Archive for January, 2011

In recent days, various members of Congress (the Republican Study Committee, Minnesota Representative and Tea Party Leader Michele Bachmann, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul) have proposed massive budget cuts to education and social safety net programs. A key part of these plans is either elimination of, or deep cuts in, the Department of Education.

Despite all this talk from those proposing these plans that “the American people spoke last November” and they want “massive spending cuts”, current polling shows the opposite. According to Gallup, 67% of Americans oppose cuts to education and 55% oppose cuts to anti-poverty programs. Only a small minority support cuts in education (32%) and anti-poverty programs (39%).

The difference in priorities between some of those in Washington and large majorities of those outside Washington could not be more stark.

On January 25th, the House of Representatives voted for a resolution that will likely lead to major cuts in children’s programs. The House voted to reduce federal spending to 2008 levels. Spending on Pentagon programs would be left alone. Education, health, nutrition, and child welfare services — all of which are vital to children and families — would sustain huge reductions. As a result millions of children could lose their health coverage and their favorite teachers would be at risk of being arbitrarily fired.

The following is a table of how each member of the House of Representatives voted on repeal of health care reform. Vote Kids opposes resolution. 239 Republicans voted for these cuts and 2 Republicans did not vote. No Republicans voted against these cuts. 165 Democrats voted against these cuts and 17 voted for them. Another 11 did not vote.

The full vote is available after the jump continue

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives made the first of many votes that could break the federal government’s commitment to the health, education, and safety of children. It is more important than ever to make your voice heard. The result of this vote would be to slash the portion of the budget that funds children’s programs by as much as $80 billion dollars. This would threaten not only the future of our children, but any hope of economic recovery. It would also do little to reduce the federal debt as the recent tax cuts adds almost $500 billion to the deficit in this year alone

The House voted to reduce federal spending to 2008 levels. Spending on Pentagon programs would be left alone. Education, health, nutrition, and child welfare services — all of which are vital to children and families — would sustain huge reductions.

As a result millions of children could lose their health coverage and their favorite teachers would be at risk of being arbitrarily fired. Specifically, the share of dollars going to children in special education grants would be cut by 53 percent. Head Start would be cut by 27 percent. Adoption incentives would be slashed by 89 percent. Some in Congress simply want to balance the budget on the backs of some of the neediest Americans.

A new proposal by the Republican Study Committee, compromising of more than 150 Representatives from all across the country, would go even further. The Committee would have Congress slash investments by even more and keep them from meeting the needs of children and families over the next decade. Child care, health care, special needs education, affordable college tuition, and every other activity government does to help children and families succeed would be sharply reduced or eliminated with little thought or debate.

These are simply the wrong choices for America. These programs benefit everyone by producing a healthier, better-educated, more productive society. These ideologically motivated cuts will neither stimulate the economy nor make a significant dent in our national debt. Our budget is a reflection of our priorities and values as a nation. Some in Congress believe they should be a top priority and others don’t.

Next month, President Obama will release his detailed budget highlighting where he would invest in the health, education, and safety of children. We hope that he makes children a top priority and will fight for their interests against those in Congress who don’t see the value of investing in our future.

Our friends at the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities flagged this important new report from the Congressional Budget Office on the budget and economic outlook. It suggests three important points to those considering drastic cuts to the portion of the budget that funds children’s and other federal programs:

• The economic recovery remains anemic, with the unemployment rate expected to remain above 8 percent through 2012. Implementing big cuts in federal spending now would weaken the economy and further slow the already sluggish pace of economic growth, sacrificing many jobs.
• Policymakers could significantly reduce the real risk that rising deficits and debt will pose later this decade simply by following current law and allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, as scheduled.
• While CBO’s projection of the 2011 deficit is higher than its projection last August, this change does not reflect “runaway spending.” The $445 billion cost in 2011 of December’s bipartisan tax cut-unemployment insurance deal and small business legislation enacted in September account for more than the entire $414 billion increase in CBO’s 2011 deficit projection. These two bills consisted overwhelmingly of tax cuts; spending provisions account for only $37 billion (9 percent) of their cost.

CBO forecasts that the economy will grow at about 3 percent this year and next, much slower than in previous recoveries and less than is needed to bring unemployment down quickly. CBO believes unemployment will remain above 9 percent through the end of this year and not fall close to its “natural rate” of 5.2 percent until 2016.

While everyone wishes the pace of the recovery would pick up, calls to “boost the economy by slashing federal spending immediately” are entirely at odds with mainstream economic thinking and basic economic theory.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf says that while substantial restraint in the growth of spending, significant increases in revenues, or both will be necessary to prevent unsustainable increases in debt:

Congress may wish to implement them gradually so as to avoid a sudden negative impact on the economy, particularly as it recovers from the severe recession, and so as to give families, businesses, and state and local governments time to plan and adjust.

It will take significant changes in current policies on both the revenue and spending sides of the budget to put the budget on a sustainable path. Cutting health, education, and safety programs for children will not accomplish this and will make America less competitive going forward.

