One week left…
On March 1st, new federal budget cuts
will begin to take effect. If Congress
does nothing, many hundreds of thousands of people will be hurt by
across-the-board cuts (sequestration) to education, nutrition, job training,
home heating assistance, public health, mental health, and social services, to
name only a few areas. In the absence of a resolution, there will be $31.4
billion in spending cuts to domestic programs like WIC, Head Start, child care,
housing, home energy, homeless aid, education and training, and much more. Medicare alone will be cut by $11.2
billion.
Congress should replace the sequester with a
balanced approach that reflects our collective responsibility to our human
community. There are core challenges
facing our nation: rising income inequality, persistent unemployment,
historically high rates of poverty and anemic economic growth. These challenges
must be addressed with justice, but the sequester will only exacerbate them.
Sequestration was developed as a backstop – a last
resort if Congress failed to reduce the deficit in a more thoughtful and
balanced way. As Christians, we believe
that our economic system must be rooted in fairness, justice, and equal
opportunity. Without these values, our
economy is, quite literally, demoralized.
Thus it is our responsibility, both individually and collectively, to
respond to those who are in need.
Therefore, the first rule should be that deficit
reduction should not increase poverty.
Congress must not replace the current sequester with policy that will be
even worse for those who are already struggling to make ends meet. We must explore responsible alternatives to
sequestration that will be more consistent with our faith and sense of
compassion. The nation’s deficit problem
cannot be solved through spending cuts alone – new revenues must be part of the
solution.
To raise revenue, the tax code should be made more
progressive (that is, tax liability increases as income increases), system-wide
health care costs should be controlled, and unnecessary tax expenditures should
be eliminated. Further, Congress should
seriously scrutinize the Defense budget, which has doubled in size in the last fifteen
years. Outdated weapons systems and an
over-reliance on the apparatus of war are no way to build peace and true
security in a troubled world.
Our partners at the Coalition
on Human Needs have recently released new national and state-specific fact sheets
that highlight (or lowlight) the effects of these devastating cuts. Just a sampling of the impacts in fact sheets
for every state and for the U.S
are startling: Up to 125,000 families
and 100,000 formerly homeless people losing their housing (or having to pay
much more), 600,000 young children and moms losing WIC nutrition aid, 70,000
children denied Head Start, nearly 76,000 people with disabilities losing Voc.
Rehabilitation services, 373,000 adults and children with serious mental
illness losing treatment.
