Budget

The Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies just approved a funding plan for those agencies in Fiscal Year 2014. The full Committee will consider the bill tomorrow.

During the Subcommittee’s consideration of the bill, Senators voiced their appreciation of the bipartisan effort and conversations leading up to the bill. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Chair of the Subcommittee, expressed her commitment to get the bill on the Senate floor saying “If we move this bill, America and the people who live in it will be in a better place.”  Senator Mikulski explained that the appropriations bill laid the groundwork for expanding opportunity in America through empowering students, investing in education and getting people to work in the 21st century.

We agree. The bill not only rejects the painful cuts from sequestration—it provides additional funding in several key areas, especially early childhood education. Here are seven reasons we were dancing in our offices when we saw the details of the Senate Subcommittee’s FY 2014 Labor, Health and Human Services Education and Related Agencies appropriations bill:

1. Early Childhood Education: A $1.43 billion increase for Head Start, including Early Head Start - Child Care Partnerships, plus a $171 million increase for existing Head Start and Early Head Start programs; a $176 million increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grants, including $110 million for new quality improvement grants and $66 million for child care assistance as well as $750 million for Preschool Development Grants.
2. Implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA): $5.2 billion to the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services to implement the Affordable Care Act, an increase from $3.9 billion in FY 2013.  The ACA will help nearly 30 million Americans, including nearly 15 million women, to access high-quality, affordable health insurance.
3. Mental Health: $40 million for Project AWARE State grants, which will focus on making schools safer and connecting young people with mental health services, and $40 million in new funding to address shortages in the behavioral health workforce.

Here we go again. After a three month hiatus, the debt ceiling has gone back into effect and the federal government officially hit the limit last Sunday. This means the Treasury has begun its extraordinary measures to keep us from defaulting. These measures will extend the time until we would actually default until sometime after the summer — but the debt limit brinksmanship still has consequences. In fact, the Government Accountability Office estimates [PDF] last time we were in this situation "delays in raising the debt limit in 2011 led to an increase in Treasury's borrowing costs of about $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2011." 

But what does $1.3 billion really mean? How about this: $1.3 billion is the annual base budget for the Department of Defense's Child Care and Youth Programs. This money goes to child care providers, as well as child and youth development programs. Next year it is estimated to serve more than 200,000 children of military families. 

This comes on the heels of another egregious money waster — the 37th vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") which passed the House last week. Read more »

As expected, President Obama’s FY 14 budget includes a proposal to use the “chained Consumer Price Index” – a slower-growing measure of inflation that would cut Social Security benefits by reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments. This is not just a technical change – but a benefit cut that would cause real hardship to the elderly and the poor. The President’s budget recognizes this threat and proposes some protections for vulnerable beneficiaries from the chained CPI – but NWLC analysis shows that this strategy is not adequate.

The budget proposes a bump-up in benefits for long-term beneficiaries, who would experience the worst cuts because the cuts grow deeper every year. In addition, the budget would not apply the chained CPI to needs-based benefit programs, such as Supplemental Security Income, or use it to determine eligibility for programs like SNAP (Food Stamps).

NWLC’s analysis finds that the small and gradual benefit increases from the bump-ups wouldn’t restore the monthly benefit of the typical single elderly woman to current-law levels—unless she lives to 104. Read more »

Did you see the first video from NWLC and the National Priorities Project explaining why budget and tax issues are women’s issues? No? Then stop what you’re doing and watch it here.

Now that you’ve seen it, you’re eager for more, right? Well, my friend, you’re in luck. In Part 2, you’ll learn how Congress can protect programs that serve women and families by requiring the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Watch the second video now:

After a couple of weeks of intense debate over budget plans proposed in the House and Senate, you may feel that this week’s Congressional recess is a welcome break from talk of taxes and spending, deficits and debt. But Congress is back in session April 8 – and the budget battles will return, too.

  Read more »

I’m not sure whether it counts as good news to report that Congress carried out one of its most basic responsibilities today by ensuring that the government will continue to function for the rest of FY 2013 — but it’s certainly better than reporting a government shutdown beginning next week. 

