House Plans Would Cut Even More than the Anticipated $6.5 Billion in FY 2013
The broad federal budget cuts known as sequestration will begin in January to make deep cuts in federal funding for services to kids. A new two-page fact sheet by First Focus summarizes the expected $6.5 billion of cuts to programs affecting children. The effects of those cuts include the following:
- Education – Title I – 1.8 million fewer students will be served nationwide.
- Special education grants to states – Nearly 500,000 fewer special education students will be served.
- Head Start – 96,000 fewer children served. Child Care & and Development Block Grant – 80,000 fewer children served nationwide.
- Nutrition – WIC – Over 752,000 participants would be cut from nutrition assistance nationwide.
- Childhood immunization grants – Nearly 212,000 fewer children would be vaccinated nationwide.
- Maternal and Child Health Block Grant – 5.67 million fewer children, women, and families would be served nationwide.
Those amounts are for just nine months of 2013 (the second through fourth quarters of the federal fiscal year). The cutting will continue over the remainder of the year and will grow in subsequent fiscal years.
The fact sheet explains that even deeper cuts for kids could take effect early next year if the Senate and next president accept changes to the sequester that were approved by the House (eliminating the cuts to defense spending). In addition, far larger cuts could begin next October under the House-approved budget authored by Rep. Ryan.
First Focus offers the following perspective on the cuts for kids.
“At a time when more than one in every five children in America lives in poverty, we should be fully investing in, and not cutting, kids. Already, federal investments in children are less than 8 percent of total government spending – an alarmingly small commitment to 25 percent of the nation’s population. Under sequestration, that share drops even further.”
Read more about the sequester (and the additional cuts recommended by the House) in a new Wisconsin Budget Project Blog post.
The First Focus fact sheet doesn’t say much about the increases in defense spending proposed by the House, but an interesting NY Times column yesterday’s critiques the GOP plans for shifting spending in that direction.
Jon Peacock
