Faithfully Engaging in the Budget Debate -- May 26, 2011
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DHN Budget Webinar from May 26, 2011.
Transcript of Faithfully Engaging in the Budget Debate -- May 26, 2011
John S. HillDirector, Economic Justice Work Area
United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society
Welcome and Introduction
Available for Download from:http://www.ncjw.org/dhnbudget/
Joan HufferDirector, Federal Budget Initiative
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Spending Cuts and People Living in Hunger and HomelessnessWe cannot end hunger or homelessness
without the federal government playing a roleDuring the recession, poverty and hunger hit
record rates.43.6 million people in poverty in 2009 (largest
number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available)
Double digit unemployment ratesNeed for services spiked. Programs responded.
Food insecurity did not rise.
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like for people living in hunger and homelessness?
Congress would have to implement the Ryan budget to achieve the necessary level of cuts.
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like?
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC):Provides food, nutritional counseling, and health care
referrals to low-income pregnant women, postpartum women and children under the age of five.
Serves about 9 million peopleOne of the most successful and cost-effective nutrition
intervention programs in the country.Cut by over $800 million.Would end benefits for 325,000 – 475,000 low-
income women and children (depending on food prices and other factors)
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like?Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, formerly food stamps)Serves 43 million low-income individualsAverage benefit is $133.80 a month, or $4.46 a day,
for each household memberCut by $127 billion, or nearly 20%, over 10 yearsFewer people eligible and/or lower benefits
Over 8 million people would lose benefitsFamily of 4 would see their benefits cut by $147 a
month, or $1,764 a yearBlock grant so can’t respond to spikes in need
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like?
Federal Housing Assistance Programs:4.9 million households using federal rental assistanceAverage yearly income $12,500
Cut by nearly 12% in 2012 and 18% by 2021Total loss of $75 billion over the next 10 years to
housing assistance programs
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like?
Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8)Serves 290,000 low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and
families with childrenCut by $2 billion in 2012
Homeless assistance Cut by over $200 million in 2012 and by $3.4 billion over 10 years
Public HousingProvides homes for 2.3 million low-income individualsCurrently, only 1 in 4 households eligible for public housing receive
any form of housing assistanceCut by over $800 million in 2012 and by over $12 billion over 10
yearsAlready, 10,000 public housing units currently lost every year
because of deteriorated conditions.
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like for older adults?
Congress would have to implement the Ryan budget to achieve the necessary level of cuts.
What does a cap on overall federal spending look like? Medicaid
Provides health coverage to nearly 60 million Americans.
Main source of long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities.
Primary payer for 64% of nursing home residents.
Cut by $1.4 trillion over 10 yearsCut federal funding by 35% in 2022 and
49% in 2030Converts into a block grant and prevents
Medicaid from responding to spikes in need.
MedicareTotal household income of typical beneficiary was
$22,800 a year in 2006Cut by $30 billion over 10 years with much
deeper cuts after that Turned into a voucher programShifts more of cost of health care onto
individualsTypical 65 year-old would see out-of-pocket costs
rise from $6,150 to $12,500 in 2022.Increases total health care spending for
Medicare beneficiaries by 40%.
What does a cap on overallFederal spending look like?
What does a cap on overallFederal spending look like?
Social SecurityLifted 13.9 million people aged 65 and older out of
poverty in 2009Virtually the only source of income for 3 in 10
female beneficiaries 65 and olderAverage benefit for women 65 and older is about
$12,000 per yearCut between $904 billion and $1.3 trillion
over the next 10 years (between 14% and 19%).
A 19% cut could mean an elderly woman receiving average benefit would see her benefits drop to $9,720 per year
Spending Cuts & Children
We cannot leave our children a legacy of rising debt…
…but neither can we leave them a legacy of rising poverty.
Spending Cuts & ChildrenMore than twenty percent of all children in the U.S. live in poverty.
The official poverty line for a family of four is
$21,947
Spending Cuts & ChildrenThe Health and Human Services budget
projected to decline by more than 15% from 2010 levels.
This includes programs like Head Start and the Childcare Development Block Grant.
These programs are strapped right now – Head Start is only able to serve 40 percent of all eligible families.
Spending Cuts & ChildrenChildren make up about half of all Medicaid
enrollees.The Ryan budget turns Medicaid into a block
grant and cuts funding by more than 20 percent. By design, funding would grow more slowly than
health care costs, shifting the burden of growing shortfalls to states.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Ryan budget would reduce federal Medicaid funding by 35 percent in 2022 and by 49 percent in 2030.
Spending Cuts & ChildrenKey programs that keep children from going hungry are at
risk. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
Infants, and Children (WIC) provides infant formula and nutritional support for 9 million low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children under age five who are at nutritional risk.
Proposed 2012 Appropriations under the Ryan budget would cut the WIC budget by 12%, turning away between 325,000 to 475,000 eligible women and young children next year.
