Federal Budget

The Bush Administration released it's 2009 budget proposal earlier this week. Sadly, President Bush’s budget is more of the same. With prices rising and our economy slowing, the President wants to slash health care for seniors and working families, freeze potentially-lifesaving medical research, raise health care costs for veterans, and cut energy assistance. Once again, the President is showing that he’ll sacrifice our most cherished social programs in order to make permanenet his tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and continue his failed war in Iraq. 

As a memebr of the Democratic Leadership, Congresswoman DeGette is working to ensure passage of a budget that reflects the prioities of the American people.  We need a budget that will invest in clean, renewable and alternative sources of energy, rejuvinate our ailing food and products safety systems, support hardworking Americans in their time of need, and spur medical and scientific innovation and discovery.  Congresswoman DeGette has already blocked the Bush administration's plan to close a Food and Drug Administration Lab in Lakewood and she is committed to fullly funding the National Renewable Energy Labratory in Golden. 

Fast Facts About the President's Proposal

• Economy

  The President shows his total disconnect with American’s who are struggling to make ends meet by slashing much of the already inadequate support they receive.

   

• He funds the low-income energy assistance program (LIHEAP) at 2001 levels. The cost of heating oil today is 65% higher than it was in 2001.

   

• Federal Childcare assistance has not received an increase, even to keep up with inflation in seven years, and the President doesn’t provide one this year either.

   

• Despite the worsening economic downturn and the increase in unemployment, the President proposes to cut federal unemployment benefits by $700 million, and he cut every last dollar of federal support away from vocational education programs, the very programs that would help people who lose their jobs retrain and find new ones.

   

• Security and Education

  Even on his signature issues, the President gets it wrong.  He wants to secure the Homeland, but only provides an increase of 2.7 billion for border security, and again, that is just to avoid cutting an increase that Democrats passed mid-year.  And the President’s proposed increase in funding for K-12 education, doesn’t even keep pace with inflation.

   

• Health Care

  Worst of all though, is what this proposed budget does to Heath Care.  In the near term, this budget would make it harder to for people to get health care, adding more people to the roughly 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.

   

• Cuts to state and local government support programs will be particularly detrimental because of the economic downturn.  Most states don’t have the option of deficit spending, so the must make difficult cuts.  The last recession caused states to kick 1 million people off of Medicaid alone.  In real dollars, this budget is an 11% cut to state and local grants not including the President’s additional cuts to Medicaid.

•  

  In the long term, by freezing funding for research, the President is also freezing progress and frustrating the hopes of so many people waiting for medical breakthroughs to save their loved ones.  He freezes research spending at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  In reality, NIH reports that freezing its budget means 600 fewer research grants, which in turn means 6,000 fewer scientists working to find cures.  This last cut is just proposed, but the priorities of this President and his republican colleagues in congress cost NIH 1,100 researchers in the two years before democrats took control of congress.

   

• The President is also in favor of cutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by $433 million dollars.  This cut is targeted at two CDC departments:  Infectious Diseases, and Preventative Medicine – two departments that could create massive savings for our healthcare system in the long run.

   

Sources: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Congressional Budget Office.

 Colorado Connection

Additional information can be found at:

The Bush Budget Map

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Congressional Budget Office

The President's Final Budget pdf. (Report by Bob Greenstein)

The Budget's Impact on Colorado pdf.