The Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities
A Progressives' Guide to the Federal Budget Battle
A fight over America's priorities is raging on Capitol Hill. In the weeks, Congress will vote on a budget that leaves low and middle income Americans out in the cold while giving huge tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens. (Current information predicts that a vote in the US House will take place on or about February 1st. The vote is referred to as Budget Reconciliation.)
In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Congress should do the right thing and help vulnerable families instead of giving more tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. The budget cuts proposed by the conservative Congress would sink more low-income people into even deeper poverty by taking away supports like food stamps and Medicaid.
As the budget battle continues, this guide will help you navigate the process and activate your friends and community in opposition to the budget cuts.
What to do: Call your Congressperson, even if you have called before. The Georgia delegation voted along party lines. The Republican US Senators and US House Members voted for the tax and budget cuts. The Democratic US House Members voted against the budget cuts.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
(Since Congress is adjourned until Jan. 31, this is officially the latest info.)
In the early morning hours of Monday, December 19, the House of Representatives passed the budget reconciliation bill by a vote of 212-206. The Coalition on Human Needs (www.chn.org) reports that the budget deal includes the following cuts:
- Medicaid: Low-income families will have to pay more than they can afford for medical care under Medicaid and face shrinking benefits.
- SSI: People with disabilities will have to wait as long as a year to receive the back SSI benefits they are owed because the government has taken so long to approve their application.
- Child Support: Children will be deprived of $2.9 billion over 5 years/$8.4 billion over 10 years in child support not collected because of cuts in enforcement.
- Foster Care: Grandparents or other relatives in certain states will lose foster care assistance.
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: The agreement assumes that work requirements will be made more harsh and expects states to fail – and so estimates that states will pay penalties to the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office expects that states will in turn create harsher penalties for poor families, causing more to lose benefits.
- Child Care: CBO estimates that it will cost $12.5 billion in new funding to pay for the harsher work requirements and to keep up with the costs of providing existing child care. The budget deal only provides $1 billion – a gap of $11.5 billion. That means 255,000 fewer children will receive child care in 2010 compared to this year.
- Student Loans: Cut $12.7 billion over 5 years.
On December 21, the Senate passed the budget reconciliation (S. 1932) by a vote of 50 to 50 with Vice President Cheney casting a vote to break the tie. However, the Senate added a couple of amendments to their final bill. The House of Representatives will need to vote on the conference report again because the Senate version now differs from the House bill. Advocates are hopeful that there might be one last chance to defeat this bill given the closeness of the House vote.
CapitolQuips is where you'll find tidbits of information you may not find any where else.
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