House Budget Pays for Tax Cuts for the Wealthy by Slashing Programs for Women & Families, Says DeLauro
House Budget Pays for Tax Cuts for the Wealthy by Slashing Programs for Women & Families, Says DeLauro
- Budget Cuts Funding for Food Stamps, Child Care, Medicaid -
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3), a member of the House Budget Committee, today said the House budget pays for tax cuts for the wealthy by slashing programs for women and families. The budget reconciliation bill, which narrowly passed the House 217-215 early this morning, includes $54 billion in spending cuts, which DeLauro says will be wiped out by $70 billion of tax cuts Republicans are expected to include.
"The Reconciliation bill is paying for more tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of America's children," said DeLauro. "Together, America can do better than a morally irresponsible budget that pays for more tax breaks for millionaires by slashing vital services for women, children, and working families."
The House budget calls for -
* $11 billion in Medicaid cuts to health services for poor children and long-term care patients, and increasing the cost of prescription drugs for beneficiaries;
* $796 million in Food Stamp cuts, eliminating nutrition and school lunch and breakfast benefits for hundreds of thousands of families and children;
* $14 billion in cuts to student aid programs, including raising the cost of college for students and their families through increased interest rates and loan fees.
Women make up nearly three-quarters of Medicaid recipients. According to a study conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration in 2000, 69 percent of all adult Food Stamp participants were women. 36 percent of households with children that receive food stamps were headed by a single parent, the overwhelming majority of whom were women, according to a Food & Nutrition Service study of data gathered in Fiscal Year 2003.
"This bill goes out of its way to make the lives of Americans already living on the margins even more difficult, cutting food stamps, child care and Medicaid," said DeLauro. "At a time when health care costs have soared, this budget includes unbelievable cuts to health care for children. This budget strips protections which guarantee more than 5 million children receive the medical services they need - services like mental health services, optical care, hearing aidsand eliminates federally funded foster care benefits for grandparents and relatives of abused and neglected children.
"By cutting student loan programs by $14.3 billion, we see so much of the progress we have made since Title 9 was enacted cast aside. We see a budget that stops more than four-and-a-half million high school graduates from attending college over the next decade - 123,000 students in my state of Connecticut alone.
"Then there are the cuts to the Food Stamp Program, a program which goes straight to the heart of government's moral responsibility to people. 25 million people depend on food stamps across the country, but this budget will mean 300,000 food stamp recipients lose their eligibility, including 40,000 children - this when the number of people in poverty has increased by a million people per year for the last 4 years.
"This bill would deny child care assistance to another 270,000 children of working parents, even though we have not increased that funding for 4 years - funding that gets parents to work.
"We need to help people understand that this budget reconciliation package is a disaster for women and families - that budgets have moral consequences and that the decisions made in this bill will have lasting repercussions on their future and their children's future."
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2005/November/budget_11_18_05.html