White House and Congressional Leaders Urged to Reduce Deficit without Increasing Poverty

Previous Deficit Reduction Packages Protected Programs for Low-Income Americans

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a critical juncture in the deficit reduction talks, the leaders of prominent national religious, civil rights, charitable, economic research, and low-income advocacy organizations are calling on Executive and Congressional leadership to honor the precedent set by previous deficit reduction negotiations that have reduced the deficit without increasing poverty.

In a letter to policymakers involved in deficit reduction talks, these groups noted the precedent of bipartisan budgets that reduce both poverty and the deficit, stating:

"…all deficit reduction packages enacted in the 1990s reduced poverty and helped the disadvantaged even as they shrank deficits.  In addition, every automatic budget cut mechanism of the past quarter-century has exempted core low-income assistance programs from any automatic across-the-board cuts triggered when budget targets or fiscal restraint rules were missed or violated.  The 1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws, the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, the 1993 deficit reduction package, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, and the 2010 pay-as-you-go law all exempted core low-income programs from automatic cuts."

The full text of the letter and a list of signatories is below this release.

The following are statements from several of the letter's signatories.

Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director, Center for Community Change

"Our families are struggling to make ends meet and our communities are suffering from record levels of unemployment and increasing poverty. It's time to get the country back on track and that means focusing on job creation and supporting our families. Protecting the programs that serve families in need is a vital component of any budget negotiations. It's time to move beyond the partisan gridlock and to the real solution, good jobs for unemployed and underemployed workers and adequate support for families in need."

Melissa Boteach, Manager, Half in Ten

"How our nation approaches the necessary task of reducing its deficits will reflect our priorities as a nation. History shows that deficit-reduction need not be accomplished in ways that increase poverty, and in fact can make the necessary investments to expand opportunity for all.  Efforts to address our nation's debt should protect the most vulnerable and safeguard programs that promote shared prosperity"

Nancy Duff Campbell, Co-President, National Women's Law Center

"Unless programs for low-income people are protected in the budget negotiations, women and their families will bear the brunt of deficit reduction.  Women are more likely than men to be poor because they still face discrimination on the job and take on more of the responsibility for unpaid caregiving.  So women disproportionately rely on Medicaid, SNAP (Food Stamps) and other safety net programs to meet their own and their children's basic needs – and on programs like child care assistance and Pell grants for a chance to get ahead and give their children a better life.  Maintaining supports for low-income women and their families isn't just fair – it's a smart investment in our common future."

Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund

"Children are the poorest age group in America and hunger, homelessness and poverty have risen dramatically for them in the last two years. Two-thirds of the 15.5 million poor children live in families in which at least one person is working. We must protect children, their families and other vulnerable people while finding ways to reduce the deficit that reflect moral sense, common sense and economic sense. We urge the President and Congress to reject all cuts that would increase poverty and inequality to ensure children and other vulnerable people are better off tomorrow than they are today. We all need to stand together for what's morally right; the future and soul of our country is at stake."  

Vicki Escarra, President and CEO, Feeding America

"With more of our nation's men, women and children facing hunger today than ever before, it would be unconscionable for the Congress and the Administration to cut the first line of defense against hunger in America.  Feeding America food banks are already overburdened as we struggle to keep pace with historic levels of need for emergency food assistance and private charity cannot fill the gap if nutrition assistance programs are cut.  We must recognize the reality that federal nutrition programs are the difference between having enough to eat and not for one in four Americans, and we must find  solutions  to our nation's economic challenges that do not send millions more people into the grips of hunger and poverty."

Robert Greenstein, President, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

"President Obama and Congress should enact a plan sooner rather than later to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course, and the recent history of deficit reduction makes clear they can reduce deficits without increasing poverty and hardship — as policymakers did in 1990, 1993, and 1997.  That's particularly important now, with inequality in the United States at its highest in over 80 years and poverty considerably higher here than in most other wealthy nations. In designing deficit reduction plans, policymakers should follow a core principle of the Bowles-Simpson Commission – to design them in ways that protect low-income people and do not increase poverty."

Wade Henderson, President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

"With millions of low-income Americans struggling to gain economic stability – including millions of women, minorities, and people with disabilities – reducing the deficit in ways that increased poverty or added to their hardships would be contrary to our national values. Our leaders would be wise to follow the precedent of previous administrations and Congresses and refuse to cut any programs that strengthen economic security for low-income families."

