URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/437497opinion03-01-06.htm

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Budget Cuts Leave Most Vulnerable Behind
By Kay Monaco
Executive Director, N.M. Voices for Children
    Once again President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have shown their true loyalty. It is not to working Americans. It is to wealthy corporations and the small, elite club of the extremely rich.
    That the president's FY07 budget adds trillions to the national deficit over the next decade will be burden enough as our children grow up and enter college and the workforce. But couple that with current budget cuts to the very programs aimed at preparing our children for college and the workforce, and you have a budget with serious moral shortfalls.
    Consider federal funding for public education— a critical cornerstone to a healthy, vibrant society and economy, and the surest way to reduce poverty, crime and substance abuse, and guarantee that everyone has the opportunity to fulfill their dreams. Nationally, K-12 and vocational education saw a 13 percent cut in funding, higher education a whopping 20 percent cut. New Mexico alone will lose more than $158 million for educational programs, some of them geared toward the most vulnerable. Cuts were dealt to New Mexico's special and vocational education programs and school improvement projects, among others.
    Over the past five years, Republicans have underfunded their own No Chil
    d Left Behind program by $55 billion nationwide. Under the FY07 budget, some 25,000 New Mexico children will get left behind, denied the help in reading and math the law had promised. New Mexico's Head Start program, which gives more than 7,000 of our most underprivileged children a fighting chance, has been frozen at its current level. Given inflation, this amounts to a cut.
    The budget also provides $50 million less for children with disabilities. With the numbers of children entering the school system at a rate not seen since the 1970s our educational budget needs to grow, not shrink. A withering budget, coupled with the growing external issues that place pressure on our schools— homelessness, gun violence, substance abuse and the like— makes the future of public education looks grim.
    Education was not the only vital social service slashed under the hatchet. New Mexico Community Development and Service Block Grants, which give communities and people the tools to lift themselves out of poverty and into economic self-sufficiency, lost a combined $10 million-plus.
    Health care funding was malnourished as well. The Republican budget eliminates $99 million in preventive and community health funding nationwide. The Bush budget also cuts Medicare by $36 billion over the next five years— despite the fact that the ranks of American seniors are growing like never before as more and more Baby Boomers retire.
    While our Legislature did somewhat better in funding essential services in the just-ended session— increasing spending on public education by 8.9 percent, among other things— it will hardly fill the federal gap. Worse, our lawmakers failed to increase the minimum wage to $7.50 from $5.15— an increase that would have provided some cushion for working families who will lose the very services upon which they depend.
    The Legislature also failed to pass a personal income tax credit for the working poor and kept Native American students from receiving lottery funds to pay for tuition at tribal colleges in the state.
    So which New Mexicans benefited from President Bush's new budget? The wealthiest 1 percent of New Mexico's residents will each receive $7,683 in tax breaks in 2010.
    New Mexico's middle-income families will each get $36— which, by 2010, may or may not buy a tank of gas.