Following a budget proposal to Congress earlier this week, President Bush on Wednesday signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
Intended to curtail federal spending and give money back to taxpayers, the Deficit Act is certainly a reduction – of social services, medical services and student services.
In defending his budget decisions and the Reduction Act, Bush was quick to point out that if programs such as Medicare and Social Security continue at their current growth rate, by the year 2030 those programs will demand 60 percent of the federal budget. Bush failed to mention that providing health care and retirement services to the nation should be a highly valued federal priority. Why is the president concerned with deficits and tax increases 20 years down the road, yet apathetic to the present and future need for stable social programs?
Along with cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the act cut $11.9 billion in student loan subsidies and increased loan fees for parents who borrow money to fund a child’s college education. In his speech prior to the signing of the Deficit Reduction Act, Bush claimed that the act would make “important improvements to federal student loan programs.”
As of yet, it remains unclear how taking almost $12 billion from student loan subsidy programs is an “improvement” of any kind. In fact, his new budget calls for $3.1 billion in more education cuts; it would end the Leveraging Education Assistance Partnership, which matches state spending on need-based aid, end the Perkins Loan Program and maintain Federal Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants at 2006 levels, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The budget proposal also renews a 1996 welfare overhaul, known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). As pointed out by myriad research teams, especially here in Oregon, TANF has a number of inherent problems. The work hours required to receive food stamps and monetary assistance through TANF are so high that most single parents are unable to both fulfill the work requirements and find suitable childcare. Further, in many small towns, citizens attempting to log job hours are unable to do so because employment opportunities simply do not exist in the area, do not offer the required hours or are so far away that transportation becomes an inhibiting factor.
Because TANF requires recipients to log up to 40 hours of job service per week, these welfare users must spend all of their time working at low-paying jobs in order to feed their families rather than attending college or more specialized job training.
Most disturbing is not what is in the Deficit Reduction Act, but what is missing: any discussion of slowing tax cuts or stymieing war spending. The administration is expected to ask for another $70 billion to pay for the Iraq war through September.
Throughout his tenure in office, Bush has made an active effort to appease the wealthiest U.S. citizens while simply placating everyone else. If President Bush ever hopes to regain his image as a sympathetic, every-man president, he will need to start looking out for the average citizen: a citizen who receives little benefit from a tax cut, is increasingly wary of the U.S. presence overseas and loses out when federally funded social services decline.
We have to join Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., in simply describing Bush’s budget proposal for education and health: “scandalous.”