Congress to Balance Budget on the Backs of the Poor

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi’s new plan proposes to balance the budget in ten years through massive cuts in domestic programs, with no revenue contribution over that time. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the Senate Budget plan and the House Budget Committee plan will get 69 percent of their cuts from programs that benefit low and moderate income people.

The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, when discussing priorities in the federal budget, wrote “we know that we are responsible to each other and, as the Gospel of Luke teaches us, ‘from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.’  We, therefore, urge a solution to the…. federal deficit that ensures long-term fiscal stability; deficit reduction; just, new revenue; long-term integrity for entitlement programs; and a priority on the most vulnerable in society[1].”

The published budgets would slash essential funding and weaken the federal safety net at a time when many families have yet to fully recover from The Great Recession. Here is a closer look at what gets cut and what programs are safe:

•      Health care for low- and moderate-income people. Each plan would repeal health reform, including its subsidies to make coverage affordable for people with low or moderate incomes and its Medicaid expansion, and block-grant much of Medicaid, while also making deep cuts to the program.  At least 14 million people would lose their Medicaid coverage or no longer gain coverage in the future[2].
•      SNAP (formerly food stamps). The House plan block-grants SNAP starting in 2021 and cuts SNAP funds by $125 billion, or more than a third, over 2021 to 2025.  Cuts of this magnitude would end food assistance for millions of low-income families, cut benefits for millions of such households, or do some combination of the two.
•      Tax credits for low- and modest-income working families. Each plan would let critical provisions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expire at the end of 2017, which would push more than 16 million people, including almost 8 million children, into or deeper into poverty.
•      Other mandatory (i.e. entitlement) programs serving low-income people. The House and Senate plans would each cut hundreds of billions of dollars from mandatory programs in the education and income security categories of the budget.  Although each plan lacks specifics, severe cuts of up to 90 billion dollars would occur to Pell Grants, which help students from families with modest incomes afford college.
•      Low-income non-defense discretionary programs. The House and Senate plans each would make additional cuts on top of the significant reductions required by the Budget Control Act’s discretionary caps and sequestration.  These cuts would shrink the funds available for investments in education, research, and transportation, as well as for low-income programs such as housing assistance, Head Start, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program[3].
•              Military Spending is Safe. The House and Senate would both stay within the budget caps for the Pentagon’s base budget ($523 billion) in 2016 but the House would significantly increase the war funding account to $90 billion, and would add $397 billion to the Pentagon accounts over the next 10 years[4].
  
  

  
  

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[1] Gradye Parsons,  “Addressing the Moral Concern of Deficits through Principles, not Politics” http://www.pcusa.org/news/2012/12/11/addressing-moral-concern-deficits-through-principl/

[2] http://www.offthechartsblog.org/proposed-medicaid-block-grant-would-add-millions-to-uninsured-and-underinsured/

[3] http://www.offthechartsblog.org/house-senate-budget-plans-each-get-69-percent-of-cuts-from-low-income-programs/
[4] http://fcnl.org/blog/2c/battling_budgets/

Oppose Budget Balanced on Backs of Poor People

Today the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives started debating their 2016 budget resolutions. Votes on these budgets will determine anti-hunger policy for the rest of this year and beyond.

If passed, the proposed budget cuts could lead to devastating increases in hunger and poverty in the U.S. and abroad. For example:

• The House budget proposal drastically cuts SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program) by at least 34 percent, the equivalent of up to 220 missed meals annually for each SNAP participant.
• Both budget plans would repeal the Affordable Care Act and block grant Medicaid, making deep cuts to health coverage for low-income people.
• Lifesaving international programs would be cut by 16 percent in the House budget. Funding for our international humanitarian aid budget has already been cut by 22 percent – we can’t afford any further cuts.
• Sixty-nine percent of the budget cuts in both the House and Senate come directly from programs impacting low-income people – placing the burden on those who are already suffering.
• Both House and Senate budgets allow to expire critical tax relief for the poorest workers, through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), plunging 16 million people, including 8 million children, into deeper poverty.
• Both budgets keep the automatics budget cuts of 2011 (called sequestration) in place – and cut even further. This puts programs like WIC, food aid, and poverty focused development assistance in grave danger.  

Raise your voice with thousands of faithful advocates. Call your Senators and Representative at (800) 826-3688 in the next 24 hours. Urge them to oppose cuts to programs that are working to end hunger and poverty in the U.S. and around the world.

For more information on proposed budget cuts to programs that serve the most vulnerable people, visit our blog.

* Many thanks to Bread for the World for use of their 800-number and permission to reprint an excerpt of their action alert.