Three-quarters of all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients are households with children. But under the 2012 Ryan budget, SNAP would shift from a program that is responsive to the ebb and flow of the economy to a block grant to states. That grant would face cuts of $127 billion over the next decade.
Spending Cuts & ChildrenIn the 90’s, when welfare reform “end[ed] welfare
as we know it,” Aid to Families with Dependent Children was replaced with a Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant.
Federal funding has not kept up with need in the recent recession, and states have been slashing benefits as a result.
In 1994-1995, just before TANF’s creation, AFDC served 75 eligible families for every 100 families with children who lived in poverty. In 2008-2009, TANF served only 28 families for every 100 in poverty.
Giving Care to the Caregivers
Leslie WoodsRepresentative for Domestic Poverty & Environmental Issues
Office of Public Witness, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
Women in the EconomyWomen in the U.S. are more likely to be poor than
men.13.8% of women are poor compared to 11.1% of
men.Data aggregated by race shows that racial-ethnic
women are not only more likely to be poor than the national average, but also more likely to be poor than men in their own racial-ethnic group. 26.5% African-American women, compared to 22.3% of men. 23.6% of Latina women, compared to 19.6% of Latino men. Black and Latina women are more than twice as likely
to be living in poverty as white women.About a quarter of adult women with incomes
below the poverty line are single mothers.Older Adult Women are much more likely to be poor
than older adult men – 13% compared to 6%.
Women in the EconomyWomen earn only about 77 cents to every dollar
earned by a male counterpart in the workforce – known as the wage gap.
Women are segregated into “pink-collar”, low-paying occupations, such as teaching, child care, nursing and other health care occupations, cleaning and waitressing.In 2007, 43% of employed women were clustered
into just 20 occupational categories, whose annual median earnings were $27,383.
Women spend more time providing unpaid caregiving than men, both for children and older adults.
Women are not only disproportionately served by programs that are under threat, but they are also disproportionately employed by them. When these services and programs are cut, not only do women lose services, but they lose jobs.
Women and MedicaidWomen aged 18-64 make up three-quarters of adult
beneficiaries (17 million women).Over 4 million women, half of all women with
disabilities, rely on Medicaid for access to health coverage.
Medicaid is an essential source of family planning services and maternity care, and covers 40 percent of births in the U.S.
Older women also rely heavily on Medicaid – 20 percent of female beneficiaries are over the age of 65. These women usually rely on Medicaid coverage for help managing a disability or chronic condition, treatment for cancer, long-term services such as nursing home stays, and Medicare cost-sharing.
Women and MedicaidThe House-passed budget threatens these services by
turning Medicaid into a block grant.Fundamentally altering Medicaid would leave
many women facing increased costs, decreased coverage, or losing their health coverage altogether.
Because women tend to be primary caregivers of children and older adults in their families, reducing access to care for those populations would also profoundly affect women. The same proposals that threaten coverage for women
also jeopardize coverage for children and older adults in general.
Women and MedicareMedicare is the federal health insurance program that
provides basic health care services for 47 million older adults and people living with disabilities.56 % of Medicare beneficiaries are women.62 % of Medicare beneficiaries are women over the age
of 80.Because they tend to be poorer, live longer, and
have more health care needs than men, Medicare is particularly important to women.In 2009, 43% of female Medicare beneficiaries were
living in or near poverty, compared with 32% of men.The average annual Social Security benefit for a woman
over the age of 65 is $12,000.Because of their low incomes, 70% of people who
receive both Medicare and Medicaid are women.
Women and MedicareThe House-passed budget threatens the
Medicare safety net for older adults by replacing the federal insurance program with a voucher system.
Total out-of-pocket Medicare costs would more than double under this plan – from an average of $6,150 to an average of $12,500 annually.
The value of the voucher would not grow at the same rate as health care costs, making it less valuable with each year.
Women would be particularly vulnerable to these cost increases because they are disproportionately likely to have incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
Women and Relationship Violence Nearly one in four adult women experience at least one
physical assault by a partner in her lifetime. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) was the first
U.S. legislation to acknowledge domestic violence as a crime and it provided resources for combating such violence.
The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 (FVPSA) is the single largest funding source for emergency services for domestic violence victims and their children.
Both of these bills require reauthorization, and both bills are funded with discretionary spending.
Indiscriminately cutting discretionary funding, that in some cases are already unable to meet current need, would have a severe impact on the services available to women and children experiencing violence.
Women and the Safety NetWomen are disproportionately likely to be poor, and
therefore rely disproportionately on safety net programs (and are more likely to be employed by them).
Mandatory programs benefiting women:In addition to Medicaid and Medicare, SNAP (formerly
Food Stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Pell grants would all face steep cuts under a global spending cap.
Discretionary programs benefiting women:In addition to domestic violence prevention and response
programs, Child care, Head Start, public education, job training programs, housing and energy assistance, WIC and other nutrition programs, health clinics, and other vital health services for women would be on the chopping block.
