will have trouble getting enforcement-only measures past the Senate — or the president’s desk. The result will likely be more of the same on immigration policy.

There are a few areas where Republicans have brought forth proposals to reform the immigration system. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is expected to take over as chairman of the House’s immigration subcommittee, plansuse his leadership position to call in Obama administration officials and question them on immigration enforcement, claiming “they’re not enforcing the laws.”

It’s a common argument from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused the Obama administration of taking a lax approach. After reports that immigration courts were throwing out deportation cases for illegal immigrants who were deemed non-dangerous or had pending citizenship applications, the seven current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committeesent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano demanding to know how much it would cost to find and deport every illegal immigrant in the country.

“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has cited a lack of resources as one of the reasons for its prioritization of cases and for its selective enforcement,” the Oct. 21 letter reads. “But to date, we have not seen any efforts by ICE, your Department, or the Administration to request an increase in ICE funding. … As a result, it appears that your Department is doing the very thing that we have raised concerns about in several letters – allowing illegal aliens to evade the law.”

If Republicans attempt to force increased immigration enforcement, it would require a huge increase in funding for ICE. The agency currently receives$2.6 billion from Congress each year to detain and remove illegal immigrants. ICE Chief John Morton says this budget allows the agency to deport about 400,000 people per year — a number it approaching this year. Deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, then, could cost as much as $70 billion.

Of course, most Republicans don’t advocate a deportation-only method to decreasing illegal immigration numbers in the country. GOP members also say they hope to pass legislation to eliminate possible incentives for foreigners to stay in the country by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, eliminating the few social services illegal immigrants can receive and in some cases even eliminating citizenship for children born in the country to undocumented parents.

A GOP-led initiative to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants under the 14th Amendment received support from 95 House members in 2009, although the bill never made it out of committee. Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution, the bill would create a statute limiting citizenship to children with at least one parent in the country legally.

King plans to push for the bill again in the next session of Congress, where support for the measure will be even stronger. King insists the bill is both legal and necessary to stop the “anchor baby” phenomenon — the idea that illegal immigrants come to America and have children in order to gain legal status — which most immigration experts agree does not exist because citizens cannot petition for legal status for their families until they are adults.

Expanding E-Verify, a controversial program that allows employers to check the immigration status of potential employees, is another likely priority for the Republican-led House. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is expected to head the Judiciary Committee, co-sponsored a bill to make use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers. (Federal agencies and contractorsare already required to use the program.)

Of course, House Republicans cannot enact any laws without the support of Obama or the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is unlikely to risk angering Latino voters by passing enforcement-only immigration measures. But even if it means gridlock, House leaders seem committed to blocking comprehensive immigration reform.

“The best solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to enforce current laws,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune last week. “Attrition through enforcement can reduce the number of illegal immigrants already in the U.S.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference at the Capitol to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Social Security Act. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

This summer, Social Security – the government program that provides a steady check for seniors – turned 75. In Washington, lawmakers celebrated its platinum anniversary not with champagne, but with a heated argument over whether to reform the costly entitlement program by slashing benefits or raising the retirement age. Indeed, with the national debt over $13 trillion and the government running at a $1 trillion a year loss, the Obama administration created a deficit commission — the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — to find ways to return the country to the black. In anticipation of its report, and in anticipation of possible changes to the program, lawmakers have started discussing how to reform Social Security.

After running a surplus for years and building up a sizable trust fund, Social Security now runs in the red. Though the program is far from bankrupt, more money is pouring out than going in. Economists project that the trust fund will be emptied by 2037. From there, opinions diverge on how far into debt the program will fall if nothing is done.

“Social Security is not in immediate trouble. There’s been a lot of exaggeration of that problem,” says Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the deficit commission. “It is not on a solid basis for the long run, however. The sooner we act, the less we have to do.”

The problem is, there’s no consensus on what form that action should take. And many of the most commonly discussed tactics for stemming the flow of red ink would disproportionately impact lower-income Americans, the segment of the population that depends on Social Security the most.

One idea that comes up frequently is raising the retirement age. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), for instance, proposes lifting it to 70; some economists have suggested lifting it to as high as 75.

The idea sounds good: People are living longer, so it makes sense they will be working longer as well, right? But raising the retirement age will not necessarily keep people in the workforce longer, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research. For lower-income Americans, it would often just consign them to a retirement of lower benefit checks.

Already, around two-thirds of non-disabled workers elect to begin receiving smaller checks at 62 rather than full payments at 65. The hardship of raising the retirement age falls disproportionately on low-income workers who work in physically demanding professions, jobs they may not be able to continue through their seventh decade. According to Baker, 45 percent of workers over the age of 58 hold physically demanding jobs. Among those who lack a high-school diploma, that percentage skyrockets to around 75 percent. “If the hope is that people will work longer, that’s a very difficult thing for low and moderate income Americans to do,” Baker says.

Moreover, though the average lifespan has increased since Social Security’s creation, those extra years aren’t enjoyed equally by all Americans. Overall, Americans are living about seven years longer. But the poorest 20 percent of Americans are living just two years longer – coinciding with that increase in retirement age. Baker notes that minority Americans fare even worse. “Even at 65, there’s a gap of about two years in lifespan. Also, on average, they have much lower wealth at retirement, so they’re much more dependent on Social Security.”

Center and right-leaning policy experts say another way to limit Social Security expenditures is to change the baseline for the benefits calculator from a wage index to a price index. Since the price of goods tends to grow more slowly than wages do, this shift would reduce the amount the program would have to pay out in the future. Supporters of this proposal say that because the benefits will still increase along with price inflation, seniors won’t suffer a shortfall in real-dollar terms.

