TAX CUTS HURT PENNA.'S NEEDIEST

Posted on Mon, Apr. 21, 2003

By Mary Hurtig

With the war in Iraq dominating the nation's newspapers, lawmakers in the grip of tax-cut fever have moved closer to decisively, profoundly, and perhaps irrevocably shaping the nation's future.

By narrow margins, the Senate (with tie-breaking help from Vice President Dick Cheney) and House of Representatives passed a budget blueprint for next year that sets the stage for a series of disastrous, costly policy choices. The budget plan puts off for now a final decision on the size of a tax cut. The Senate will work to develop an initial package of $350 billion over 10 years, while the House will aim much deeper. But the budget also calls for another $700 billion in cuts (including making permanent the cuts enacted in 2001).

Political commentators have noted that the Bush administration is fighting two wars: one in Iraq and the other on the home front. The victims in the second war are Americans who until now have been able to count on some help to obtain health care, and house and feed themselves and their families, when their own efforts to provide for themselves fell short.

While we respect the historic significance and overwhelming importance of the war in Iraq, the press has all but ignored that "second war," the quiet but critical debate in Congress over the real cost of tax cuts that will reshape our priorities for generations to come.

The budget plan adopted last week hid the true costs to come by tabling explicit program cuts that a closely divided House of Representatives had earlier put on the chopping block. These cuts were not included in the final budget. But they are disturbing evidence of the poor priorities in Congress:

$12.5 billion from food stamps;

$7.9 billion from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families;

$5.8 billion from school lunches;

$3.7 billion from foster care and adoption assistance;

$2.6 billion from child support enforcement; and

$92.1 billion from Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income people.

These proposals show what deep tax cuts would mean - and who will likely bear the ultimate disproportionate burden: children, people with disabilities, and lower-income Americans.

Can Pennsylvania afford such a massive tax cut? Can Pennsylvania afford cuts to education, health care and veterans programs, as the House had proposed? Can Pennsylvania afford to ignore other pressing needs?

Consider the public mental health system, which the President's Mental Health Commission says "is in shambles" and "does not adequately serve millions of people who need care." Rather than advancing a rescue plan to help people with mental illnesses, the budget plan calls for shrinking the Medicaid program, which funds about 67 percent of mental health spending in Pennsylvania.

Moreover, this tax-cut-driven budget comes as Pennsylvania, like most states, is wrestling with a budget deficit of more than $2 billion. The budget recently passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly already reduces mental health and drug and alcohol treatment funds by $103 million. This funding currently provides services to more than 90,000 persons across the commonwealth - 90,000 people who are going to lose desperately needed mental health and drug and alcohol treatment. Shouldn't Congress provide relief to Pennsylvania and the country to meet these and other pressing needs before it enacts a decade-long tax cut?

In this time of economic downturn, we need to protect and bolster critical public service systems. Deep, long-term tax reduction will place Pennsylvania and all Americans at risk. 

Members of Congress must stand up and not be steamrolled into cutting taxes at the expense of poor families, children, and people with disabilities.
Mary Hurtig (mhurtig@mhasp.org) is director of policy at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

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