Cleaver: A budget is a moral document

In his latest EC from DC report, Fifth District Congressman Emanuel Cleaver explains why the federal budget is a moral document.

I do not believe slashing Head Start and forcing parents to stay home from work is the right way to go. 

I do not believe adding debt to college students while giving tax breaks to big oil companies is the right way to go. 

And I don’t believe ending the Medicare guarantee for our seniors, raising taxes on the middle class, and cutting jobs – in order to cut taxes for millionaires – is the right way to go.

There is a lot of debate right now on Capitol Hill when it comes to the budget. I believe we must have a solid budget that responsibly reduces the deficit, protects hard-working, middle class Americans, and keeps in place a strong safety net, one that ensures our children have enough to eat, promises made to our seniors are kept, and that we don’t cater to the rich at the expense of the poor. 

The common term for the Republican budget is called the Ryan Budget. I don’t like to call it that, because in pointing out problems with it, it implies a criticism of the person. I don’t harbor any ill will toward the man, only a disagreement with the ideas. 

 * For instance, Missouri’s Fifth District has 27,290 current and former federal employees. The proposed GOP Budget would essentially cut their pay by 6%. 

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports this proposed Republican budget gets 69% of its cuts from programs that would help our most vulnerable Americans. These are our neighbors, our friends, and the folks sitting next to us in the church pews. 

According to the CBPP:

• Medicaid and subsidies to help low and moderate income people buy private insurance would be cut by $2.7 trillion. 
  
• At least 40 million of these Americans – 1 in 8 people – would become uninsured in the next decade alone.
  
• The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would suffer $137 billion in cuts over the next decade. Almost half of the people served by SNAP are children.
  
• Pell Grants for low and moderate income students would be cut by up to $125 billion.
  
• An additional $385 billion would be cut from programs that serve the elderly, the disabled, provide school lunches to kids whose families can’t afford them, and tax credits for child care so parents can work. 
  

And where are the jobs in this proposed budget? There are numerous cuts to critical investments, but no talk of jobs. 

We need to help create jobs in this country, not stand in the way of that. We need to keep jobs here at home, not outsource them to other countries. We need training, trade policies, and tax incentives to put American workers on the job, by manufacturing things here, in America. 

Just this week, the jobs report was released for March. For the 49th consecutive month now, our country has seen private sector job creation. March marked a pivotal month – as we, finally, hit the number signifying we have recovered all of the private sector jobs lost in the devastating economic recession.

This is NOT a time to go backwards. 

We need to expand our good-paying jobs, not eliminate them. 

We need to increase our minimum wage, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty and revitalizing the economy. 

We need to extend emergency unemployment insurance to those who are desperately searching for work. A renewal would bring critical relief to some 49,300 Missourians. 

And for heaven’s sake … women should make equal pay for equal work! 

We should be caring more about what we are doing for hard-working Americans' pocketbooks – than for multi-millionaires' portfolios. 

A budget is a moral document, it shows where our priorities lie. 

I do not believe we should be leading our country down the path of creating more wealth for millionaires, while our seniors, our students, and the very backbone and strength of our country - the middle class - pay the price. 

It is not right.