Farm Bill Update

Final Farm Bill Falls Short of a Faithful Farm Bill

by Leslie Woods

On February 7, President Obama signed into law the newest Farm Bill. Unfortunately, the best I can say about the overall bill is that it could have been worse.  The PC(USA) has a long history of supporting a Farm Bill that connects hungry people to what should be a sustainable food system. Last year, both the PC(USA) Big Tent and Ecumenical Advocacy Days focused on Food Justice. But this bill falls short of the justice we seek.

The Bad News: the bill cuts $8 billion from SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program. In this economic climate, it is unconscionable that we are cutting nutrition assistance to some of the most vulnerable people in the country. Due to these cuts, some 850,000 households will lose an average of $90 per month.  These cuts are unacceptable. Further, the Farm Bill fails to make reforms to Farm programs that benefit corporate Ag, like commodity and crop insurance subsidies.

The Good News: the bill invests over $1.2 billion in the innovative programs for beginning farmers, local food, organic agriculture, rural development, and specialty crops that were stranded when the Farm Bill expired in 2012.  The bill also reconnects crop insurance subsidies to basic conservation requirements. Furthermore, under this new law, U.S. international humanitarian food aid becomes much more efficient and culturally appropriate. These were all key requests of the faith community.

A Reason to be Relieved: I am not writing today about a $40 billion cut to SNAP and the four million people who would be about to lose their benefits, as I would if the House-passed Farm Bill had become law. Indeed, when thousands of Presbyterians responded to frantic action alerts about that $40 billion cut in September 2013, I could not have imagined that the final, comparable damage would be so small. 

So, the new Farm Bill is a mixed bag. The SNAP cuts are appalling, but they are not nearly as bad as they could be – or even than we thought they would be only a few months ago. The farm programs are investing in some new and innovative ideas in agriculture, even while they fall short of real reform of the system.  In all, this is not a good bill, nor is it something the PC(USA) can support, but it does do some good things.  

Farm Bill Update from NSAC

Last week, we posted an update on the Farm Bill that focused largely on the Nutrition section of the bill. On Friday, the National Sustainable Agriculture blog had a helpful piece on of our other concerns in Farm Bill negotiations.  Read it all here or see the Farm Bill excerpts below:

Farm Bill and Budget Deal Moving Forward

December 13th, 2013

Farm Bill

Behind closed door action on the farm bill this week did not yield the expected announcement of an agreed upon framework, but did seem to push closer toward a final package.  There has been a very noticeable uptick in discussions and decision making on numerous issues that had, in earlier negotiations, been left open.  And by most accounts, budget estimates for the emerging commodity title of the farm bill have just been completed that suggest they are close to their overall spending and deficit reduction goals for the commodity subsidy portion of the farm bill.

Negotiations are expected to continue next week, even with the House having left for the holidays, with the goal of having everything ready for a formal meeting of the conference committee on January 8 or 9.  At that time, the conferees will vote an any issues that have not been settled behind closed doors, and then vote to adopt the final conference report.  At this point in time, that is expected to be a one-and-done meeting of the conferees.

To the best of our knowledge, some major issues remain open and under active debate.  Those include:

• commodity program payment limit reform (including closing the loopholes that allow farms to collect unlimited subsidies) that is included in both bills, yet still faces backroom opposition by anti-reform forces;
• nationwide sodsaver protection (crop insurance reform to reduce subsidized destruction of grasslands) included in the Senate bill;
• an assault on fair market competition in the livestock sector that would eliminate most of USDA’s authority to maintain a fair and competitive market and to protect the rights of farmers and ranchers, an anti-farmer provision included in the House bill;
• reversing consumer-right-to-know country of origin labeling for meat, also included in the House bill; and
• the King amendment, another House provision, that would curtail the rights of states to regulate food, agriculture, and natural resources.

Some of those, if still unresolved after next week, could possibly go to a public vote when the conferees meet in January.  We expect some of these to be worked out next week, eliminating the need for specific votes.  Other unresolved issues might also be added to the list of issues requiring votes.

It appears that the big issues that have taken up much of the time in the so-called gang of four negotiations between the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are close to finished.  That includes the widely reported, though still not officially confirmed, cut to the SNAP or food stamp program of $8-9 billion over the next 10 years.  All or nearly all of the reduction is reportedly coming from forcing states to give low-income families receiving heating assistance more money before they can use that heating benefit as a deduction to qualify for a higher SNAP benefit.  The food stamp title of the bill is also expected to include some job training pilot projects in lieu of the House-passed work requirement.