Today, the House of Representatives approved the continuing resolution (CR) passed yesterday by the Senate, averting a potential shutdown by funding government operations through the end of the fiscal year (September 30, 2013). (The CR passed last September will expire on March 27.) The bill largely maintains current funding levels, further reduced by the full $85 billion in cuts from the “sequester,” which means many programs and services that women and their families depend on remain subject to cuts — and hundreds of thousands of jobs are still likely to be lost, slowing our economic recovery.   Read more »

Once upon a time (last year), I taught 4th grade at a Title I school in rural Louisiana.  We went to school Tuesday through Friday.  Yes, that’s right – only 4 DAYS A WEEK. In 2006 the underfunded and low performing school district desperately needed to find a way to save money, so the school board had to cut out Mondays.

Last week Paul Ryan released his budget and guess what - in FY13 it CUTS $15.8 million in funding from Title I schools (schools where over 75% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Louisiana alone!  In FY14 it adds a whopping $54.9 million in additional cuts to Louisiana schools.  By the end of 2014, under Ryan’s plan, over 4 million of the most vulnerable children across the country would lose access to education services. 

According to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan this is the “The Path to Prosperity.”  Is that a joke?  Read more »

You may have heard that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his FY 2014 budget plan this week – and that it is bad news for women and families. Like Chairman Ryan’s previous budget plans, the latest version would make deep cuts to programs that women and their families depend on while giving lavish tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

The good news is that Chairman Ryan’s budget is not the only plan circulating on Capitol Hill this week. Yesterday afternoon, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA) released her own budget blueprint for FY 2014. In stark contrast to the Ryan budget, the Murray budget proposes new investments in early childhood programs, largely protects core safety net programs (although it includes some cuts to funding for health care programs that could be worrisome), and advances tax fairness. For example, Chairman Murray’s budget:

• Supports key investments in our future. The Murray budget calls for new investments to expand access to pre-K, child care, Head Start, Early Head Start and home visiting services for parents with young children, helping more children prepare to succeed in school while giving more parents the support they need to work. The budget also invests in measures to speed up the economic recovery, including a $100 billion fund to support job training and infrastructure projects that would create new jobs and strengthen the economy.  
• Protects critical supports for vulnerable families and individuals.  Chairman Murray’s budget protects Social Security and most core safety net programs, which are particularly important to women because they face a greater risk of poverty than men at all stages of their lives. The budget also permanently extends improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit that lift millions of women and children out of poverty each year. And it secures funding to fully implement the Affordable Care Act, ensuring that women will have greater access to affordable health insurance and preventive care services.

Today House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his vision for the next ten years. Despite having a section entitled "Fairness Restored," Ryan’s budget does anything but put forward a fair and equitable plan.

Chairman Ryan’s plan balances the budget on the backs of vulnerable women and their families. It would:

• Cut the funding available for programs like Head Start, child care, K-12 education, job training, and domestic violence prevention.
• Cut Medicaid and turn it into a block grant, allowing states to restrict eligibility and eliminate benefits. About two-thirds of adult Medicaid beneficiaries are women.
• Repeal the Affordable Care Act, eliminating the Medicaid expansions critical for low-income families, tax credits to help moderate-income families purchase health insurance, help with the cost of prescription drugs in Medicare and preventive health care services (including contraceptive services), and protections against discriminatory insurance company practices.

Yesterday, Senate Democrats proposed a plan to postpone across-the-board spending cuts — known inside the beltway as the “sequester” — that are currently scheduled to take effect in just two weeks, on March 1. The bill, called the American Family Economic Protection Act, includes $120 billion of savings — enough to replace the sequester through the end of calendar year 2013. 

Unlike the sequester, which reduces the deficit solely through deep spending cuts (on top of earlier spending cuts that are 2.5 times greater than new revenues), the American Family Economic Protection Act achieves savings from an equal amount of revenues and cuts (plus about $10 billion in interest savings). The bill would raise $54 billion over 10 years by adopting the “Buffett rule,” a measure that would ensure very wealthy taxpayers cannot get away with paying taxes at a lower effective rate than middle class families. Those with incomes above $1 million (after subtracting charitable contributions) would be required to pay at least a 30 percent tax rate, with a phase-in for incomes between $1 million and $2 million. An additional $1 billion in revenue would be raised by eliminating an oil industry tax loophole and a tax deduction for businesses that ship jobs overseas. 

On the spending side, savings in the bill would come mostly from modest reductions in the overall level of defense spending — which would not begin until FY 2015, when the war in Afghanistan is expected to end – and cuts in agriculture subsidies, especially direct payments to farmers that are currently provided regardless of yields, prices, or farm income.  

All in all, this sounds like a reasonable proposal to us — especially compared to the sequester, which would be devastating for many programs that women and their families depend on. Read more »