House Republicans’ Plan Harms Women, Seniors and Children
Report Sheds Light on GOP Funding Bill That Will Never Get Full Airing
WASHINGTON, DC—A newly-released Democratic report shows that not only would the proposed funding bill for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments slash their budgets by $6.8 billion, it would seriously harm a number of programs serving everyone from elementary school students to seniors. With just four work days expected before Congress leaves for its August recess—and the body scheduled to be in for less than three weeks in September and October—the time to stop these cuts is now. The report was commissioned by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the senior Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the three aforementioned departments.
“I sincerely wish these important issues were not left hanging over this body for five weeks,” DeLauro said. “We should have had a full committee discussion about this bill this week and given more of my colleagues a chance to voice their opinion on this bill and an opportunity to try and improve it. The cuts to critical programs covering family planning, economic security, mental health, women’s health care and education—just to name a very few—are really just reckless and ought to be aired in public, not left to fester behind closed doors.”
Due to the Majority’s failure to hold a public full committee debate on the bill, many of these proposed cuts have gone unnoticed by the millions of Americans they would harm should they become law. The report also shows that over the past ten years funding for the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments has barely kept pace with inflation. Once you account for inflation and population growth, the bill’s funding levels have actually decreased over that time period. Continuing that path would have a harmful effect on services millions of Americans interact with and rely on, such as job training, health services, operating expenses of Social Security and Medicare and local school systems.
The attached documents lay out exactly how much and what kind of harm the Republican proposal would have in a number of areas: