The House Votes to Cut Social Spending
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1-Both Maine Representatives joined all of their fellow Democrats Wednesday in voting against the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. But supporters of the bill narrowly prevailed, 216 to 214.
The act will cut over five years $39 billion in social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and student loans. There is also a $56 billion tax cut bill pending, which Democrats say effectively cancels out the savings from the Deficit Reduction Act.
The new law will cut $12.7 billion from federal student aid at a time when college is not getting any cheaper. The average student leaves school with $17,500 in debt.
The House had approved a nearly identical version of the bill in December by six votes, with Maine Reps. Michael Michaud and Tom Allen voting against it. The Senate passed the bill on Nov. 13 by 52-47, with both Maine senators voting against it.. “The House is about to consider a proposal that is one of the worst that I have seen in my years so far in Congress,” Michaud said in a statement before the House vote. “They call this bill the Deficit Reduction Act, but that is nothing short of a deception; $38 billion in budget cuts, combined with $56 billion in tax cuts, means a $17 billion increase in the deficit.”
Of the $12.7 billion in student aid cuts, some $9 billion will take the form of higher interest rates. Rep. Allen said that President Bush and his party were sending a very different message from the one enunciated Tuesday, when the President, in his State of the Union speech, said this country needed to stay competitive with India and China in a new world market. “I think if you’re concerned about international competition, you don’t start by making it harder for young people going to college,” Allen said.
The Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal non-profit organization that pushes for “progressive social change,” said in a statement that a Department of Education study showed that some 4.4 million students over the next decade would be unable to attend four-year public universities for lack of funds. During the same period, some two million students would be unable to attend any post-secondary education facility. By 2020, this will lead to a shortage nationally of 12 million college-educated workers. The new law will cost Maine college students an additional $1,799 a year, according to the Campaign for America’s Future.
“This bill will make it harder for students from working families to go to college,” said Robert Borosage, the organization’s co-director. “This measure makes deep and harmful cuts to student loans that will not even pay for the new tax breaks planned for the wealthy.” Michaud and Allen agreed that there are better ways to reduce the budget deficit than by cutting health and education programs.
“We desperately need to restore a sense of fiscal discipline in our nation’s capital,” Michaud said in a statement. “Not only will this budget plan balloon a federal debt that has already passed $8 trillion-the equivalent of $27,000 for every man, woman and child in the country-but it also contains devastating cuts to programs that are important to Mainers.”
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