Federal budget squeeze
Amidei, Nancy
new powers in determining the national budget. That was a par- ticularly bad move. Overall, the agreement puts many important budget decisons on "automatic pilot," and substantially alters the...
...Overall, the agreement puts many important budget decisons on "automatic pilot," and substantially alters the balance of power...
...That's $32 billion more than it was in 1985 when the Balanced Budget Act was passed...
...It included such mainstream groups as the American Association of University Professors, the American Library Association, the American Lung Association, the Council of Chief State School Officiers, United Way of 246: Commonweal America, several states, and the National Association of Counties...
...Yet it got zero attention from the media, and the same share from the voters...
...Op-ed pages and the evening news were filled with war stories and little else...
...And it takes a desire to win that war that has yet to be revealed...
...former Illinois Congresswoman Lynn Martin, also a political loser, was chosen to head the war against unemployment and despair...
...In a year when thirty states face budget deficits and proposals abound to eliminate entirely some welfare programs, scarcely any attention has been paid to the consequences of yet more cutbacks---even though they are occurring during a recession, and on top of all the Reagan- era cuts...
...REPORT FROM SWEDEN SI-III'TING GFJUlS Wt-tY 'EC' GO HAS BF___.~OME 'EC' COME he decision of Sweden's Riksdag (parliament) in December to apply for full membership in the European Community (EC) marks a fundamental political shift for a country that had long regarded opposition to such membership as a dogma of its political creed...
...doing more to reduce infant mortality could mean doing less for the mentally ill...
...By contrast, as last year's budget deal and this year's budget proposals make clear: the troubled, the vulnerable, the families living in poverty here at home, aren't on anybody's agenda...
...What's more, by 1993 the budget will be so top-heavy with interest on the debt and other costs that by fiscal year 1994, we will be locked into a spending total for human needs $8 billion below what is spent this year...
...Human needs issues aren't being rejected so much as they are being ignored...
...W'mning the war on the second front, the war at home, takes a staying power that most politicians, President Bush included, lack...
...It sets up a rigid new com- petition: new jails and roads are pitted against education and immunizations...
...Meanwhile, the lack of any semblance of national leadership on pressing domestic concerns was thrown into sharp relief by the war...
...As the costs for health, housing, education, and long-term care grow, we will be stuck with a budget that is less, not more, able to respond...
...In some sense, concem over domestic human needs was just one more victim of the Persian Gulf War...
...NANCY AM1DEI Nancy Amidei is the 1990-91 Belle Spafford professor at the University of Utah School of Social Work and a frequent con- tributor to Commonweal...
...We can't wipe out poverty, illiteracy, hunger, or homelessness by dropping bombs for a cou- ple of weeks, so we don't even try...
...Or contrast the approach to meeting health care needs: entire surgical units--fully equipped, no expense spared--went into place in the Gulf, where 100-plus lives were lost...
...For over three decades, Sweden argued that EC membership...
...We may not know how our oil got under their land, but we know that was something the pres- ident and Congress cared deeply about...
...The president placed General Norman Schwarzkopf --proven winner, man of effectiveness and extensive military experience---in charge of Desert Storm...
...The new budget process encourages Congress and the White House to leave human needs unmet...
...Even the most poignant stories about human needs, the most compelling budget warnings, got left on the cutting room floors...
...State and local advocates felt it very keenly: always at a disadvantage in getting media coverage, this year they were very nearly closed out...
...A letter signed by 150 organizations that make up the "Coalition for America's Future" last month called on Congress to increase funding for health, education, social services, and employment services in these harsh recessionary times...
...For example, without including the costs of the Persian Gulf War or the S&L bailout (and assuming the assets of Social Security are not available to meet other obligations), the deficit for fiscal year 1993 is expected to reach $252 billion...
...That was a particularly bad move...
...Unfortunately for the country, and particularly for everyone concerned about the nation's unmet human needs, the budget agreement is a bad deal on several counts...
...But not much has been heard either about the new process or its consequences for people...
...But infant mortality, which claims forty to fifty thousand babies' lives each year, is to be fought by robbing other desperately needed health care programs for poor children...
...But to see the nation through the equivalent of "Domestic Storm," he chose defeated Republicans in need of jobs and exposure...
...For example, former Florida Governor Bob Martinez, a political loser, was chosen to head the war against drugs...
...Maybe it's because the war at home is harder--it isn't like "shooting fish in a barrel," not like "sending the New York Giants into the Superbowl against a high school team"--and we only have the stomach for easy wins...
...As OMB-Watch (a not-for-profit watchdog organization) put it: "These provisions...give more authority to the executive branch than in any post-Watergate period...greatly diminish the role of various congressional committees...and...lock future Congresses into a specified spending/revenue pattern which will make it hard for human services advocates to influence the budget process...
...A rare, interfaith human needs advocacy effort directed at the Utah state legislature went largely unnoticed, for example, while national efforts fared no better...
...and any money saved by reductions in military spending can only be used for new military com- mitments, not, for example, to build housing for low-income families...
Vol. 118 • April 1991 • No. 8