This logic works in theory. But in practice, it would seriously impact lower-income Americans. Why? Seniors spend differently than average-aged workers: They buy more healthcare goods and services. And healthcare costs are skyrocketing well above the average inflation rate, so lowering benefits would make it more difficult for retirees to cover their costs. The more economically strapped the American, the more it would hurt.

Other plans would have less impact on those least able to shoulder the burden. One idea would be to reduce benefits for wealthy retirees. The idea is that “Bill Gates doesn’t need social security,” says Brookings’ Rivlin.

The problem is deciding where to set the bar: Too low, and you ensnare middle-class families, too high, and you only earn the ire of the superrich without contributing much to the bottom line. Some experts, including Rivlin, think the political cost probably wouldn’t be worth the impact on the bottom line. Polls show that even wealthy Americans want their Social Security, and are willing to pay for it. The government might net a little more money, but it would lose the public support and buy-in of wealthy (and thereby influential) citizens.

“U.S. benefits relative to earnings are low by comparison with those in other wealthy nations,” says Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think there’s a strong case for cutting benefits on the merits of the idea. In my view, the bulk of the fix should come from the revenue side.”

Many economists on the left share that sentiment. “It makes sense to fix social security by increasing revenues and making sure a good chunk of those revenues come from the high end of the income distribution,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

Raising the payroll cap is one popular idea. Currently, the first $106,800 an American makes is subject to the Social Security tax; above that, the earner pays nothing. “If you eliminate the cap, you’re probably getting very close to eliminating the entire Social Security deficit for the next 75 years,” says Christian Weller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “The more common proposal is to raise the cap so 90 percent of earnings are subject to the tax, which would eliminate about a third of the deficit.”

Another idea under consideration is raising the payroll tax rate by a fraction of a percentage point. Although the flat rate of this tax is inherently regressive, some left-leaning experts say it’s preferable to a cut in benefits, especially when the prospect is discussed in conjunction with other modifications like a minimum benefit, as described in a recent report by the Urban Institute.

Not everyone thinks adding to the payroll tax rate is the way to go, though. “It seems to me that raising the payroll tax is the least desirable way to try to move the program towards solvency,” says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. “It’s a tax on work and makes it more expensive for employers.”

Marshall supports ideas more commonly embraced by the right to make up the shortfall, including an increase in the retirement age and a downward adjustment on the formula used to calculate benefits.

Some Republican politicians are still pushing for privatization, pointing to the rise of the stock market over the long term. Mike Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, asserts that even if a retiree cashed out at the trough of the market in 2009, he or she would have still experienced a growth in wealth. Given the wariness with which many Americans bruised by a drop in their 401(k) and home values now view the stock market, though, privatization may be a tough sell at least until the current bear market fades from our collective memory. “A lot of Republicans seem to view private investment as some kind of panacea, which I don’t think is correct,” says PPI’s Marshall. “That wouldn’t solve the underlying structural problems.”

Right-leaning experts tend to paint a bleaker view of the Social Security situation in general. Cato’s Tanner explains that the difference is that they include in their calculation of upcoming obligations the cost to be borne by the Treasury when the program cashes in its trust fund bonds. Obviously, that money will have to come from somewhere, but progressive economists like CAP’s Weller, counter that it’s disingenuous for the right to say those bonds pose an economic risk when the Social Security surplus is one factor that was used to justify Bush-era tax cuts in the first place.

Experts of all stripes like to point out that Social Security reform should be a snap compared to changing more complex programs like Medicare. In a strictly economic sense, that’s true. But the discussion around Social Security often threatens to collapse under the metaphorical weight lawmakers have conferred on the program. “It’ll probably be more politically determined than substantively determined,” PPI’s Marshall concedes. “Right now neither side wants to come out of its assigned place.”

“The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures. The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives,” the panel told President Obama.

“With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un(studied) or understudied and largely unregulated,” the panel wrote. “Exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers.”

The public is largely unaware of many common environmental carcinogens such radon and manufacturing and smoke by-products such as formaldehyde and benzene, the panel concluded.

The widespread use of high-radiation Computed Tomography (CT) scans instead of x-rays has increased Americans’ exposure to ionizing radiation and may also be significantly contributing to national cancer rates, the panel reported. A single chest CT scan can deliver more radiation than 100 chest x-rays, a recent study found.

Hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians in the United States were exposed to potentially carcinogenic levels of radiation during nuclear weapons testing and development, the panelists wrote, including nuclear fuel and weapons production, and uranium mining, milling, and ore transport.

Children are more vulnerable to environmental carcinogens than adults, the panelists wrote.

Climbing rates of some cancers in children are poorly understood, but the panel noted studies reporting industrial chemicals in umbilical-cord blood that suggest prenatal exposure to carcinogens from the mother’s environment.

“To a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted,’ ” the panel reported.

The U.S. should rewrite existing laws to better and more rapidly evaluate the safety of chemicals in consumer products, the panelists wrote, echoing calls on Congress by labor, environmental, consumer and cancer patient advocates to update the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act.

The Obama administration has already begun to do that.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stripped health risks for hundreds of chemicals of their “confidential business information” status and posted information about those chemicals online, for example.

And the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program to evaluate the toxic and cancer risks of chemicals, is now back at work evaluating a backlog of chemicals after eight years of stalled efforts under the Bush administration.

Several IRIS scientists had reported in 2008 that they had been told to alter data in scientific reports about chemical risks, and the U.S. Energy and Defense departments were allowed to derail assessments of several chemicals deemed “mission critical” to the government.

IRIS has evaluated only 200 of the 80,000 chemicals that are on the market for carcinogenicity and other risks.

In January, the EPA announced that production of another flame retardant, the suspected carcinogen deca-BDE, will be curtailed by 2013.

In 2009, 1.5 million Americans were diagnosed with cancer, and 562,000 died from cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.