Resources and Events.
Tools and resources on how to take action in your community.

Where We Stand Now
03/23/05

What Happened in the Senate

The full Senate voted to make limited changes to their committee’s recommendations. The final budget resolution—with its slight nod to the pain of budget cuts and its large shrug for the cost of tax breaks—won passage in the full Senate by a vote of 51-49.

Good News:
The change that has gotten the most media attention is the Smith-Bingaman amendment, which abolishes a requirement to cut an estimated $14 billion from Medicaid funding. This revision passed 52-48, winning support from all the Democratic Senators, plus Republican Senators Chafee (RI), Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), DeWine (OH), Smith (OR, who sponsored the amendment), Snowe (ME), Specter (PA), and independent Senator Sen. Jeffords (VT). As a result, the Senate budget plan calls for no cuts to Medicaid, while the House plan requires Medicaid cuts of $15 to $20 billion.

Other beneficial changes included the Kennedy (D-MA) amendment to increase discretionary education spending by $5.4 billion, and the Coleman (R-MN) amendment to maintain funding for the Community Development Block Grant at its current level of $4.7 billion. (The President’s plan had been to consolidate CDBG with 17 other programs and give them all a total of only $3.7 billion in funds.)

Bad News:
The Senate voted against an amendment offered by Sen. Baucus (D-MT) to protect the Agriculture budget—which includes the food stamps program—from billions of dollars worth of mandatory cuts.

The Senate budget committee had recommended a requirement to give some $70 billion in tax breaks to wealthy people. Senator Carper (D-DE) offered an amendment to delete that requirement. It was defeated. To make matter worse, late on the last night of debate Senators passed a Bunning (R-KY) amendment to nearly double the size of the required tax breaks to $134 billion.

Senators Feingold (D-WI) and Chafee (R-RI) offered an amendment to reinstate a requirement to “pay as you go” (identify budget cuts to balance out any new spending) for both tax cuts, which decrease revenue, and spending on programs. The amendment failed on a 50-50 vote. This means that Congress will have to “pay” for any spending increases by making cuts elsewhere, but will not have to pay for tax cuts.

The House of Representatives

The House also approved a budget resolution, on a near party-line vote of 218-214. Their budget plan features a host of mandatory cuts to programs that are vital to low- and moderate-income families. These include $5.3 billion from programs overseen by the Agriculture committee, which the chairman has suggested should all come out of the food stamps program; $15-20 billion from programs controlled by the Commerce committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid; and almost $19 billion from programs handled by the Ways and Means committee, which include TANF, child care, foster care, child support, Medicare, EITC, and SSI. The chairman of this committee has made clear that Medicare will be untouched, and he expects to take most of the cuts from the EITC program.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The next step is for select members of both the House and Senate to get together and see if they can agree on a compromise version of the budget that both chambers can vote on. This process is called “conferencing.”

Click here for more details on 'conferencing' (PDF, 554kb)

You may have heard in the media about how hard it will be for the House and Senate to agree on a budget. We don’t think so. We believe that, despite differences such as the Medicaid cuts that will require compromising, the House and Senate budget resolutions are strikingly similar in key, fundamental ways: they both reflect the entirely wrong priorities, and they will both hit low- and moderate-income people the hardest.

Both budget plans include deep cuts to discretionary spending (approximately $202 billion on the Senate side, $216 billion on the House side). Both include mandatory cuts to entitlement programs ($17 billion on the Senate side, $69 billion on the House side). Both include massive mandatory tax breaks ($134 billion on the Senate side, $45 billion on the House side) for the wealthy. And despite claims to the contrary, both would increase the federal deficit (Senate bill by $130 billion, House bill by $127 billion).

What You Can Do

Over the next two weeks, most Senators and Congress members are at home for the spring recess. This is an ideal time to let your representatives know that neither the House nor the Senate budget plan is acceptable—and that no combined version can possibly be acceptable. Tell your elected representatives that you want them to oppose any budget resolution that includes either deep program cuts or increased tax breaks — much less both!

Click here for additional ways you can help