Printable Version
Letter to Congress on Federal Budget Priorities
Wednesday, February 27, 2008(Alliance for Retired Americans)
Federal Budget Must Respond to Pressing Needs
Even before the economic downturn, average Americans worked hard but lost ground to rising costs. Now they struggle to avoid joining the millions of unemployed. Even in “good times,” more than a third of Americans lacked steady health insurance and millions were unable to afford nutritious food. Now, more employers are dropping health care coverage and food banks cannot keep up with rising demand. Energy costs are soaring. Foreclosures are at record levels – and rising. For years federal human service funding has fallen behind the growing need. The recession has turned this shortfall into a crisis. More and more states are facing severe budget gaps that make it harder for them to respond. Congress must respond to these needs in its budget resolution.
The President’s budget for FY 2009 will make things worse for millions of families, especially for those vulnerable because of age or disability or hard-hit by the downturn. The Administration’s budget continues a trend of recklessly wrong choices – sacrificing progress in health, education, nutrition, and other needs while channeling many hundreds of billions of dollars in tax handouts to corporations and the very rich.
Congress must do better. Years of cuts are making it even harder for families and communities to withstand lean times. If Congress does not decisively turn away from the greater hardships inflicted by the President’s budget, it will allow the downturn to grow worse and hurt more.
The Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities (ECAP) is a broad campaign of national and grassroots organizations working for a federal budget that creates opportunity and prosperity for all. ECAP seeks to reverse years of upside-down budget and tax policies that cut programs primarily benefiting the poor and middle class in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and special interests.
For FY 2009, we urge Congress to adopt a budget resolution that reverses drastic cuts and invests in services to protect people and communities from serious loss while giving them tools to rebuild and grow. To provide protection and growth, the budget resolution must:
· Boost domestic discretionary spending by at least $40 billion over the President’s inadequate proposal.
· Increase outdated benefit levels for Food Stamps, fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) at levels adequate to cover all eligible children, protect Medicaid eligibility and benefits, restore funds cut from child support enforcement, and strengthen the unemployment insurance system.
· Reject new tax breaks for the wealthy
and special interests, and oppose any changes
in the tax system, such as the AMT “fix,”
that do not make the system more progressive
and that do not, at a minimum, replace lost tax
revenue.
These are
essential elements of a budget plan to respond
to the dangers of an uncertain economy with
practical steps forward. The
President’s budget is heedless of those
dangers, depriving 100,000 families of rental
vouchers despite the housing crisis;
eliminating training for 161,000 adults,
dislocated workers, and youth, and job search
assistance even with rising unemployment;
ending food packages for 500,000 poor seniors,
mothers and young children through the
Commodity Supplemental Food Program although
food hardships are growing; and eliminating
LIHEAP home energy aid to 1.2 million family
and elderly households even though heat costs
80 percent more than it did seven years
ago. Another 200,000 children and their
families will go without child care help;
14,000 children will lose Head Start. As
revenue losses hit states and counties, overall
funding for K-12 education is cut, including
funds to educate children with
disabilities. Even urgently needed
services to protect children from abuse and
neglect and women and families from violence
are cut. We cannot begin to cover the
extent of the harm in this space.
It will take at least $40 billion above the President’s grossly underfunded domestic appropriations to begin to address unmet needs by reversing three years of cuts and responding to growing challenges. Undoing at least some of the past damage to services is necessary but not sufficient. Apart from the growing needs sketched above, the responsibility to care for veterans will rise, as will costs for infrastructure repair. The President’s budget ignores these increased costs. If Congress tries to address these needs without raising the domestic discretionary total sufficiently, it will come at the expense of people struggling to get an education or a job, or to pay for housing or food.
We all have a shared responsibility to pay for these common-good investments through a fair and progressive tax system and by preventing wasteful uses of public funds, both in the United States and Iraq. This shared responsibility begins with ending the tax handouts that overwhelmingly benefit those making more than $200,000 a year, and eliminating corporate tax breaks and other subsidies for the powerful few.
The budget resolution ought to be a practical expression of the nation’s most vital priorities and an engine for expanding opportunity and prosperity for all. Carrying out such a plan must be the urgent work of this Congress.
ECAP partners include the following National Organizations:
ACORN
Alliance for Retired Americans
(ARA)
American Federation of Labor-Congress
of Industrial Organizations
(AFL-CIO)
American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME)
American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC)
The Arc of the United States
Association of Farmworker Opportunity
Programs
Campaign for America’s Future
Children's Defense Fund
Coalition on
Human Needs
Food Research & Action
Center (FRAC)
Legal Momentum
Let Justice
Roll
National Association of Social
Workers
National Consumer Law
Center
National Council of Jewish
Women
National Head Start Association
National Priorities Project
National
Women’s Law Center (NWLC)
NETWORK: A
National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
OMB
Watch
Planned Parenthood
Federation of
America
RESULTS
Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice
Sargent Shriver
National Center on Poverty Law
United for a
Fair Economy
United States Student
Association (USSA)
USAction
Wider
Opportunities for Women (WOW)
Women Work!
The National Network for Women's Employment
The Workforce Alliance
YWCA
USA
Contact:
Marvin Silver, USAction - msilver@usaction.org,
(202) 263-4548
Ed Jayne, AFSCME - ejayne@afscme.org,
(202) 429-1189
Richelle Friedman, Coalition
on Human Needs - rfriedman@chn.org,
(202) 223-2532 x 29