WASHINGTON – After spending several days reviewing the hundreds of pages and programmatic funding proposals in the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) budget, Congresswoman Jahana Hayes (CT-5) sharply condemned the malign document that seeks to inflict devastating cuts to consequential programs for all Americans.
Just days after the President promised Americans robust Medicare and Medicaid programs, solutions to high drug costs, and Social Security protections in his State of the Union address, he submitted a budget request replete with dangerous proposals that breaks these promises and leaves working families to fend for themselves in a changing and uncertain economy.
The budget:
- Slashes $1.6 trillion from federal health care spending, including $451 billion from Medicare and $920 billion less for Medicaid – gutting our safety net for low income children and families, health care services for seniors, and putting the $130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions in jeopardy;
- Cuts $24 billion from Social Security, betraying the trust of our senior citizens and reneging on the promises that it affords them;
- Slashes Environmental Protection Agency funding by 27% and DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy funding by 74%, continuing his war on protections for clean air, water, and public lands while we stand in the face of a looming climate crisis;
- Cuts $170 billion from student loan programs over the decade, eliminates the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and makes drastic cuts to programs that support first generation college students, putting a post-secondary degree further out of reach for many young Americans;
- Proposes an 8% cut to the Department of Education and annihilates public education programs for states, including Title I grants for schools with children living in poverty, programs that support mental health supports, afterschool programs, and funding for the arts in schools;
- While cutting $6 billion for our public schools and turning 29 education programs into a collective block grant, the budget plans to direct $45 billion over 10 years to fund Secretary DeVos’ new private school voucher tax credit plan – ensuring that we only invest in a select few of our nation’s children;
- Cuts Department of Housing and Urban Development budget by an astounding $9.6 billion, or 18% -- including eliminating the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), starving communities of critical resources for affordable housing;
- Cuts $1.27 billion, or 18% from the Centers for Disease Control, right in the middle of a global coronavirus outbreak. Additionally, the budget cuts 35% from chronic disease programs that address heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and arthritis – some of the leading causes of death and disability in the United States;
- Puts thousands of seniors and families at risk of going hungry through a $182 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over ten years;
- Abandons farmers by cutting crop insurance by almost $25 billion, conservation programs by more than $9 billion, and eliminating the Rural Energy for America Program;
- Eliminates crucial funding for Autism CARES activities that provide vital training, education and health care services for people and families affected by Autism, mere months after the President signed the Autism CARES reauthorization into law;
- Slashes the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program by over 1 billion dollars – money that helps families put food on the table and keep the lights on when financial disaster strikes;
- Eliminates Preschool Development Grants – a commonsense program with a proven program that helps improve states’ early childhood systems.
The cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in the President’s FY21 budget amount to a little more than the cost of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, meaning that the President is financing the corporate bailout on the backs of everyday Americans and critical health care safety nets.
“Our budget is a statement of our values. The President has showed us his values, line by line: slashing funding for the poor and the sick, undermining public education, eliminating funding for autism and disease prevention, leaving senior Americans in poverty, and our air and water vulnerable for pollution. This FY21 budget is not a moral document,” said Congresswoman Hayes. “This is not a budget for the people; it is an anti-growth budget that assaults the health and economic security of hard-working America. I will do everything in power in Congress to fight against these mean-spirited and unscrupulous attacks against our neighbors and the bedrock of our society.”
For more information on the President’s budget, you can read through it here, and through the detailed agency budgets here.
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Rep. Jahana Hayes has been a public school teacher in Connecticut for more than 15 years and was recognized in 2016 as the National Teacher of the Year.
Currently serving her first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Hayes sits on the Committees on Education & Labor and Agriculture and proudly represents Connecticut’s 5th District.