The last minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff
brought fiscal relief, but that relief will be short lived. A year ago GOP
congressional leaders made clear that if they have their way they will weld the
meat ax on vital domestic programs. In March, they will get their chance. This
time they have the cover and leverage of the debt ceiling battle, and they will
be under even fiercer pressure from conservatives not to make any more
concessions to President Obama and the Democrats on delaying spending cuts.
The cuts are brutal. The programs targeted for
them include food grant aid, job training programs, and health programs. The
biggest hit will be on programs that directly serve needy children and their
families. These programs and the funding for them have long been the most
tenuous and vulnerable even in the best of fiscal times. Many of them have
flown quietly under the public radar scope for years, but no more. They will be
back in the budget cut bulls eye in March and they will spark yet another
fierce fight, and they should.
The devils in the details of the proposed cuts
but those details though have drawn almost no intense media or public scrutiny.
The grim dollars and cents tally of programs to be cut or eliminated in the
next budget debate go round is heartbreaking. More than $600 million could be
axed from the Head Start program. For decades it has provided child care,
education and nutrition programs for millions of low income children. In 2012,
nearly a million children were enrolled in the program. Thousands more children
were eligible for the program, but were left out because of past funding trims.
The budget cuts would eliminate nearly one hundred thousand needy school age
children from the program. Head Start has been widely recognized as a program
that has reduced costs for welfare, special education and the criminal justice
system by providing children and their parent's crucial education and job training
skills.
A companion program to Head Start is the program
that allocates block grant funds to child care and development. This program is
scheduled to lose nearly $200 million. The funds provide subsidies to low
income families to help defray the costs of child care. It has been a huge
lifeline to thousands of low income working parents and it has enabled them to
work or to search for jobs. In 2012 the program provided aid to 1.5 million
children and their families. As in the case of Head Start, thousands of
families that were eligible for the subsidy program received no funds because
of the funding shortfall. The number of families and children in the program
will plunge by thousands more with the proposed cuts.
A similar program funds block grants to the
states for urgent child health care and treatment. It provides subsidies to
clinics, and schools to provide the health care. It will lose more than $40
million. The figure may seem relatively small. But the cost effective program
has provided care for health services and prevention for several million
children. The estimate is that five million children would lose access to these
programs with the funding cut.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
will take a major hit to its HIV prevention and testing program. A huge slice
of the funding for grants it provides to the states for surveillance, testing,
behavioral programs, and other scientifically proven activities will be lopped
off. More than a half million persons would be no longer have access to HIV
testing, prevention and drug assistance programs with the proposed $40 million
in cuts.
That's only the start. The AIDS Drug Assistance program will also
be slashed by $12 million. The program has literally been a life saver for
thousands of persons affected by HIV that can't afford treatment drugs or to
pay for health insurance coverage to get access to medication and treatment.
The program has not just saved the lives of those affected but has been key to
stopping the spread of the disease to other potential victims.
These scheduled cuts are
just the tip of the iceberg. The Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education,
and Related Agencies sounded the loudest alarm on the scheduled cuts. It
has listed dozens more programs that will be sharply reduced or are on the
chopping block. They affect tens of millions of the poorest and neediest
Americans. If ever the penny wise and pound foolish line applied it's to these
cuts. They would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product for the next decade by
nearly $80 billion. The billions do not tell the human toll the cuts will take
on the neediest and least protected. The pain of the fiscal cliff was averted,
but the bigger pain for the needy that looms wasn't.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of
the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge.
He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly
Hutchinson Report on KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