It also includes the new commodity program that would give grain and oilseed producers a choice between revenue protection payments or counter-cyclical payments.  Both will be based on an updated version of historic “base” acres and will not be based on actual planted acres in the future.

Assuming a final bill gets mostly wrapped up next week and is then presented to the conferees on January 8 or 9, and assuming that after voting on the remaining open issues, a majority of the conferees support the final bill, it will then presumably be scheduled for floor action in the House and Senate later in January, about the same time, perhaps, as the final omnibus appropriations bill is also headed for floor action.

The latter must be passed by January 15 in order to avert a second government shutdown.  The farm bill, on the other hand, does not have such a hard deadline, but will have the threat of antiquated permanent commodity program law kicking in and causing market mayhem.  The House in fact this week passed a one-month extension of the old farm bill in order to defend themselves against charges of allowing those old farm programs to kick in.  The Senate, wisely, is not taking up the extension, choosing instead to focus on getting the new farm bill finished and passed.  A farm bill extension back on October 1, when the old farm bill expired, would have been a positive thing.  But at this point in time, it is too late to be helpful, and could seriously harm the momentum that is building to get the new farm bill finished.

The vote on a final farm bill could turn out to be a close vote, and for sure will require substantial Democratic votes to pass.  Aware of that reality, and upset that the budget deal did not include an extension of unemployment compensation benefits, some Democratic leaders are pushing to use a portion of the savings to be generated by the farm bill to offset additional unemployment benefits.  Benefits otherwise expire at the end of this year for many of the long-term unemployed.  Whether that play moves forward or not will depend in part on how many Republican votes can be rallied to support passage of the final farm bill.

It will be a busy week next week, with a Senate vote on the budget deal, with appropriators getting to work on the final spending bills for this year as soon as the Senate passes the budget, and with intense work on the details of all the titles of the farm bill.  Then everyone will depart from the Hill, go home and drink lots of eggnog, and come back for what is shaping up to be a momentous January.

Year-end Farm Bill Update

It appears that House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are close to a Farm Bill deal. While we have not seen legislative language, it is our understanding that under the working agreement on the farm bill, the nutrition title would include $8-9 billion in cuts to SNAP made by taking the House level cut to the Heat and Eat program, concentrating the full impact of the cuts in the 16 states that participate. Leaders had hoped to unveil the deal this week, but a key budget analyst was snowed in in New Jersey and unable to provide the necessary Congressional Budget Office scores in time for action before the House adjourns tomorrow, Friday, Dec 13. As such, Ag Committee leaders announced their intention to move the bill in early January.

The House has introduced legislation providing a short-term farm bill extension through January. House Ag Chairman Lucas (R-OK) wanted the legislation in case it looks like Congress won't be able to wrap up the full farm bill reauthorization in early January. In the meantime, Senate leaders have stated explicitly that they will not take up an extension, hoping to maintain pressure on Congress to wrap up negotiations and vote on a final farm bill in early January. One major concern that arises by not passing a bill by December 31^st is that dairy programs will revert back to 1949 farm law, which required USDA to provide price supports at a much higher level than today and which could lead to a significant spike in milk prices. However, Secretary Vilsack has assured negotiators that, provided they take action in early January, he will hold off on implementing permanent law and milk prices will not be impacted.

Agriculture Committee leaders met Tuesday and are scheduled to meet again today. While the House is not in session next week, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member Peterson (D-MN) are expected to come back next week to finish up negotiations with Senators Stabenow (D-MI) and Cochran (R-MS) to finalize the framework. Staff would finish writing legislative language to match the framework deal before Congress returns in January. In January, the conference committee would have a public meeting to vote on the conference agreement. Some amendments may be concerned at the conference committee level to allow members who are unhappy with certain elements of the legislation to raise their concerns. The bill would then move to the House and Senate floor for final passage. 

Many thanks for all of your tremendous advocacy efforts. Together with our partners, we generated over 4,000 calls to Congress last week and Presbyterians alone sent over 2,000 emails in the last three weeks calling for a Faithful Farm Bill. To read more about PC(USA) advocacy for a comprehensive and faithful Farm Bill, visit our blog.

We will share additional legislative details as they are made available. In the meantime, members of Congress are heading home for the holidays. It's a great time for you to invite them to worship, to volunteer in your food pantries or feeding programs, and to continue to elevate the issues of hunger and ongoing need in your communities.  In a season when we are celebrating the coming a Savior to all people, the stark inequalities become startlingly apparent.  Make sure your elected officials understand the importance of protecting and strengthening nutrition programs and of completing a comprehensive, sustainable Farm Bill.