Subject: [Homestead] You can't see the poor from White House windows
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 21:49:56 -0500
washingtonpost.com
Remember the Poor
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A20
BETWEEN 2000 and 2003, the number of people living in poverty rose 14
percent. In 2003, the most recent year for which numbers are available,
one out of every eight Americans was poor, a disproportionate number of
them children. The number without health insurance was the highest on
record; more Americans went hungry. The poorest fell further below the
poverty line while the richest took home a greater share of national
income than ever.
We recite these depressing numbers today, as President Bush prepares to
unveil his fiscal 2006 budget, because budgets are not only dry,
fact-choked documents but a measure of the national character. These are
the budgetary times that try the nation's soul: tax cuts that have
drained the available revenue; a deficit that demands austerity; a war
on terrorism, at home and abroad, that requires resources to keep the
country safe. In the face of this unhappy fiscal reality, the risk is
that the budget ax will fall most heavily on the poorest and most
vulnerable Americans, those with the greatest need for government help
but the smallest voice in the corridors of power.
This is not an idle worry. Tax increases -- more accurately, undoing the
reckless tax cuts that account for a good portion of the current
constraints -- are, unfortunately, off the political table. What scant
room there is for increased spending is to be consumed largely by
defense and homeland security costs: Mr. Bush's new budget will seek
$419 billion in defense spending, up 4.8 percent, and this amount does
not include funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As much as
we think the president's pledge to cut the deficit in half in five years
is a sham -- an inadequate target achieved by misleading budgeting --
the cuts will have to come from somewhere if he is to even pretend to
achieve that goal.
Reports that Mr. Bush will propose cuts in agricultural subsidies are
terrific news, but any attempt at rollback is guaranteed to meet fierce
resistance on Capitol Hill. It's fine that he wants to slash other
wasteful spending, but last year's record on this front (the president
targeted 65 programs for a savings of $5 billion; he ended up with five
gone and a paltry $292 million savings) isn't inspiring.
All this leaves programs for poor Americans -- housing vouchers, home
heating aid and food stamps, among others -- potentially exposed to
troubling cuts. Medicaid, whose costs have been growing sharply along
with health care costs in general, is slated for a cut of at least $44
billion over 10 years, shifting more costs to states and risking leaving
more Americans with no insurance or inadequate coverage.
No program is sacrosanct, and no waste should be tolerated in any
program. But a key test for lawmakers as the budget-writing process
proceeds will be how the neediest are treated -- not whether they are
lavished with government assistance but whether they endure a cruelly
disproportionate share of the cuts that are to come.