Ah,
the hot topic of budgets.
Unless
you work in your company’s finance department, odds are the word makes your
eyes glaze over.
But
for the parallel universe contained inside the Beltway, and for the watchdog
groups monitoring it, budgets are a different story. For those people, things
are just getting interesting.
Two
weeks ago, one such group — the local chapter of MoveOn.org — staged a
protest in Fairport near freshman Congressman Randy Kuhl’s office. The event,
which drew about 30 participants, focused squarely on the budget Kuhl and his
fellow lawmakers were considering.
“We’re
asking him to vote against the budget resolution,” explained Rome Celli, who
emceed the event, “and we’re asking him to vote against the companion bill for
tax cuts.” Each of the speakers Celli introduced castigated parts of the $50
billion in spending cuts proposed by Republican House of Representatives
leadership. Summing up those speakers, Celli said, “That budget will cut back
on food stamps, affordable housing, student loans and apparently quite a bit
more than that.”
But later that
week, the House approved the cuts, and among the ‘yes’ votes was Randy Kuhl’s.
Before
the vote, Washington pundits said
Republican leaders would hold open the vote until they had enough of their own
party aboard. Apparently they held it open that long and no longer; the bill
passed by the slimmest of margins: 217 to 215.
Among
the Republican Congressmen voting for the measure were all three whose
districts reach into MonroeCounty. An
Associated Press report the following day said moderate Republicans had held
out for some concessions. The news agency singled out Syracuse’s John Walsh,
whose district includes Webster and parts of Penfield and Irondequoit: “The
biggest concession came Thursday evening,” said the AP report, “when Walsh won
language permitting food stamp recipients making the transition to work to
continue to be able to receive non-cash benefits for child care,
transportation, and housing without losing their nutrition benefits.”
Walsh
spokesperson Dan Gage told City Newspaper that Walsh “was part of a group of moderates who are uncomfortable with some
things.”
Drilling
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and cuts to food stamps were among them.
Walsh believes Congress shouldn’t be “destroying that welfare-to-work bridge
they created during welfare reform a few years ago,” said Gage.
Randy Kuhl’s
role in shaping the cuts is less clear. Spokesperson Brian Fitzpatrick dismissed the
word “cut,” since he says spending in areas affected will still grow, just not
at the expected rate.
“Only
in Washington is less more considered a cut,” he said, adding
that the reduction “was less than one-tenth of one percent of the growth that
will occur anyway.”
Asked
what concessions Kuhl had demanded in exchange for his vote, Fitzpatrick
mentioned only a 50 percent increase in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Program.
But
since Kuhl sits on the education committee, he also was involved in what’s
become a controversial part of the cuts package: financial aid for students.
Just
shy of $15 billion was chopped from government spending on student loans. But
Fitzpatrick downplayed the notion that the changes might affect students’
ability to attend college:
“Any
reduction is aimed at the lending community, not the students,” he said.
Lenders are profiting off government subsidies meant to help students, said
Fitzpatrick, and these changes try to stop that. An education-committee report
he supplied to City backs up that
assertion. The report says government subsidies ensure that lenders get a “fair
market return,” yet when rates exceed fair market levels, lenders pocket the
difference. Forcing them to return those extra profits could save $5 billion a
year.
But not
everyone is willing to accept the rhetoric that the changes aren’t hurting students.
Louise
Slaughter spokesperson Eric Burns argues that they’re still a cut, because of
how such funding streams are supposed to work.
“They’re
designed to keep up with inflation,” he says. “What they’re essentially doing
is they’re cutting the program.”
His
litmus test for what constitutes a cut? “It will actually result in service
cuts,” he says.
Like
every House Democrat, Slaughter voted against the bill. But she objects even
more vigorously to companion legislation, which has yet to pass: a package of
about $56 billion in tax cuts, mainly for the wealthy. It hasn’t escaped
Democrats’ notice that despite the propagandist nickname Republicans gave the
spending-cuts package (they call it the “Deficit Reduction Act”), it saves less
money than the tax breaks give away.
“They’re
actually increasing the deficit by 6 or 7 billion dollars,” says Burns.
In
her speech on the House floor, a copy of which was provided to City, Slaughter had stronger words:
“This
is an outright deception,” she said. “Where I grew up we had another name for it;
it was called a lie.” And the timing of the votes, separated by the holidays,
was no accident, she charged.
“The
Majority deliberately chose to separate this bill from its planned passage of
$56 billion in tax cuts for the rich, more than half of which goes to the super
rich — those with incomes over a million dollars per year,” said Slaughter.
According to her office, 1 percent of the tax cuts affect those making below
$40,000 a year.
Early
this week, with lawmakers on recess, no action had been taken on the tax
breaks. But despite turmoil among House Republicans, activist groups may have a
tough time blocking the bill’s passage. At least they’ll have allies like
Slaughter, who summed up her opposition saying the budget was created
specifically to “cut vital programs and increase the national debt in order to
create tax cuts for the rich and the super rich.
“I
and many of my colleagues in this body, both Republican and Democrat, see
nothing at all responsible about this agenda,” said Slaughter. “And neither
will the majority of the American people.”
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.
