The President's Scandalous Budget

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An email from the Coalition on Human Needs (http://www.chn.org/)...

The President's Scandalous Budget

To quote Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the President's FY 2007 budget is "scandalous" for its cuts to health care and education. We would add that the budget is shameful for abandoning investments in many vital services - and for recklessly handing out still more unaffordable tax cuts.

Here are some reasons why. For more detail, click here:

http://www.chn.org/pdf/060208presbudget.pdf

http://www.cbpp.org/2-6-06bud.htm.

This budget requires sacrifice from those with modest incomes, but provides still more billions to the wealthiest.

Domestic programs except homeland security are cut by $182 billion over 5 years, including $36 billion in Medicare, nearly $14 billion in Medicaid, and billions in cuts to education, nutrition, social services, and a host of other investments America needs.

Taxes are cut by at least $285 billion over 5 years, with the benefits flowing very disproportionately to millionaires - over 10 years, the group with incomes of one million dollars or higher will gain $600 billion.

The President's budget abandons investments in shared prosperity for all Americans.

Education spending is slashed by 29 percent in one year.

The budget closes off routes to good jobs by continuing to cut student loans and to freeze Pell grants, and by making deep cuts in vocational education.

19,000 fewer children will be enrolled in Head Start because funding is not keeping pace with inflation.

The budget reduces vital help to vulnerable people.

470,000 elders, mothers and children will lose food packages because the President would eliminate the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. Once again, the budget proposes eliminating Food Stamps for 300,000 low-income parents and children in working families and ending free school lunches for 40,000 low-income children.

Services for abused and neglected children and elderly will be cut, along with many other services, because the Social Services Block Grant is cut by 30 percent in one year, from $1.7 billion to $1.2 billion.

The budget cuts services that strengthen low-income working families.

At least 400,000 fewer children will receive child care assistance between now and 2011, under the President's proposal, on top of the 250,000 children who have lost child care since FY 2000.

Support will diminish for a range of community services that help families - Head Start, energy assistance, weatherization, etc. - because the budget eliminates the Community Services Block Grant, $670 million in funds for local Community Action Agencies that administer these and other services.

The budget makes most of us less secure, and is even more reckless with the security of future generations.

The budget will make the problem of unaffordable health insurance worse, not better. Its use of $52 billion in health care-related tax breaks benefit people with high incomes while making health insurance still more expensive for everyone else.

The budget attempts to revive the unpopular proposal for Social Security private accounts, threatening the security in Social Security. At the same time, the budget cuts $6.3 billion in current Social Security benefits over 10 years, denying dependents' benefits to children over the age of 16 if they are not in school, and ending the one-time $255 death benefit, often used towards funeral expenses.

Deficits continue recklessly into the future - severely worsened by the tax cuts and military spending, and paid for by our children and grandchildren.

Speak out about these wrong choices! We hope you will use these points to let your members of Congress and the public know that this is a scandalous budget. Send a letter to the editor using these points now, and share a copy with your senators and representative. Sources of state-specific background data are available here http://www.chn.org/pdf/makingitrealstateimpacts050203.pdf

State data available soon! Within about a week, we will be sharing state data detailing the impact of the President's budget cuts from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (and other sources as they are made available) to help you make the case. More in-depth analyses of the budget proposals will also follow.

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