Yesterday was Tax Day - How will your dollars be spent?

From Witness in Washington Weekly, published by the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), April 14, 2008

Budgets are about restrictions, about how to live within spending limits, and about defining essential or unavoidable expenses. You can't make these types of decisions without first defining a vision for yourself and for the country. Let's not talk about the federal budget.

Let's start with our vision for this country instead and then talk about how to divide up the $3 trillion budget proposed by President Bush for the upcoming fiscal year.

What Vision?

For the past 55 years, the federal budget has supported just one primary vision - a vision of the United States as the world's dominant, or even sole, military power.

But a majority of people in the United States has a different vision of the country. When polled about federal spending in 2005, and again in a Gallup poll in 2007, clear majorities of representative national samples favored increased funding for non-military priorities. In the 2005 poll, respondents specifically preferred to support veterans, education, job training, and medical research. The largest group, 70%, would have increased spending for conservation and renewable energy development by more than a thousand percent.

Majority Wants to Spend Less on Military

In contrast, nearly two-thirds said they would prefer to cut military spending by almost a third. Only 11% agreed with the vision of the United States as the dominant world military power. The people of the United States have a vision for the future that is not being translated into federal policy. Part of the problem is the myth that the majority of people always support more military spending. "The member of Congress agrees with you, but we are not in the majority," say congressional staff who support cutting military spending. But comments like these do not match actual research on American opinion, individuals who want to stop increasing military spending or want to cut military spending are the majority. Congress needs to hear that majority's voice.

Changing the vision reflected in the federal budget will not be easy and will not happen quickly. But it can happen. One first step is helping people to understand that the budget does reflect a vision, one that affects them and their community.

Start by talking to your neighbors. Then get a group together to talk with your members of Congress. Begin with your vision for the world. Imagine this country in a different way. This nation could join with other nations to respond to global problems, such as climate change, disease, and terrorism, and Congress and the president can use the budget to advance those priorities concretely.

Make your vision real by naming the things that the U.S. government could accomplish with our common dollars. Don't talk about the federal budget. Talk about the federal government's vision.

The Friends' Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), in their analysis, "Where Do Our Income Tax Dollars Go?" show that 43 cents of every tax dollar goes toward military spending. Click here to see FCNL's analysis of federal spending priorities and find out where your tax dollars are going.

This article reprinted, with slight modification, from the Washington Newsletter, [issue # 725, March 2008] published by the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

General Assembly Guidance:

In 1979, the 191st General Assembly "reaffirm[ed] the actions of previous General Assemblies pertaining to the elimination of poverty and unemployment, to equitable taxation, and to the continuing shift of national priorities from an excessive preoccupation with military superiority to bold and imaginative initiatives for peace, health and welfare." (Minutes, UPCUSA, 1979, p. 292)

The Federal Budget: a Human Needs Budget?

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew 6:21

The Presbyterian Washington Office is posting very helpful analyses of the proposed federal budget, from the perspective of our church's views on social needs and social justice..  They are appearing as part of the office's Witness in Washington Weekly, with the first section appearing in the February 12, 2007 letter, and the second in the February 19 letter. They are authored by Leslie G. Woods, staff person for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues. More articles will be posted in the near future.

We reprint them here with the kind permission of the Washington Office. If you find these analyses helpful, you can receive them yourself only by subscribing to the e-list for them, since they are not normally posted on the Washington Office web-site. Just go to http://capwiz.com/pcusa/mlm/signup . And we encourage you to do just that!  [2-21-07]

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has also issued a very good analysis of the proposed budget.  Click here for links to the full report and various articles in it.

 

February 12, 2007

On Monday, February 5, 2007, President Bush released his Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 budget proposal. This document outlines how the President sees the nation’s financial future from October 2007 through September 2008, the 2008 fiscal year. While some of the assumptions the President’s budget makes are widely seen as unrealistic with respect to reducing the deficit and balancing the budget in 2012, even worse are the terrible priorities displayed by the President’s choices in the programs he funds and those he cuts.

A federal budget is about more than just spending, taxes and thousands of pages of tables and graphs. It is about what this nation values as a community. Where we choose to spend our money shows what we value most as a society and this budget proposal displays values that are outright hostile to low- and even moderate-income Americans who are making ends meet only with the help of federal programs that provide assistance for health care, food and nutrition, housing, the cost of energy, child care, and much more.