In advance of her alternative State of the Union response, Michele Bachmann is putting out her own budget proposal. You can see it all by clicking here:

The following in a summary of her specific cuts for children:

1. Cut federal education funding by half including abolishing the Department of Education. These cuts would even include special education funding.
2. Return Pell Grants to 2009 levels. Colleges and universities do not plan to return college tuition to 2009 levels.
3. Eliminating the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, a public health program that reaches across economic lines to improve the health of all mothers and children.
4. Eliminating the additional refundable child tax credit. This credit goes to middle and lower class families with more than one child.
5. While not direct cuts to children’s programs, Bachmann calls for tens of billions of dollars in cuts by eliminating federal homeland security, criminal justice, and transportation funding and requiring states to fund the programs instead. Given how two-thirds of state budgets fund education and Medicaid, these policies would lead either to dramatic cuts in education and child health care, not funding needed homeland security or transportation programs once paid for by the federal government, or dramatic tax hikes for working families. These tax hikes will be highly regressive given how many states do not have a progressive tax code.

President Obama will release his budget next week and we hope that it protects programs that provide for the education, health, and safety of children. Bachmann’s budget does the opposite.

Via the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein:

American schools are more segregated by race and class today than they were on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, 43 years ago. The average white child in America attends a school that is 77 percent white, and where just 32 percent of the student body lives in poverty. The average black child attends a school that is 59 percent poor but only 29 percent white. The typical Latino kid is similarly segregated; his school is 57 percent poor and 27 percent white.

Overall, a third of all black and Latino children sit every day in classrooms that are 90 to 100 percent black and Latino.

This week, Congress will start debating the first of many resolutions regarding the federal budget. Important programs to protect the health, education, and safety of children are at stake. It is more important than ever to make your voice heard. One proposal in the House would slash the portion of the budget that funds children’s programs by $80 billion dollars. This would threaten not only the future of our children, but any hope of economic recovery. It would also do little to reduce the federal debt.

The House is scheduled to vote on a resolution reducing federal spending to 2008 levels. Spending on Pentagon programs would be left alone. Education, health, nutrition, and child welfare services — all of which are vital to children and families — would sustain huge reductions.

As a result millions of children could lose their health coverage and their favorite teachers would be at risk of being arbitrarily fired. Specifically, the share of dollars going to children in special education grants would be cut by 53 percent. Head Start would be cut by 27 percent. Adoption incentives would be slashed by 89 percent. Some in Congress simply want to balance the budget on the backs of some of the neediest Americans.

A new proposal by the Republican Study Committee, compromising of more than 150 Representatives from all across the country, would go even further. The Committee would have Congress slash investments by even more and keep them from meeting the needs of children and families over the next decade. Child care, health care, special needs education, affordable college tuition, and every other activity government does to help children and families succeed would be sharply reduced or eliminated with little thought or debate.

These are simply the wrong choices for America. These programs benefit everyone by producing a healthier, better-educated, more productive society. These ideologically motivated cuts will neither stimulate the economy nor make a significant dent in our national debt. Our budget is a reflection of our priorities and values as a nation. Some in Congress believe they should be a top priority and others don’t.

Next week, President Obama will release his detailed budget highlighting where he would invest in the health, education, and safety of children. We hope that he makes children a top priority and will fight for their interests against those in Congress who don’t see the value of investing in our future.

This last week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the reform of the health care system passed last spring and signed into law by President Obama. It will likely not receive a vote in the US Senate, and even if it did pass the Senate, it would be vetoed by the President.

However, the effort to deny access to quality, affordable health care to every American will continue. Mainly, the strategy involves three key components:

• In Washington, cripple [health care reform] by stripping away the funds to implement it
• In the state capitols, governors are resisting implementation on fiscal grounds
• In the courts, 20 lawsuits against [health care reform] have been filed by state attorney generals who are challenging on constitutional grounds, the requirement that people buy insurance

If successful, more children will be uninsured, and millions more will not have access to quality care. We need to ask politicians if they oppose the reform passed last year, what do they offer instead for America’s children and families.

The following is a table of how each member of the House of Representatives voted on repeal of health care reform. Vote Kids opposes this because repeal will harm children, and the House majority has no plan what they will do to guarantee access to quality care for every child. All 242 Republicans voted for repeal. 189 Democrats voted against repeal. 3 Democrats – Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, and Mike Ross of Arkansas – voted for repeal. Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was not able to vote as she is recovering from a gunshot to the head.

The full vote is available after the jump continue

This Sunday, the Washington Post published an article entitled “GOP Lacks Clear Health Care Plan“. The article describes how that despite planning to have a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act this week, there is no clear alternative plan to deal with the many problems facing the health care system:

In the absence of a plan, Republican leaders nevertheless are eager to convey that they have ideas about health care – and are not merely trying to knock down those of the Democrats. As a result, they have drafted a resolution to accompany the repeal legislation. It lays out broad, long-held GOP health-care goals, but no specifics.

Vote Kids opposes this repeal and has a question for any adults supporting it – How does repealing health care improve the coverage and quality of care for every child? If politicians can not answer that question, they have no business claiming to represent the children of their district.

We know health reform bans insurance companies from denying coverage for children with pre-existing conditions. We know that health reform ends the practice of placing lifetime limits on coverage so that if a child is fortunate enough to beat leukemia when they are 8 they would be uninsurable if they face another serious illness later in life. We know that health reform allows children to stay on their parents plan until the age of 26. Any adult in Washington must have answers to what they will do for these children.

In 2009, there were still more than 8 million children who were not insured at any time during the year. Many more are at risk of losing coverage either if their state removes them from Medicaid rolls or their parents lose their jobs and their care. Saying “I oppose ‘Obamacare’” or “we will repeal and replace health reform with something else” is a cop out in absence of specifics on what they will do for children in their district instead.