Last week, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) debated the Congressional Black Caucus’ Fiscal Year 2012 Alternative Budget on the House Floor. The United States Congress took up the Cleaver/Scott Amendment— the CBC Budget. The final vote was 103 to 303. The CBC budget focuses on the CBC’s priorities of economic development, job creation, cradle to college and workforce education, and protecting the Affordable Care Act. It makes significant investments in education, job training, transportation and infrastructure, and advanced research and development programs that will accelerate the economic recovery. At the same time, the CBC Budget protects the social safety net without cutting Social Security, killing Medicaid, or making seniors contribute more to Medicare.
The CBC has served this nation diligently for the past 40 years since 1971, and since 1981 it has offered an alternative budget. On the 101st day in the 112th Congress of the United States, the CBC related the Republican Leadership has not brought one jobs bill or solution to the table. Instead, the CBC contended, the GOP leadership passed a budget with draconian cuts that will critically wound and significantly impact vulnerable communities.
The nation’s communities of color have been hit hardest by the effects of the recession. Even as the country’s economy slowly rebounds, Black communities are experiencing disproportionately higher rates of unemployment, home foreclosure, educational disadvantages, and economic hardship. As a result, vulnerable communities increasingly rely on public programs to meet their basic needs, but these are the programs the Republican Leadership is eradicating with their budget proposal, according to the CBC.
U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) weighed in after the House passed Republican Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget:
“As the Democratic alternative budgets showed, we can get our fiscal house in order without rationing health care for our seniors and low-income Americans.
“The other side likes to talk about how Medicare is driving the deficit, but that’s just part of the story. The full story is that private health care costs – and we all know this to be true because we’re all paying more – are rising at a rapid clip, and Medicare can’t keep pace.
“The debate we had on this budget could have been the same debate our nation had about the New Deal and Social Security. It could have been the same debate when Medicare and Medicaid became law. And this budget is turning back the clock and taking us to the ‘good old days’ when people are just on their own.”
Congresswoman Donna Christensen (D-VI) released the following statement as well revealing information that especially the minority communities, middle-class and working class citizens need to be aware of with Ryan’s budget proposal.
It is important that everyone understands that in their proposed 2012 budget, Republicans are diverting money from programs needed by the poor, seniors and people with disabilities to corporations and the wealthy in our country. Their attack on Medicare and Medicaid has nothing to do with reducing the deficit. It is simply a ruse to kill these two programs they tried to block from the outset and have been trying to destroy for years.
If budgets are a statement of one’s values, what Republican values allow them to deny help to those in need.
Under the Bush policies which they are continuing, between 2000 and 2007 the richest 10 percent of people in this country received all – 100 percent – of our income growth? The poor and middle class continued to fall down the income ladder.
The drastic cuts and changes they are trying to make in Medicare would put seniors at the mercy of private insurers and then only help them with a shrinking part of their premiums.
Their cutting almost 800 billion out of Medicaid and making it a block grant for governors to use as they see fit would mean even dropping more people from the program and cutting important benefits.
Together with their continuous attack of healthcare reform, they are effectively slamming the door to access to quality health care in the faces of those who were just preparing to enter – some for the very first time. And none of this creates jobs or helps the economy. It is simply part of their plan to deny President Obama his deserved second term. The CBC will do everything we can to block their efforts. We also need you to do your part.
The Members of the Congressional Black Caucus believe that budgets serve as a window into the moral compass of a nation’s conscience— and the nation’s compass is horribly off. Recklessly cutting vital programs like job training, education, and health care to millions of hardworking American families is not a roadmap to balancing the budget.