Within federal expenditures are several different kinds of spending, including interest on the national debt, mandatory spending (such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), Defense, and Domestic Discretionary spending (including Homeland Security). Other than mandatory spending, which is also sometimes called "entitlement" spending, the programs that serve the most vulnerable in society are funded through the domestic discretionary spending section of the budget. Other than the interest on the national debt, which in 2006 was 8 percent of total expenditures, spending on non-defense, discretionary service programs made up the smallest wedge of the pie, at 14 percent in 2006.

Now that the President has proposed his budget, Congress must go to work to create its own. By April 15, Congress must pass a "Budget Resolution" that will set an overall spending cap for FY 2008 federal spending, but it will not set funding levels for specific programs or departments. After the budget resolution passes, the individual appropriations committees will go to work creating detailed budgets for each of the federal programs and departments, so advocacy for individual programs will begin later in the year. Right now, advocates’ focus is on making sure the overall budget spending cap is high enough that human needs programs do not have to fight with each other for funding (i.e. cutting Head Start to fund housing vouchers).

There are several programs that will experience severe hardship if this budget is enacted as the President proposes. Some of the programs that will experience especially egregious cuts and reductions in the services they can provide are the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Medicaid, housing assistance, Food stamps and other nutrition programs, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), child care programs and Head Start, some college aid programs, the Social Services Block Grant, job training, education, pollution control, and funding for veterans’ health care (which will be increased in FY 2008, but cut in each of the four subsequent years.)

The President’s budget does contain some very encouraging policies, including increased international HIV / AIDS funding, increased commitment to the Millennium Challenge account, increased humanitarian aid and peacekeeping programs for Sudan, and increased maximum allowed Pell Grant, which helps low-income students go to college. It is important to preserve these positive steps toward meeting our commitments abroad, but we must also meet the commitments that the government has made at home.

In the following weeks, Witness in Washington Weekly will individually address some of the domestic human needs issues and programs that are affected by the President’s budget proposal. The 1988 General Assembly stated, "In light of the growing disparity in household income and the past positions of General Assemblies, the 200th General Assembly, urges the President and Congress of the United States to oppose further cuts in social programs that benefit poor people and to increase support for programs unable to serve all eligible persons due to lack of funds."(1988 Statement – PC(USA), p. 364) As people of faith we are called to advocate for the common good on behalf of "the least of these," but this budget does the opposite. Advocates should follow the budget debate and urge their members of Congress to make sure the Budget Resolution overall spending cap is high enough to adequately fund programs that help real people every day.

Part 2, posted on February 19, 2007

As discussed in the Witness in Washington Weekly on February 12, 2007, the federal budget is more than just thousands of pages of numbers, tables and graphs. Rather, it is a document that shows what this nation values as a community. Where we choose to spend our money shows what we value most as a society. President Bush’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 budget proposal outlines his priorities for the nation, but people of faith, who are called to speak out in defense of the poor, cannot choose the same priorities. In this article, we will examine in more detail the President’s proposed funding levels for nutrition and hunger programs, energy assistance programs and conservation programs.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. – Deuteronomy 24:21

From our earliest laws, people of faith have been concerned about making sure that the poor people in their communities have enough to eat. In the ancient world, it was unlawful to reap the entire harvest from a field. Instead, farmers and their workers intentionally left the crop at the edges of the field, and it was the right of the poor to glean, or collect that crop to feed themselves and their families. We no longer have gleaning laws, but we have put in place service programs that intend to address the same need. The Food Stamp Program, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) all provide indispensable nutrition assistance to families who routinely have to choose between paying their bills and buying groceries.

Food Stamps: In the FY 2008 budget, the President proposes to cut about 329,000 low-income people from the Food Stamp Program by eliminating the option for states to provide automatic Food Stamp eligibility for families that are receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) services. This loss of Food Stamps would mean that children in the affected families would lose their automatic eligibility for free school breakfast and lunch programs as well. In a positive change, the President proposes removing retirement and education savings from the assets that determine whether a family is eligible to receive Food Stamps, which would mean about 98,000 new enrollments in the program, but overall, enrollment in food stamps will drop by 231,000 people due to the changes mentioned above.

