President's Budget Bad for Wisconsin

President's Budget Bad for Wisconsin
March 22, 2005

When it comes to maintaining a budget, there isn't a family in Wisconsin that doesn't know the difficulties of meeting expenses, providing for basic needs, and making hard choices between things they must have and things they can do without. I was fortunate to grow up in Wisconsin where I learned the values that help us make those sometimes painful decisions. After reviewing key elements of the President's budget proposal, I couldn't help but wish he'd grown up here, too, and learned fiscal responsibility guided by real family values. Unfortunately, the President doesn't understand the priorities of Wisconsin families.

He doesn't understand that, here in Wisconsin, we don't want him to cut funding for education at the same time he's demanding that schools and teachers take on more and more of his costly federal mandates. Under the President's proposal, 36,408 children in Wisconsin will go without promised help in reading and math and 21,375 will no longer be able to enroll in the after-school programs that boost academic achievement and keep kids safe.

We don't want him to diminish college scholarships at the same time students and their parents are taking on greater and greater debt. Pell Grants serve 63,751 students in Wisconsin, but the President's budget fails to provide the $1,000 increase that he promised in Pell Grant levels.

Over the past four years, Wisconsin lost 66,600 manufacturing jobs, but the President's budget cuts the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), which helps small U.S. manufacturers with everything from plant modernization to employee training, by nearly 60 percent. It also proposes to eliminate the Advanced Technology Program, which spurs cutting-edge research to solve manufacturing problems, helping to make U.S. manufacturers more competitive.

And it cuts almost $23 million in vocational education funding for Wisconsin. Although Republicans are proposing a new block grant program in these areas, it is unlikely that it will make up for the loss in funding. Under the President's budget, Wisconsin will see Federal grants to education, law enforcement, community development, and the environment drop by $165 million, inevitably leading to reductions in services or increases in taxes.

We don't want him to cut funding for first responders at the same time he's telling us to be better prepared for domestic terrorist attacks. The President's budget slashes funding for the COPS program, which has put 1,353 police officers on the street in Wisconsin, by 96 percent. It cuts nearly $20 million from homeland security formula grants in Wisconsin, which provide police, firefighters and emergency management teams with the training and equipment they need to keep communities safe. It also cuts more than $2 million from bioterrorism grants for Wisconsin, which fund needed improvements in public health and medical infrastructure statewide.

We certainly don't want the President to force veterans to pay for more of their health care at the time we're sending our loved ones in uniform into harms way. Frankly, I'm outraged that he's asking them to do just that. The President's budget raises health care costs for many of the more than half million veterans in Wisconsin, increasing drug co-payments and imposing new enrollment fees that will cost veterans more than $2 billion over five years and drive more than 200,000 Wisconsin veterans out of the system entirely. The budget continues the Disabled Veterans Tax (whereby disabled veterans have to choose between disability benefits and military retirement benefits), thus undermining a secure retirement for 2,636 veterans in Wisconsin.

Apparently, the President sees nothing wrong with increasing the federal deficit to $427 billion, a debt that our children and grandchildren will bear for decades to come. Well, Wisconsinites do! And he's trying his best to make permanent his tax cuts for the very wealthiest, adding $2 trillion in additional debt that will be a burden to future generations.
The Republicans' reckless disregard for fiscal responsibility has created a "debt tax" of $2,400 for every family in Wisconsin this year alone - that's the amount of money that each Wisconsin family pays in interest on our national debt. During the President's first term, each family in Wisconsin saw their share of the national debt increase by $38,559.

Wisconsin has sent hundreds of its men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan without hearing from the President either a clear exit strategy and or an honest accounting of the cost. Yet, the President's budget fails to include funding for our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, relying on accounting tricks that serve to continue to hide the cost of this war from taxpayers.

As your elected Representative, I cannot accept such a fiscally reckless, morally irresponsible proposal from this President and the Republican leadership in Congress. I will uphold the principles in which Wisconsinites believe: a prosperous economy, a secure nation, fiscal responsibility, equal opportunity, fairness, and accountability.

These are my priorities; I'd like to know yours. On my website you will find a list, provided by the President, of all the items he has proposed cutting from the federal budget. Please look it over and send me your thoughts.

When it comes to managing a budget, Wisconsinites get it! If only we could say the same of our President.

http://tammybaldwin.house.gov/columns_display_page.asp?page=columndisplay&type=3&releaseid=55