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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2422907&mesg_id=2422907How Cuts in Vital Services Now Before the House Will Hurt KansasOn February 1, the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to take up legislation
cutting $40 billion in health care, student loans, child support enforcement, help for
parents trying to move from welfare to work, assistance to relatives providing foster care
to abused or neglected children, aid to people with severe disabilities, and other
programs.
The House narrowly approved this legislation (S. 1932), with virtually no opportunity to
review its 774 pages during an all- night session on December 19. Because it has been
slightly changed in the Senate, House members now have an important opportunity to
reject this bill, to protect their constituents from harm. With time to analyze the bill’s full
impact, it is clear that many provisions, a number of them unknown before and even
during the night of the first House vote, will deny assistance to and impose costs on the
people of Kansas. A vote against these cuts is a vote to protect low-income and
vulnerable children, the elderly, struggling working families, and people with disabilities
in Kansas.
Less Health Care for Low-Income Residents of Kansas: Harsher than either the
original House or Senate bills, the bill now back before the House would permit Kansas
to reduce benefits for nearly all of its 174,000 children who receive Medicaid.
Comprehensive care that now effectively prevents and treats child health problems would
no longer be assured, even for the poorest children. In addition, Kansas’s 31,000 elderly
Medicaid recipients will be at risk of losing eligibility for long-term care services,
because of a punitive provision that would penalize many non-affluent seniors who make
modest gifts to relatives or charity and several years later become ill enough to require
long-term care. The “savings” from restricting eligibility for long-term care is 11 percent
larger in this bill than in the original House legislation. (For more information, see the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
http://www.cbpp.org/12-20-05bud.htm.)
A little-known provision requiring birth certificates or passports as documentation for
anyone applying or reapplying for Medicaid will burden 316,000 U.S. citizens in Kansas.
This unnecessary red tape will create disproportionate roadblocks to care for the poor,
people of color, and people with language barriers. One study estimated that up to one in
five African-Americans born before 1940 lacks a birth certificate. Evacuees from the
recent hurricanes or other disasters are particularly likely to have lost important papers.
Less Help for Kansas’s Low-Income Working Families: One of the budget bill’s
untold stories is the repeated targeting of poor and near-poor working families for cuts.
In addition to allowing states to charge families more than they can afford for Medicaid
services (a family earning $18,000 could be charged up to $900 a year), the bill will mean
that more of Kansas’s struggling families will do without child support they are owed,
child care assistance, or preparation for better-paying jobs. (For more information, see
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
http://www.cbpp.org/1-5-06health.htm.)
· Child Support Enforcement: Because the budget bill cuts federal funding for
Kansas’s enforcement activities to collect child support by $36 million, Kansas’s
children will lose at least $61 million in child support over 10 years. Families
between 100 – 200 percent of the federal poverty line who receive child support
average $4,000 in collections each year, about 15 percent of their income.
Children and families in Kansas cannot afford to lose this vital part of their
income. (For more information, see Center for Law and Social Policy,
http://www.clasp.org/publications/incentive_payments_121405.pdf.)
· Harsher Work Rules; Less Federal Funding: By throwing the reauthorization
of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) into the budget bill,
negotiators placed major new requirements on states and families while cutting
High Performance Bonus funds available to states for work programs and cash
assistance by $200 million a year. The legislation requires states to engage 50
percent of their caseloads in work activities, which in Kansas would require 1,200
additional participating families. Kansas received $131,055 in High Performance
Bonus funds in fiscal 2004. Such bonuses will end under the legislation before
the House.
To prevent federal penalties from failure to meet the participation rates, states
have a powerful incentive to push families off TANF, whether parents are able to
work or not. (For more information, see Center for Law and Social Policy,
http://www.clasp.org/publications/tanfagreement_update.pdf).
· Child Care: Assistance with the cost of child care is so inadequately funded in
the budget bill that by 2010, 255,000 fewer children in working families will get
child care help than in 2004. (Even now, funds are so short that at least half the
states have waiting lists for child care help, often with tens of thousands of
families; other states simply turn families away.) A recent survey by the U.S.
Census Bureau showed that employed mothers spent approximately $400 - $500 a
month for child care. For two-thirds of poor working families headed by single
mothers, child care consumes at least 40 percent of their income. But the bill now
before the House would give Kansas only $128.09 per month per family, while at
the same time drastically increasing the proportion of parents who must
participate in TANF work activities. (For more information, see Center for Law
and Social Policy,
http://www.clasp.org/publications/tanfagreement_update.pdf;National Women’s Law Center,
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/HelenBlankTANF_ReauthorizationTestimonyFeb05.pdf; Center for American Progress,
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=41341.)
People with Severe Disabilities Will Have to Wait Longer for Aid: Approving
applications for cash aid for poor people with disabilities can take many months. When
benefits are approved, people now get lump sum payments for the time in which the
application was pending. The bill makes beneficiaries wait much longer to collect what
they are owed. Part of the “savings” in the bill comes from the expectation that some
seriously disabled people will die before they receive their full benefits. In Kansas,
38,000 received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in December 2004. (For more
information, see Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
http://www.cbpp.org/7-19-05imm.pdf.)
Students Will Have to Pay More for College Loans: The $12.7 billion net five- year
cut to the student loan programs is the largest federal cut in the history of the programs.
The federal government gets 70 percent of the bill’s gross savings from raising the
interest paid by students or their families above current rates and then capturing the
overpayments back from the lenders. Students will pay more, though even now more
than 39 percent of college students graduate with unmanageable debt. Nationwide, the
average student borrower in school in 2003-2004 had federal loans of more than $17,000.
There will also be increased interest payments for Parent Loans for Undergraduate
Students (PLUS) and a new fee for loans that will further increase the cost of borrowing.
On average, loan payments consume more than 10 percent of a graduate’s income after
he or she enters the workforce. In the U.S. each year, nearly 200,000 high school
graduates do not go to college because they cannot afford it. Increasing the cost of going
to school will place college out of reach for more, and increase the squeeze on those who
do stay in school. (Source: Congressional Research Service Memo, October 19, 2005,
Meredith Peterson, “Undergraduate student debt by state and occupation.”)
The people of Kansas should not bear the burden of misplaced priorities. Kansas’s
children, students, elderly, and people with disabilities should not lose services in order to
pay towards $70 billion in tax breaks overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthy that
Congress will take up soon. A vote for this budget bill will tighten the squeeze on
Kansas’s struggling working families, who will lose millions in child support, have less
chance than ever of receiving child care help, and get less medical care at greater cost.
The Kansas Congressional delegation should reject this failure to protect and invest in its
constituents, young and old.
http://www.chn.org/pdf/factsheets/Kansas.pdf
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