The Commodity Supplemental Food Program gives special help to low-income seniors as well as to some families on the WIC program. Essentially, this program provides a food package worth less than $20 each month to these households. In FY 2005, this program served an estimated 459,000 low-income older adults and more than 50,000 pregnant women and young children. The FY 2008 budget proposal would eliminate this program entirely.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) ensures nutrition assistance and education for low-income women who are pregnant, breastfeeding and post-partum, and to infants and children. Currently WIC serves 45 percent of all infants born in the United States, according to the Federal Food and Nutrition Service. The President’s proposed funding level is at least $175 million short of the nearly $5.6 billion needed to cover all eligible WIC applicants. WIC is one of the most effective programs for reducing hunger and malnutrition in children and must be funded adequately.

According to America’s Second Harvest 2006 Hunger Survey, nearly 42 percent of the households served by this nationwide system of food pantries had to choose between paying their utility bills in the winter and putting food on the table. As the nation is gripped by bone-freezing temperatures and crippling snow storms, poor families turn to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) for help in heating their homes. The FY 2008 budget proposal cuts funding for LIHEAP by 44 percent, from $3.2 billion in FY 2006 to $1.72 billion in FY 2008.

In the opening story in Genesis, God creates the earth and everything in it. Then God makes human beings, and puts them in the world to care for it and be good stewards of its resources. In the FY 2008 budget proposal, environmental programs would sustain some of the deepest cuts. The budget proposal cuts the overall funding for programs in the Natural Resources and Environment budget by $2.5 billion in 2008 and by $20.1 billion over the next five years, after accounting for inflation. Every subcategory of this line item in the budget would feel the effects of this cut, including water resources, conservation and land management, recreational resources including national parks, and pollution control and abatement. In particular, pollution control would be cut by $706 million in 2008 and by $1.4 billion, 15.7 percent, in 2012.

If the federal budget reflects the priorities of the nation, this budget must not pass! Help for women, children, seniors, and poor families is at the core of Jesus’ call to care for "the least of these." As Congress now sets out to create its own budget for FY 2008, advocates must contact their legislators and urge them to set the overall spending cap high enough that human needs programs will not be squeezed. When the spending cap is set too low, these programs and their advocates will have to fight with each other for adequate funds for the common good of all. Send a message to your members of Congress in support of a budget spending cap higher than the President’s, high enough to fund human needs programs without cuts.

Click http://capwiz.com/pcusa/issues/alert/?alertid=9383911&type=CO to send a message to your members of Congress.

Leslie G. Woods
Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues
Presbyterian Church (USA) Washington Office
100 Maryland Ave. NE Ste. 410
Washington, DC 20002
(202) 543-1126 (phone)
(202) 543-7755 (fax)
lwoods@ctr.pcusa.org

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has created and gathered very helpful resources on the proposed Federal Budget and questions of what priorities will shape it over the coming months.

The huge proportion of the budget that will go to military programs is given careful analysis.

The Federal budget reflects the nation's priorities. The March 2007 Washington Newsletter asks What Vision Will Be Represented in the New Federal Budget?. Will it be your vision? FCNL is lobbying Congress to make real choices for human security by funding social services, diplomacy, and environmental protection programs. Instead, Congress continues to allow the military budget to balloon, all while Military Profits Are Robust and Rising. The U.S. Government Shopping List shows that the government has real choices on how to spend the budget and could easily fund many important human security needs, if there was political will to do so. The Congress has the chance to change the focus of the budget to address domestic needs as well as promote diplomacy abroad. Shouldn't there be No One Left Behind?

As part of the budget process each year, FCNL determines what percentage of our tax dollarsgoes to funding war and the military. This year's number was a staggering 41% of every dollar. View the breakdown of the Federal budget with the chart Where Do Our Income Tax Dollars Go? (PDF). Please be sure to read the explanation of how the budget numbers were discerned. This month saw the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War. As we move into the fifth year of war and occupation, we should ask ourselves, "isn't this long enough?" The cost in lives is significant...over six hundred thousand Iraqi civilians and more than three thousand U.S. troops. FCNL believes that Congress Should Defund the Iraq War. The time to withdraw U.S. forces is now, and Congress should insist that the president change course and approach a diplomatic, non-military solution to the crisis in Iraq.

A major
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July 28 - August 3, 2008

Paths toward Peace and Justice:
Spirituality, Earth-Care, and the Prophetic Word in a time of Violence

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