Presbyterian Washington Report
More on the proposed federal budget
Domestic Programs Slated for Large Cuts in
2006 Budget
By Jessica Tate
[3-11-05]
March 2005: A few weeks after Christmas our
church youth group spent an evening assembling supply kits for tsunami
victims. Their boisterous energy was captured in organized chaos as they put
together care packages. During the commotion, I watched a sixth grader slip
out of the assembly line and hand an envelope to the youth pastor. I found
out later that the envelope contained a check—a Christmas gift he
received—signed over to the church to aid in the relief effort for those who
had lost homes and livelihoods in Southeast Asia. I was moved by this act of
generosity and compassion and I was confronted with the reality that the
ways we spend our money show what we value.
On a much larger level, our federal budget
illustrates what we value. As Congress wrestles with the budget proposed
last month by President Bush and begins to appropriate our financial
resources for the coming year, people of faith are called to remember that
our country’s budget is a moral document.
Recently, Robert Greenstein from the Center
for Budget and Policy Priorities shared some sobering economic assessments
of this year’s budget proposal with a committee of the National Council of
Churches.1
• The magnitude of the budget cuts proposed
this year is very high. They include: tax cuts that don’t take full effect
until 2010, increasing costs in Medicare, Medicaid, and social security, the
continuing rise in healthcare costs, and the increase in security costs. As
these areas of the budget increase, the only sector left to cut is domestic
programs, both mandatory and discretionary.
• Today’s federal budget has the same level of
revenue as the budget in 1960. Today we take for granted many of the
domestic programs that help us care for the “least of these among us,” but
these programs had not yet been enacted in 1960. The Food Stamp program, as
we know it, was enacted in 1964.2 Medicare and Medicaid
became part of the Social Security program in 1965.3 The
Environmental Protection Agency was launched in 1970.4 It
is impossible to pay for these programs—which promote the welfare of all in
our society—with a 1960 revenue level.
• States are already struggling to fund
entitlement programs. Block grants are one approach the federal government
likes because they limit the federal contribution to a specific amount and
not a percentage of the cost. This places a disproportionate cost share onto
the states.
• The deficits that result from current U.S.
fiscal policy concern international markets. The dollar is sliding
internationally.
• To balance the budget by 2014 while making
tax cuts permanent, we can: cut Social Security by 57 percent, cut defense
spending by 72 percent, or cut Medicare by 81 percent. None of these
programs is likely to get cut. As a result the domestic programs bear the
burden of the budget deficits and are to be cut across the board by 38
percent.
• The $225 billion spent in tax cuts for the
top one percent of earners (those people making $350,000 or more) is equal
to all the federal education spending or all spending on veteran’s benefits.
• Projections into 2025 suggest that defense,
social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt will
account for ALL revenue by 2021.
Our domestic programs help alleviate hunger
through Food Stamps and school lunch programs, provide high quality public
education to all children, assist families in affording safe child care,
help families find safe, affordable housing, and offer unemployment
benefits. All of these are at risk when tax cuts and security costs account
for so great a proportion of federal spending.
Our past Presbyterian General Assemblies have
suggested maintaining social programs by reducing military spending5
and “urge our federal government to reverse the cuts in federal programs
designed for low-income Americans so that the number of Americans below the
official federal poverty line be decreased.”6 Our
Confessions teach us that “a church that is indifferent to poverty, or
evades responsibility in economic affairs . . . makes a mockery of
reconciliation and offers no acceptable worship to God.”7
Our biblical heritage teaches us to care—as God does—for all members of our
community, and especially the poor. From Jubilee traditions in Leviticus, to
Hebrew prophets who decry the injustice of poverty, we have a long biblical
tradition of caring for the poor and working against poverty.
To care for the poor among us we need to
examine the federal budget with a careful eye, asking whether it represents
the values to which we, as Christians, remain faithful: the Christian values
that encourage us to build up our community and to seek God’s justice, and
the values that encourage us to put not just domestic programs, but the
entire federal budget on the table and jointly sacrifice to ensure that we
are welcoming God’s kingdom into our midst.
Footnotes:
1 National Council of Churches
Public Education Committee Meeting, 24 Feb. 2005, Washington, D.C.
2 “A Short History of the Food
Stamp Program”
http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/rules/Legislation/history.htm
3 “Medicare Information
Resource”
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/medicare/
4 “The Birth of EPA”
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/epa/15c.htm
5 1979 Statement, UPCUSA
6 1985 Statement, PC(USA)
7 Book of Confessions,
Confession of 1967, 9.46.