Spending Cuts & the Unemployed“Speak up, judge righteously, champion the
poor and the needy.” (Proverbs 31.9)
Spending Cuts & the Unemployed: Dignityunemployment rate is 9%millions of families are struggling to meet their
most basic needs - we cannot neglect the very programs which allow these families to live in dignity.
Ryan budget cuts deeply into important safety net programs, such as health care and nutritional assistance, on which millions of Americans, including families of the unemployed, rely to meet their most basic needs
Spending Cuts & the Unemployed:Opportunity13.7 million people who are looking for work
are unable to find it. (If we counted the number of people who have given up and stopped looking, that number would be much higher.)
Ryan budget cuts 2.2 million jobs over the next two years (Economic Policy Institute).
Big cuts to job training programs, education, and research and development, will reduce national economic growth and global competitiveness, further slowing job growth.
Spending Cuts & the Unemployed:Hope for Recoverycaps and triggers would reduce our capacity to address high
rates of unemployment with increased assistance and economic stimulus.
Federal programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps, and Medicaid are specifically designed to allow enrollment to expand automatically during an economic downturn, when the need for these supports grows even as GDP falls.
But a cap is typically tied to GDP so that in a recession, when GDP shrinks, our ability to respond by expanding human needs programs would also shrink, even as demand for assistance expands.
These programs put money back into local communities quickly, stimulating recovery. Without them, our recessions will look even worse.
What You Can DoGet the message out to decision-makers:Oppose arbitrary spending caps that would
undermine our ability to meet the needs of low-income individuals and families.
Any deficit reduction targets and enforcement mechanisms must be thoughtfully constructed to protect services for low-income and vulnerable populations.
Congress should consider both revenue and cuts to military spending as part of any deficit reduction plan.
What You Can DoMeet with your SenatorsCall your Senators and RepresentativesSend Letters t the Editor
What You Can Do: Meet with SenatorsWhy meet with your Senator:
Personal visits are most effective.Constituents (you!) matter most.Meet them at home. Recess is coming up May
30-Jun 3. (Next one July 4-8)
What You Can Do: Meet with SenatorsBefore the meeting:
Gather a team.Make an appointment.Do your research.Prepare!
What You Can Do: Meet with SenatorsThe meeting:Make clear who you are and who you
represent.Be concise and direct – make a clear ask.It’s OK if you don’t know everything.Follow up!
Calling your Senators 1) Call the Capitol Switchboard
(202-224-3121) and ask for your Senator’s office or look up the number on their website.
2) Ask whoever picks up, usually an intern or receptionist, to speak to the staffer who works on budget issues. Note that some offices first require you to navigate a menu system before speaking to a live person.• You may be asked who you are, so be sure to identify
yourself as a constituent who wants to discuss budget policy.• Sometimes the receptionist may indicate that you have to leave your comments with them. Do so, but you can still ask for the name and contact information of the specific staffer for follow-up.
3) Tell the staffer who you are, what town you live in and what organization or denomination you are with.
• Explain that you are calling about the budget and debt negotiations• Share your personal story. How have federal programs helped you, your friends and family, and those you work with? • Emphasize that spending caps or poorly designed triggers may have devastating consequences for many families and communities that are served by critical federal programs.
4) Follow up with a thank you email and continue to keep in touch with the staffer as negotiations go forward.
Tips:Be polite, clear and try to stay under 5 minutes.Provide your contact information so they may follow up with you later.Thank them for taking the time to speak with you
Leslie WoodsRepresentative for Domestic Poverty & Environmental Issues
Office of Public Witness, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
Letters to the EditorThe Basics of writing an LTE:Elected Officials monitor media outlets in
their home state / district. Mention your Representative or Senator’s name to make sure you get his/her attention.
LTEs should be 100-200 words.Focus on a single issue.If your opinion represents others, make sure
to mention it.Include your name, address and phone
number at the end.
Letters to the Editor Choosing your Media Outlet:Submit your letter to a local or regional media
outlet for a better chance at publication.Highlight the local impact of the policy about
which you are writing.Also consider other outlets, such as
neighborhood papers, specialized magazines, ethnic press, religious press, and alumni magazines.
Use an online submission form, if available.
Letters to the EditorBasic Structure of an LTE:First Paragraph
State main point and why it is important to you (local impact).
Second ParagraphProvide facts, quotes, and statistics to support
your argument.Third Paragraph
Restate your point and make your “ask”.Mention your elected official by name and the
specific action you want him/her to take.
What You Can DoCheck out some of these resources:- DHN’s Budget Resource Page
- http://www.ncjw.org/dhnbudget
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)- http://www.cbpp.org
To follow up:If you would like to contact any of today’s
presenters or follow up with our group, please contact John Hill at:
202-488-5654 or [email protected]
Jonathan BackerEisendrath Legislative Assistant
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
