House Republicans Budget Likely Means Cuts to Education

This week, the Chairman of the Budget Committee in the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan (R-WI), released the House Republican’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2013 – A Path to Prosperity.  In general, this budget proposes to spend 33% less than the President’s budget on the areas of education, training, employment and social services and make major changes to Medicaid.  While many details must still be clarified, CEC is concerned with what this budget would mean for education.

The material released by the Chairman does not provide specific details on spending cuts to education and other domestic programs, but the proposal does state it will reduce the amount of discretionary spending (including education) by $19 billion from a total level that both the House and Senate agreed on last summer in the Budget Control Act.  In addition, the proposal seeks to reduce spending for important health and education programs, known as Function 500 programs, by $9.5 billion.

The proposal attempts to address the issue of the year, sequestration or automatic cuts. This 9.1% across the board cut will apply to every program in the Department of Education and will begin on January 1, 2013. CEC will be joining with several other groups throughout this year to oppose sequestration and urge Congress to find a better way to reduce the deficit. Chairman Ryan’s proposal would replace the first year of automatic cuts with cuts to mandatory-funded domestic programs, not including education. However, it leaves in place the more than $1 trillion of sequestration cuts that will occur to education programs in FY 14 - FY 21.

Overall, while CEC was not pleased to see the President’s request for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in his budget proposal, essentially level funding, we support the President’s commitment to making education a priority. Unfortunately, if the Path to Prosperity is enacted we have grave concerns about the future of funding for any education program. 

One bright note, was a letter sent by the Chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, John Kline (R-MN) in which he urged members of the Appropriations Committees to fully fund IDEA. Read CEC’s letter thanking him for his commitment to funding IDEA here.

Comments

[William Bushlow]

The question we should ask the supporters of the Path to Prosperity is "whose prosperity?" Not mine, not my students and most definitely not education. I have read so many newspaper articles about severe cuts to education yet I see so few letters to the editor - it makes me wonder do parents care. Where is the hue and cry. We have elections coming up and I couldn't tell you which, if any, candidate wholeheartedly supports schools and education,opposes budget cuts and is willing to stand in front of the American public and say so (and mean it). Thanks CEC for standing up for our students.

[Deborah Galy-Veldman]

How many more cuts can our schools endure? We want to provide our children the best education possible yet we continue to undercut their futures by cutting funding. How many of our legislators have children that attend public schools where the cuts keep getting deeper by the day? Now we are looking at cutting funding to those that often can't and won't advocate for themselves. Those with special needs. How very sad that our society has come to this.

I will simple say this: I do not want to see another news story or article about Congress investigating professional athletes or sports...dumping millions into who lied about taking steroids while we are looking at cutting education and other vital programs.

[Leslie Miles]

Our scholars deserve more than the cuts that the chairman is going to propose. If we look forward for a better future then, cutting cost to education is not the best way to propose. It's not to late to take actions.