Fwd: INFO ALERT: Gregg Bill - Women,Infant,Children will be Slashed

[Guest guest]

TO: CAWA NETWORK

FR: CALIFORNIA WOMEN’S AGENDA

RE: THE GREGG BILL – SLASHING WOMEN, INFANT AND CHILDREN’S FUNDING

 

This information is from one of our US Women Connect (www.uswc.org) partners

in Missouri - it can affect us all!

 

June 28, 2006

 

WOMEN, INFANT AND CHILDREN – SLASHED – OH MY!

The Real Impact of the Gregg Bill (S. 3521)

Kerri McBee, Outreach Director

 

What is the Gregg Bill?

 

S. 3521 is the STOP OVER SPENDING Act of 2006.

 

S. 3521 is designed to dramatically change how Congress and the President

make budget decisions.

 

These changes will guarantee that federal spending programs will radically

decrease or disappear in the near future and will cripple basic supports like

Social Security and Medicare.

 

Sweeping legislation to radically alter federal budget procedures, designed by

Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg and endorsed by Senate Majority

Leader Bill Frist, was adopted by the Budget Committee on June 20. The bill may

be brought to the Senate floor this summer (either as a single piece of

legislation or as several separate bills). The legislation seeks to force

dramatic changes in the budget. If enacted, it could have profound effects on

Missouri.

 

Senator Gregg described S. 3521 in moderate terms as offering “common-sense

and fiscally responsible solutions†to problems like “duplicative and

wasteful spending.†S. 3521 fails, however, to include common-sense budget

reforms that have proved effective in the past, such as restoration of the

Pay-As-You-Go rules on entitlement increases and tax cuts. Instead, the bill

contains extreme measures that could lead to massive cuts over time in Medicaid

and Medicare and reductions in the majority of domestic programs, while

shielding tax cuts from any fiscal investigation.

 

If Enacted the Gregg Bill would:

 

Force a minimum of $66 BILLION to be cut from the federal budget over the next

three years and another $1.7 trillion over the next ten years.

 

Guarantee that Medicaid funding will be reduced by over 20 percent by 2022.

 

Facilitate permanently ending your program with minimum debate and little or

no opportunity for amendments.

 

Eliminate opposition to Social Security privatization.

 

By 2009, these cuts would impact EVERY domestic discretionary program area in

the budget, including Head Start, child care, job training, vocational education

programs, WIC and other important services for families. THEY CANNOT, HOWEVER,

COME FROM DEFENSE SPENDING.

 

The Gregg Bill Targets Entitlement Programs.

S. 3521 sets deficit-reduction targets that are enforced by that are enforced

by automatic, across-the-board cuts in all entitlements (except Social

Security). The gap between the projected deficit and the targets set in the S.

3521 would amount to $252 billion in 2012 ALONE, and would require Congress to

cut $1.7 trillion from entitlements in the next ten years.

 

Entitlement cuts would need to come from (among others) Medicaid, Medicare,

SCHIP, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the refundable Child Tax Credit, Food

Stamps, unemployment insurance, and student loans.

 

What Happens to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security under the Gregg Bill?

 

Well, to put it mildly, they will be devastated. S. 3521 establishes a

commission on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to develop a plan to ensure

the long-term “solvency†of these entitlements - BUT “solvency†is

defined to guarantee VERY DEEP cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. To meet the

bill’s “solvency†target for Medicaid will require a 22% cut by 2020, a

36% cut by 2030, and a 50% cut by 2042! Furthermore, it is assumed that in order

to meet the “solvency†target for Medicare will require increasing

co-payments and premiums AND cutting back eligibility and services. Finally, the

Commission will facilitate privatizing Social Security.

 

What Happens to Domestic Programs under the Gregg Bill?

 

S. 3521 establishes an unelected commission appointed on “SUNSETS†to

produce plans for terminating or sunsetting discretionary and entitlement

programs. This means that the commission could suggest a consolidation of

programs into block grants with reduced funding levels, allow a bare partisan

majority on the commission to approve the plan, and allow the plan then to

pushed through Congress under fast-track procedures without any minority-party

votes needed-and with no amendments allowed either in committee or on the House

and Senate floor. With their votes irrelevant and their amendments disallowed,

members of the minority party could effectively be disenfranchised.

The Line Item Veto

 

S. 3521 would give the President “line item veto†authority, the equivalent

of assassinating federal spending. Any appropriations or item of additional

entitlement spending would be subject to the line item veto. TAX CUTS WOULD NOT.

 

The line-item veto provision in the Gregg Bill would give the President one

year after enactment of a bill to propose the cancellation of provisions in it.

It would then allow the President to withhold the funds proposed for

cancellation for 45 days after submitting his veto request, and would allow the

President to propose a repeat impoundment of the same item and to withhold funds

for another 45 days, if Congress voted down his initial request to cancel the

funds. This would enable the White House to withhold some appropriated funds

through the end of a fiscal year, which would cause the funds to lapse and the

appropriation to be cancelled – EVEN IF Congress had voted to disapprove the

veto.

 

Conclusion

This analysis is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the Gregg bill. For

detailed information regarding this bill you may access a complete analysis at

www.cbpp.org <http://www.cbpp.org/> .

The most far-reaching and important proposals are discussed here, however, and

they are highly problematic. The bill omits what should be the first three

elements of any serious fiscal discipline package: the enactment of actual

program reductions and revenue increases, or at least a call for serious

bipartisan negotiation to that end; the restoration in full of the PAYGO rule;

and the prohibition of the use of the reconciliation process to push through

legislation that increases deficits. Instead, the Gregg bill contains provisions

that could have profound impacts on American society over time — increasing

poverty, swelling the ranks of the uninsured, threatening most domestic programs

with reductions, even subjecting disabled veterans to benefit cuts, and

adversely affecting the economy when it is weak — while leaving large

deficit-financed tax cuts for the most affluent members of society entirely

unchecked and permitting their unlimited expansion

 

 

Mark Hull-Richter, U.S. Citizen & Patriot

U.S.A. - From democracy to kakistocracy in one fell coup.

" Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution

inevitable. " - JFK

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-01.htm

http://verifiedvoting.org http://blackboxvoting.org

http://PatrickHenryThinkTank.org

 

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e. cummings-