To keep this page up-to-date, we will ask elected representatives to keep us abreast of upcoming national policy and budget decisions that may directly impact programs in our communities. In addition, we will ask representatives to note the potential effect on the community. This aspect of the website should be active in the fall 2005.

The following is a dated list of the effects the proposed national budget is having or will have on local programs.

February 2005 ::

National $2.57 trillion budget:

• Does not include the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; Bush stated that the US will stay in Iraq as long as needed.
• Does not include the cost of the change in Social security.
• Make tax cuts permanent; cost of tax cuts $53 billion in the first term; projected cost of $1.1 trillion in the next 5 years.
• Eliminates more than 150 programs - agricultural, education, health, environment and other domestic programs.
• Freezes all discretionary spending, except Pentagon spending, for next 5 years.
• Affects real people with its program cuts: food stamp recipients, farmers, veterans, small business owners, nursing students, air travelers and Amtrak passengers.

Budget in Billions

New York Times - Feb 8, 2005
Federal amendment against same sex marriage.

Cuts to NYC

• Deep cuts in law enforcement, domestic security; largest reductions are in social services
• 207M in Community Development Block Grant - pays for daycare centers, housing, senior services, literacy training
• Loose $31 million from other poverty reduction program - after school and ELS
• Jackie has specifics on housing

Washington Post - Feb. 15, 2005
Hidden costs after Bush leaves office
Bush's extensive tax cuts, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and, if it passes, his plan to redesign Social Security all balloon in cost several years from now. His plan to partially privatize Social Security, for instance, would cost a total of $79.5 billion in the last two budgets that Bush will propose as president and an additional $675 billion in the five years that follow. New Medicare figures likewise show the cost almost twice as high as originally estimated, largely because it mushrooms long after the Bush presidency.

"It's almost like you've got a budget, and you've got a shadow budget coming in behind that's a whole lot more expensive," said Philip G. Joyce, professor of public policy at George Washington University

Paul Krugman NYT op Ed - Feb 11, 2005
First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.

For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.

More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.

It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.

Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.

On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)