How does the President’s budget affect human needs programs in your state? While many numbers are yet to be crunched, several expert groups have compiled state estimates. Here are some links:
Education, Human Services, and Community Development: The budget would make substantial cuts over the next five years to a wide range of discretionary programs such as elementary and secondary education, IDEA, vocational and adult education, WIC, Section 8 Housing Vouchers, child care, LIHEAP, Ryan White AIDS, and community development. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has calculated the loss to states in each of these programs over the next five years – and where possible, the number of people who will lose services. Read the overview paper and look at the state data tables.
Medicaid: The budget would cut Medicaid funding by a net $45 billion over 10 years. According to Families USA, in 2010 the amount cut would be large enough to provide health care for 1.8 million children or 345,000 senior citizens. Families USA has also calculated how many children and how many seniors in your state could be covered by the amount of cuts.
Heating and Cooling Assistance: The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is cut by about $200 million, down from $2.2 billion this year. LIHEAP serves about 4.5 million low-income households this year (down from 5 million in 2002, because of shrinking funds), about half with children, half with a person with a disability, and one-third with a person 60 or older. Only 18 percent of the eligible population is served. Cutting LIHEAP is cruelly ill-timed, since energy costs are rising. In March of 2004, heating oil cost $1.34 a gallon; in April 2005, a gallon cost $1.82. (source: Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, www.liheap.org )
Job Training and Literacy: Job training has been cut in several places in the President’s budget, including $329 million cut from adult training programs in the Department of Labor and $362 million from adult education and family literacy programs (a 62 percent cut). The Center for Law and Social Policy has estimated the impacts in each state of cuts to literacy, Adult Basic Education, GED, and English as a Second Language services, available at http://www.clasp.org/publications/adult_ed_budget_cuts.pdf. The $637 million Community Services Block Grant, which provides job training, is eliminated. The budget also eliminates the Perkins Vocational and Technical Education program (funded at $1.3 billion this year) and folds its funds into the Administration’s new high school initiative. While some Perkins’ programs could continue within the new initiative, post-secondary vocational programs now operated by Perkins would not fit. The Association for Career and Technical Education has estimated the loss of funds by state for vocational training under the President’s proposal.
Community Development: The Administration’s budget would cut community development funds by $1.8 billion, eliminating the Community Development Block Grant, consolidating 18 community development programs into one block grant funded at $3.7 billion, and moving these programs to the Commerce Department. The Community Development Block Grant alone is funded at $4.7 billion this year. Funding for the 18 programs would be cut by about one-third. According to HUD figures cited by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in FY 2004, nearly 160,000 households received housing assistance from CDBG funds, 13 million received services such as job training, child care, assistance for battered women, and transportation, and businesses in distressed neighborhoods received loans. The National Priorities Project has estimated how the community development funding cuts would be allocated among states in FY 2005.
K-12 Education: While funding for No Child Left Behind programs are up, they are far below the amounts promised to school districts (and to children) when the legislation was enacted. According to the National Priorities Project, Congress authorized the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to be funded at $36.7 billion for fiscal year 2006 for the elementary and secondary education programs included in the legislation. Under the President’s budget request, NCLB programs would only be funded at the level of $23.6 billion, indicating underfunding for the programs of $13.1 billion. NPP estimates state-by-state breakdowns, showing both the increase over last year and the shortfall compared to the promised funding levels.
Head Start: The budget proposes to increase funding for Head Start by $45 million in FY 2006, but this is actually a real cut in funding because the $45 million increase would fund state demonstration projects (block grants.)
