Bush’s Budget Priorities Wrong for New York
“The President’s budget puts tax cuts for millionaires ahead of funding for health care, education and struggling New York families. Those are the wrong priorities — for New York and the nation,” said Richard Kirsch, Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York at a joint press conference with the Fiscal Policy Institute last month (at the Metro Justice Annual Meeting Metro Justice voted to affiliate with Citizen Action). Kirsch added, “Bush’s one billion dollars in federal cuts for New York will undermine New York’s effort to improve education and restructure health care.”
The report presented there, First Things First for New York: The President’s Budget Makes the Wrong Choices for New York, finds that the President’s budget would shift billions of dollars in costs to New York and other states, forcing them to either raise taxes to compensate for the lost federal funds or scale back key public services. Many families could end up losing child care assistance, help paying winter heating bills, and other assistance. In contrast, millionaires will receive $73 billion in tax benefits from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts which the President wants to extend indefinitely.
According to the report, which is available at fiscalpolicy.org, the President’s budget would:
• Cut New York’s K-12 education funding by $130.7 million after 5 years (by 2012). The President’s proposals would eliminate much of the additional funding Congress provided to help states implement the federal No Child Left Behind law. The years in the report refer to federal fiscal years so that 2012 means the period beginning October 1, 2011 and ending September 30, 2012.
• Cut New York’s child care funding by $2 million next year, and $6.7 million after 5 years. Under the proposed cuts, children receiving child care assistance nationally would fall by 300,000 by 2010.
• Cut New York’s Head Start funding by $41.6 million after 5 years. The report projects that under the President’s budget, programs would serve 5,300 fewer children than the programs served in 2002.
• Cut New York’s funding for low-income energy assistance by $49.4 million next year and by $63.3 million after 5 years. The 40% cuts in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) would vastly curtail the ability of states to provide assistance to vulnerable households, often the elderly or persons with disabilities, despite increases in energy prices in recent years.
• Cut New York’s funding for clean and safe drinking water by $48.6 million next year and by $62.4 million after 5 years. Among the programs impacted are EPA grants to states for sewage treatment plants and clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects.
• Completely eliminate the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which helps 28,300 low income elderly New Yorkers. This program provides nutritional food packages to more than 400,000 low-income elderly people nationally, more than a third of whom are over age 75.
• Eliminate funding for New York’s Community Services Block Grant, a cut of $55.4 million next year. The Community Services Block Grant provides core operating support to New York’s fifty-two community action agencies that work to alleviate poverty in their communities.
• Eliminate a set of grants programs that assist state and local law enforcement, costing New York $85.6 million in guaranteed funding next year.
In contrast, the Bush administration is requesting nearly $100 billion in additional war-related spending for this fiscal year, 2007. If Congress passes this request, the cost to New York taxpayers for the Iraq War will rise to $40.9 billion. The cost of the Iraq War to Monroe County is estimated at over $1.3 billion. Hopefully the House and Senate budgets now being negotiated will follow much different priorities.