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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Samantha Levine
February 7, 2005 212-245-0510
The Wrong Choices: The President's Budget Plan Hurts Children, Elderly, Disabled, and Low-Income People While Protecting the Affluent
The President's proposed FY 2006 Budget would slash crucial services for children, the elderly, disabled and low wage families to protect the well-connected. These are irresponsible and dangerous choices.
The President's plan would end medical care for millions of low-income Americans by cutting $60 billion from Medicaid; starve food stamps by $1 billion, which would give states less flexibility to provide food stamps for working poor families who now get non-cash benefits such as child care or training; cut education for children by a total of $4.3 billion; and end the $225 million Even Start literacy program and the community food and nutrition program.
These cuts would leave children hungrier, seniors sicker and hard-working parents unable to provide food and medicine for their families. While the government says it's being fiscally responsible, the problem isn't too much spending. It's spending on the wrong things -- permanent tax cuts for special interests. According to the Congressional Budget Office, total federal spending will remain lower in 2005 as a share of the economy than in any year from 1975-1996. The deficits our nation faces reflect not an unusually high level of spending, but an unusually low level of revenue. Our federal revenues are at the lowest they have been as a share of the GDP since 1959.
Says Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of The Coalition on Human Needs, "Vice President Dick Cheney said the federal government is not suddenly turning its back on the most needy people in our society. But that is precisely what this proposed budget would do. It locks in tax cuts for the rich while stripping vital services from those who need them most. These are the wrong choices and Congress should not pass this budget."
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