Feb. 8, 2005 – When the Bush administration pushed through massive tax cuts and military funding, some budget analysts and advocates for the poor predicted the backlash would include large revenue cuts that would diminish programs serving the most vulnerable people in the US. With the release of Bush?s proposed 2006 budget yesterday, those fears have been realized. The president?s request includes $20 billion in budget cuts to over 150 programs, many of them targeted toward low-income people.
"The new budget proposals continue the Republican strategy of emasculating the parts of government that serve ordinary Americans in order to build the military, subsidize corporations, and slash taxes on the affluent," said Frances Fox Piven, professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York, in a press statement issued yesterday. "With deficits rising and the dollar weakening, the policy threatens not only the well-being of millions of Americans, but the stability of the American economy."
The president?s $2.5 trillion budget proposal increases military and national security spending, which in turn benefits defense and other contractors and their investors. It also includes additional tax cuts.
But, in an attempt to control spiraling deficits that have characterized his administration?s fiscal policy, the president proposes eliminating or weakening other projects and services.
Among the programs lined up for the chopping block are: Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control, Amtrak, Even Start, farm subsidies, and housing programs for Native Americans, people with AIDS, and the disabled. Many programs that are not slated to be cut will see their funding stagnate or lag behind inflation at a time when many essential government efforts are already experiencing funding shortfalls.
For its part, the Bush administration did not hide the fact that so many programs were to be terminated or cut deeply. At a press event yesterday, Bush called his budget "lean" and said: "People on both sides of the aisle have called upon the administration to submit a budget that helps meet our obligations of -- our goal of reducing the deficit in half over a five-year period, and this budget does just that. Discretionary spending is -- will increase at a rate less than inflation."
Instead of discussing the potential impact of the cuts, administration spokespeople and documents touted the administration?s commitment to defending the homeland, transforming the military, and promoting "pro-growth policies that have helped produce millions of new jobs and restore confidence in [the US] economy."
The budget proposal includes a 5 percent increase in military spending, not counting money for the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"This budget?s priorities are clear," wrote the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in an analysis of the president?s proposal. "The budget features cuts in scores of programs that middle- and low-income families rely on, alongside large additional tax cuts for those at the top of the income spectrum who have benefited the most from the tax cuts already enacted."
While Bush boasted that his proposed budget would cut the federal deficit in half over the next five years, budget analysts for CBPP pointed out that the president?s blueprint did not take into account future spending on Iraq and Afghanistan or his proposal to make his tax cuts permanent.
William Gale, a budget analyst with the centrist Brookings Institution, agreed. In a recent seminar on the Bush agenda, he compared the president?s claim to "saying you're going to go on a diet until dinner."
According to CBPP and Brookings, the administration?s deficit projects are designed to appear to decrease over the next five years and then skyrocket shortly thereafter.
Advocacy organizations from small farmers? groups to housing coalitions railed on the administration for slashing funding and blamed the administration for looting federal coffers in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy.
One of the hard-hit programs is Medicaid, slated to sustain cuts of $45 billion over the next ten years. Heather Boushey, an economist at the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), says Medicaid and other programs, like childcare assistance, which is also being reduced, are crucial for low-income families struggling to keep their jobs.
"Access to health insurance and affordable, quality childcare makes the difference between mothers being able to stay on the job and not," said Boushey in a press statement put out by CEPR. "Unfortunately, the President's budget does not recognize the importance of these supports for helping working families."
Small farmers will feel the crunch as well, as the Bush proposal includes reducing the caps on subsidy payments to farmers by $90,000. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), an advocate for family farms and rural communities, said the current subsidy system needs to be changed but called the administration?s plan "small-minded thinking that misunderstands farm programs."
IATP advocates policies that control production in order to keep market prices high enough to sustain farmers and says that the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill stripped measures that had previously prevented massive overproduction, leading to falling prices and the need for government payment programs.
"Capping subsidy payments will do nothing to address the underlying cause of the current farm crisis, which is massive overproduction and low farmgate prices," IATP President Mark Ritchie said in a press statement. "Subsidy cap or no subsidy cap, farmers will over-produce, prices will continue to be low, and rural communities will continue to pay the price."
Education advocates, while acknowledging the budget?s proposed increases for Pell Grants, special education and funding for No Child Left Behind, criticized the president for completely eliminating 48 programs, including Even Start - a program that targets low-income children and parents who have reading trouble - and funding for vocational programs - which are designed to provide students with job skills right out of high school. The Bush administration called those programs "wasteful" and "redundant" and claimed that they had failed to produce measurable results.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development will see its budget reduced by 11 percent under Bush?s proposal. Some of the programs slated for decreased funds include: Native American Housing Block Grants, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, Housing for Persons with Disabilities, and Lead Hazard Reduction.
Meanwhile, programs to promote home ownership would receive budget increases, in keeping with the administration?s "ownership society" theme.
"A cut of this magnitude will force communities to close youth centers, curtail neighborhood revitalization programs, help fewer elderly homeowners stay in their homes, leave poor neighborhoods without water and sewer services, and reduce or eliminate a host of other activities," Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told Reuters.
Though the president?s budget proposes severe cuts, Congress has great control over the final outcome, and many of the programs slated for elimination and cuts will likely be reinserted into the final version.
