What’s the Human Cost of Federal Budget Cuts to Public Programs?
An important new initiative from Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years, and the Coalition on Human Needs, is putting a face on irresponsible “slash and burn” deficit reduction by showing how it would damage real lives. The organizations are collecting people’s stories so that the cruel consequences of draconian cuts to key federal programs are plain to see.
This project is important because it highlights the fact that millions of people will be harmed by cuts to vital federal programs, like ones that help low-income people heat their homes, or help students pay for college, or help unemployed people get job training, or help people with disabilities pay rent in accessible homes, and many more. In the name of deficit reduction, these cuts would cause the people who rely on public programs to flounder, and economic progress to stall.
What is most maddening about the budget debate is that few legislators are talking about alternatives like increasing revenues by closing obscene tax loopholes and corporate giveaways and making the wealthy pay their fair share. Instead, the proposals hit the most vulnerable people the hardest—lower-income people, children, seniors, people with disabilities, unemployed workers, and others. (For a “Better Budget for All” check out this report.)
Kudos to Half in Ten and the Coalition on Human Needs for collecting these stories and making these budget cuts real. If you have a story to tell, please share it. The only way we win this budget battle is to show the very real consequences of these abstract numbers being thrown around Washington, DC, and then organize and demand alternatives.