Civic Values

Protest Federal Budget Cuts Oct. 17th-18th

Protest Federal Budget Cuts
Toll Free Call In Days--Monday, Tuesday (October 17th-18th)

Congress resumes today and high on its list of priorities is final approval of a budget for Fiscal Year 2006.

The news about this budget was never good--only bad and slightly less bad. We're still facing a 10% cut in the Community Development Block Grant, cuts in the Low Income Heating an Energy Assistance program (LIHEAP), cuts in Medicaid and Food Stamps, cuts in job training and Title 1 Aid to schools, and more...

There's a full update on the BushBudget.com web site.

In response, the  American Friends Service Committee is again providing a toll free number to call Congress about the budget.

The number is 1-800-426-8073. You ask for the Capitol switchboard. Then you should ask for your Senators.

The House of Representatives shows little hope for change--given the leadership.

We have a better chance in the Senate.

If one of your Senators is on the Appropriations Committee, so much the better. This is where the final negotiations will lie.

There's a link on the BushBudget Web Site to the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee--along with their fax numbers. Sending faxes to Congress has far greater impact than calling. So keep this mind if one of your Senators is on the Appropriations Committee.

The BushBudget web site also links to sample letters to Congress  protesting cuts in the Community Development Block Grant , Medicaid, and Food Stamps that address the major issues.

The basic message should be clear: No More Community Cutbacks.

The Philadelphia Inquirer gave us  warning here in Philadelphia about what's happening with the budget.

The Inquirer has done absolutely nothing to cover pending budget cuts on its news pages. They're not interested.

But on Friday, the resident conservative on their editorial board--Kevin Ferris--wrote an op-ed piece applauding a group of Republican Congresspeople known as the "Republican Study Group" for coming up with 122 possible spending cuts totalling $950 billion over the next 10 years.

Ferris only mentioned a few of these cuts, but the whole list includes turning Medicaid into a block grant, increasing Medicare co-payments, offering the Community Development Block Grant only to distressed cities, eliminate grants for drug and safe street schools, eliminate school lunches for middle class students, eliminate the Economic Development Administration, eliminate Americorps and VISTA, eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities--and more.

Here..read the column for yourself: Kevin Ferris on the Spending Cutbacks

I estimate that these cuts would cost our city (Philadelphia) as much  as $50 million a year.

Go to the Consolidated Federal Funds Report for your County that you can access from the Bush Budget web site to see how these additional budget cuts might effect your community.

Meanwhile, the Bush Tax Cuts--mostly benefiting people who are now trying to decide which high definition TV to buy this Christmas--currently cost the federal government $225 billion a year.

And there are more tax cuts on the way.

But the Republican Study Group in the House makes it clear these are off limits.

This is what now passes for "fiscal conservatism."

The toll free number is 1-800-426-8073.

Call it today. Or tomorrow. And if you have the time, send a fax to your Senators, especially to those on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

We really can make a difference if enough of us speak out. We have only ourselves to blame if we don't.

Now's the time.

The Bush Budget vs. America's Communities

The Bush administration’s 2006 budget proposes devastating cutbacks in domestic security, community development, education, human services, transportation, and the environment that spell disaster for America’s cities and towns.

Most of the news about the budget focuses specific programs--Social Security and Medicaid,  education, the Community Development Block Grant, agricultural subsidies, Amtrak, among a host of others. 

We are also learning what this budget will mean to broad groups of people in the United States--the elderly, veterans, farmers, working families, the poor.

Yet the central principle behind all of these cutbacks is clear:

The Bush administration wants to make America’s cities, neighborhoods, and communities pay for the War in Iraq, at a time when wealthy taxpayers are benefiting from more than $220 billion in tax cuts that the President now proposes to make permanent.

American conservatives seem to think that while it’s an honor to die for your country, it’s an imposition to pay for it.

America’s communities are paying the price.

We at the Institute for the Study of Civic Values believe that to ”promote the general welfare,” and “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity,” the federal government must help us build strong and healthy communities throughout the United States.

That is an American principle as old as the 1st National Bank of the United States and the 19th Century Homestead Act. It has been a central premise of federal policy for more than 70 years.

This what the Bush administration  wants to discard in the name of “effective government.”

For this reason, we have developed a new web site--BushBudget.com--to provide updated information devastating impact that the 2006 proposed Bush budget will have on America’s communities, large and small. Among its main features is direct access to the Census Bureau's Consolidated Federal Funds Reports that the total federal investment in each and every County in the United States.

We have also established an email list to bring together people from all parts of the country who are prepared to fight for America’s communities in the budget process.

You can join it by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bushbudget/join.

One thing is certain: unless we, the people working to build strong communities in America mobilize to defend them, no one will do it for us.

The campaign for America’s communities begins here.