Alan Houseman, President and Executive Director, CLASP

"The current debate over the nation's deficit is incomplete," said Alan W. Houseman, executive director of the CLASP, the Center for Law and Social Policy. "We have to make tough choices about how the nation spends and raises money to keep the government functioning, but we also must consider deeper questions such as what kind of nation we want to be now and in the future. As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said, deficit reduction should protect the truly needy. Lawmakers must do more than pay lip service to this principle. They must commit to it, and they must ensure that the decisions they make don't increase poverty and inequality."

John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress

"Long-term deficit-reduction is a critical goal, which can, indeed must, be accomplished in a way that strengthens the middle-class and ensures adequate protections for the most vulnerable."

Ron Pollack, Executive Director, Families USA

"Responsible federal budgets protect people who can't bear added economic burdens. We urge our nation's leaders at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to adhere to this time-honored principle."

Hilary O. Shelton, Director, NAACP Washington Bureau & Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy

"A nation's budget is, in its aggregate, a statement about the values and priorities of its people," said Hilary O. Shelton, the Director of the NAACP Washington Bureau and the Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy.  "The NAACP fully believes that it is incumbent upon the federal government to meet the unique needs of the most vulnerable Americans among us and that they are allowed to engage in their Constitutional right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  We therefore strongly encourage everyone involved in the budget negotiations to do all they can to ensure that essential services are not cut and that no American goes hungry, is undereducated, underemployed or homeless or suffers from a preventable illness.  Not on our watch."   

James Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center

"One in five Americans reported they were unable to afford enough food for themselves or their families in 2010. Given the economic struggles that Americans continue to face, our nation's leaders must refuse to even consider reckless cuts that harm the most vulnerable. Any proposal to cut or otherwise restructure valuable safety net programs would roll back a generation of progress in this nation against very deep hunger and poverty, and would destroy a bipartisan compact that for two generations has developed and sustained a strong and effective safety net."

Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs

"Forcing millions of low-income people to pay for deficit reduction by going without health care, food, and jobs is un-American and jeopardizes our economic future."

The full text of the letter is below.

President Barack Obama

Vice President Joe Biden

Speaker of the House John Boehner

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Dear Mr. President; Mr. Vice President; Speaker Boehner; Minority Leader Pelosi; Majority Leader Reid; Minority Leader McConnell:

We write to urge you to follow a key bedrock principle included in prior bipartisan deficit reduction efforts and espoused by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson:  protect programs for low-income families and individuals and make sure that deficit reduction is achieved in a way that does not increase poverty.

Any agreement on deficit reduction should neither cut low-income assistance programs directly nor subject these programs to cuts under automatic enforcement mechanisms.  Cuts to programs that help low-income people meet their basic needs or provide them with opportunity to obtain decent education and employment would inevitably increase poverty and hardship.

The major bipartisan deficit reduction packages of recent decades have adhered to the principle we espouse here.  In fact, all deficit reduction packages enacted in the 1990s reduced poverty and helped the disadvantaged even as they shrank deficits.  In addition, every automatic budget cut mechanism of the past quarter-century has exempted core low-income assistance programs from any automatic across-the-board cuts triggered when budget targets or fiscal restraint rules were missed or violated.  The 1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws, the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, the 1993 deficit reduction package, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, and the 2010 pay-as-you-go law all exempted core low-income programs from automatic cuts.

The United States already has higher levels of poverty and inequality than most other Western nations.  We agree that we must address future deficits and put our nation on a sustainable fiscal course.  But that need not — and should not — entail increasing poverty and hardship or inequality, as various past deficit reduction packages demonstrate.  Indeed,  the 1990, 1993, and 1997 deficit reduction packages, which improved the Earned Income Tax Credit, strengthened the SNAP program or created the Children's Health Insurance Program, show that reducing poverty and expanding effective low-income assistance programs is fully consistent with deficit reduction.

In recent weeks, an unprecedented coalition of Evangelical, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, African-American, and Latino Christian leaders have joined together to advance this principle of protecting people with low incomes in the current budget debate.  They have issued a joint statement calling on policymakers to draw a "Circle of Protection" around programs that meet the basic needs of low-income people, both at home and abroad.  We applaud this effort and add our voices to it.  We call for Congress and the White House to commit to the principle of protecting low-income people in deficit reduction.

Sincerely,

SOURCE Center on Budget and Policy Priorities