Ironically, just a few hours later the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved big cuts in the Food Stamp Program, the nation's first line of defense against hunger. If these cuts become law, more than 200,000 low-income people will have their food stamps cut off.
This is not the time to be cutting food assistance. Last year, 38 million Americans - including one in five American children - lived in households that couldn't afford sufficient food at some point during the year, according to new government data. Nearly 15 percent of Utah households couldn't afford sufficient food at some point during 2004, the fifth straight year in which that number has gone up.
It gets worse. The House bill also would weaken programs such as Medicaid, child-support enforcement, foster care and child-care assistance, programs that help vulnerable families - millions of whom work in low-wage jobs - make ends meet. These cuts would force these families to spend more of their meager budgets on such essentials as health care, leaving them even less able to put food on the table.
What's going on? House leaders claim that the cuts demonstrate "fiscal responsibility" and will help offset the cost of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Neither claim is true because the House also plans to pass a new round of tax cuts in December that would cost more revenue than all the budget cuts would save. As a result, the budget cuts would be used not to help reduce the federal budget deficit or pay for hurricane relief, but instead to help pay for tax cuts - a significant share of which will go to high-income people.
House leaders have tried to downplay the human impact of their planned budget cuts. But the reality is that these cuts will cause real pain for many families.
The House, for example, cut funding to help states enforce child-support obligations. With critical federal help, states have stepped up their efforts to ensure that non-custodial parents pay the child support they owe. This encourages personal responsibility and helps parents caring for children pay for necessities.
Instead of supporting this worthwhile effort, the House wants to cut the program, a cut that would lead to a whopping $24 billion in child-support payments going uncollected over the next 10 years. There's no way to downplay the impact of that.
The House cuts in child-care assistance mean that 330,000 child-care slots for low-income working families will disappear over the next five years. Many parents who lose this assistance will have to cut back on food and other essentials to pay child-care costs. Some parent will likely be unable to afford child care and may be forced to leave work altogether.
And it's hard to downplay the impact of forcing low-income people to pay more out of their limited budgets for health care, which the House bill would also do. Study after study shows that when health care becomes unaffordable, poor people do without it and their health worsens over time. One study showed that one-third of those who were hit with increased health care costs reported that they had to cut back on food to pay for medical costs. The bottom-line impact of the House cut? More people in Utah and around the country will go without health care.
The one good thing about the House cuts is that they haven't happened yet. The House and Senate still have to work out a final agreement on the budget. Right now our members of Congress have returned to Utah to find out what's on voters' minds. Sens. Bob Bennett and Hatch and Reps. Rob Bishop, Chris Cannon and Jim Matheson need to hear that these cuts do not reflect our Utah values of strengthening families and protecting children.
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Karen Crompton is the executive director of Voices for Utah Children.
