Jews line up to save what Bush budget would cut
By Ron Kampeas
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WASHINGTON (JTA)—How many federal program cuts does it take to get the Jewish community ready to fight tax cuts?
Within hours of the release of the president's proposed budget for 2008, a wall-to-wall coalition of Jewish groups called on members of Congress to fight budget cuts that could adversely affect programs for the poor and elderly.
The United Jewish Communities, the umbrella body for Jewish federations, was circulating an internal memo that drew a direct line between the program cuts and Bush's proposals to make tax cuts permanent.
"A significant portion of increased spending would be dedicated to tax cuts that expire in 2010," it said. "Under this approach, a number of human service programs are slashed or even eliminated."
It was an extraordinary analysis for an organization that in the past has focused on the program trees and ignored the ideological forest. UJC traditionally has instructed its lobbyists and activists to avoid talk of tax cuts, which divide Republicans and Democrats.
The anonymous memo writer acknowledged that policy shift.
Noting the "mammoth" $3 trillion budget proposal, the writer said, "While the details have some relevance, it's direction and approach are more important."
Some Jewish officials predicted an evolution among community leaders who in the past have warned against opposing tax cuts.
"The community is more and more willing to look at the complete picture," said Hadar Susskind, Washington director for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which in the past has advocated against tax cuts.
JCPA, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Reform movement have led the opposition to tax cuts. UJC, which boasts a slate of Republican donors, until now has resisted opposition.
"Some elements that argued against tax cuts are coming to understand" that taxes and revenue "are intimately connected, and at some point you lose credibility if you're not willing to talk about the revenue side," Susskind said.
The spending side of the budget already was coming under fire.
"We urge you to fight cuts that would be harmful to the vulnerable populations we advocate on behalf of," said the UJC letter, sent to every member of Congress.
It said also that programs such as the Social Services Block Grant, the Community Services Block Grant, Food Stamps, State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, and the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program "are critical to the elderly, refugees, children and persons with disabilities. Please keep these populations in mind..."
The letter was signed by 16 national Jewish groups, including UJC, JCPA and the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox religious streams, as well as 62 local groups.
"This budget represents more of the same wrong priorities: placing a higher priority on huge tax cuts for multimillionaires than on urgent national needs," U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a statement. "It cuts Medicare and Medicaid by $300 billion while failing to reinvest those funds to help cover any of the 47 million uninsured Americans, and also not providing SCHIP sufficient funds to reduce the number of uninsured children."
Pelosi suggested that Democrats would closely scrutinize to what degree the Iraq war was siphoning off tax dollars.
Rob Portman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the growth of programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security was "unsustainable."
For UJC, the one bright light happened to be a tax cut: The budget proposes that up to $100,000 in tax-free rollovers from individual retirement accounts to charity be extended beyond the program's 2007 expiration.
The IRA rollover "added $10 million to federations last year," Daroff said. "It's an important incentive."
Other areas of concern outlined in the internal UJC memo, include:
- Cuts for independent living for seniors, from $747 million to $575 million; and for group homes for the disabled, from $240 million to $125 million;
- Billions of dollars in cuts to social-service block grants to the states that the UJC memo said "have extraordinary influence in shaping program delivery on the ground." The cuts in such grants affect poverty alleviation, adoption services and refugee assistance;
- UJC predicts at least $70 billion in immediate cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
A UJC memo described the cuts as "slashing payments from everything from payments for nursing homes and hospitals, which are already operating on razor-thin margins, to SCHIP, which would include new eligibility caps for children with family incomes as low as 200 percent of the poverty line. Instead of investing in health-information technology, which would save significant resources in the long run, the president is cutting the muscle of two programs geared to America's neediest."
Daroff also identified the reduction of inflation adjustments for nursing facilities and home health providers.
"The federation system has long been recognized as providing excellent care both through home- and community-based services as well as in Jewish aging facilities," he said. Cuts "could result in millions of dollars of cuts to Jewish community providers across the nation."