CHN’s Human Needs Watch: Tracking Hardship, July 12, 2024
July 12, 2024
The (mis)appropriations Edition. The House Appropriations Committee has now passed all 12 of its appropriations bills. The picture is not pretty, but most of them face an unclear future.
For human needs advocates, the battle over appropriations is mostly a fight over non-defense discretionary spending (NDD), which makes up about one-sixth of the federal budget. That might not seem like much. But it includes programs of vital importance to Americans. Think of housing assistance, child care, public education, nutrition assistance, scientific research, public health, law enforcement, environmental protections, home energy assistance, worker safety, and more.
Recently, more than 1,000 groups wrote leaders in Congress. They asked that NDD spending on these important programs not be cut. “Every state and congressional district benefits from NDD investments,” they wrote. “Denying NDD programs the increases needed to keep pace with rising costs and provide effective services is a penny-wise, pound-foolish way to address the challenges facing our country.”
Some in the House, in particular, don’t see it that way. They’ve outright cut many vital programs – others, they’ve failed to adequately fund to keep up with inflation. They’ve attached poison pill policy riders they hope will score political points – harming immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, and workers, for example. The Senate is beginning its appropriations work with more funding than the House and likely agreements to reject many poison pill riders.
CHN and its member groups will press to prevent the House’s cuts and harmful riders.
-$122 billion
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By September, public K-12 schools in the U.S. will have lost a total of $122 billion in extra funds allocated during the pandemic. This comes as the gap in school achievement has widened between students in rich versus poor school districts as compared to before the pandemic. Students in rich and poor districts both suffered math score losses since 2019, but the richer students made up more of the losses than did the poorer students. Tweet this.
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-$8.6 billion/ -$4.7 billion
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The Labor, HHS, and Education spending bill approved by the House Appropriations this week cuts education spending by $8.6 billion below current levels. This includes $4.7 billion in cuts to Title 1 K-12 funding in low-income school districts. Tweet this.
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7.9%/ $719
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The cost of keeping cool this summer is expected to increase an average of 7.9% per household across the U.S. — from $661 this same time last year to $719 from June through September this year. That’s according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate. Tweet this.
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-$2 billion
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Congress cut funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) from $6.1 billion in FY 2023 to $4.025 billion in FY 2024 – a cut of $2 billion. The House Appropriations Committee would increase funding only slightly, to $4.04 billion. Tweet this.
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-$4.4 billion/ 4.3%
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House Republicans voted in committee this week to cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development by $4.4 billion, or 4.3% from current levels. Cuts include a 60% decrease in funds for new affordable rental and home ownership housing construction. And they include a cut of $600 million, or 7%, for public housing, which would result in tens of thousands of evictions as well as curtailing lead abatement efforts. Tweet this.
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-2%
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House Republicans have proposed cutting funding for the U.S. Census by 2% — from its current level of $1.382 billion to $1.354 billion. What’s worse, the legislation contains language that would, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, forbid the counting of noncitizens for the purposes of political reapportionment.
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-$2.35 billion
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House Republicans have proposed cutting $2.35 billion from the IRS — $2 billion from enforcement, which allows the agency to pursue wealthy tax cheats, and $350 million from overhead, which enables the IRS to improve customer service and run more smoothly than it has in the past. The legislation also would eliminate the popular Direct File project, which allows some taxpayers to file quickly, easily, and for free.
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-$3 billion/ 22%
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The House Appropriations Committee this week voted to cut the Department of Labor’s budget by $3 billion, or 22% below current levels. The cuts include totally eliminating a youth job training program funded this year at nearly $1 billion and a decrease of $193 million for worker protection agencies, including the Wage and Hour Division, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Office of Solicitor.
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Nearly $30 billion |
More than 1,400 groups this week asked Congress to protect and strengthen SNAP as part of the Farm Bill. A Farm Bill passed by the Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee would cut SNAP by nearly $30 billion over 10 years. |
11%
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This past May, more than 24 million people, or 11%, reported that their households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the previous week, according to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey. For Hispanics and Blacks, the numbers were strikingly worse – 16% and 18.5%, respectively. Fully 10.4 million people with children, or one in seven, reported sometimes or often not having enough to eat in the same time period.
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