Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor by Amy Goodman

Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor
By Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.
February 15, 2011

(Paragraph #1) President Barack Obama unleashed his proposed 2012 budget this week, pronouncing, proudly: “I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending—domestic discretionary spending—to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.”

(Paragraph #2 Focus on the word “freeze.” That is exactly what many people might do, if this budget passes as proposed. While defense spending increases, with the largest Pentagon funding request since World War II, the budget calls for cutting in half a program called Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.

(Paragraph #3 LIHEAP offers block grants to states so they can offer financial assistance to low-income households in order to meet home energy needs, mostly for heating. Most of its recipients are the elderly and disabled. The program is currently funded at more than $5 billion. Obama is calling for that to be slashed to $2.57 billion—roughly half. This life-or-death program, which literally can help prevent people from freezing to death, represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the proposed $3.7 trillion annual budget.

Paragraph #4 Compare this with the proposed military budget. “Defense spending” is a misnomer. Until 1947-48, the Pentagon was officially, and appropriately, called the War Department. In the proposed budget released on Valentine’s Day, the Department of Defense request is $553 billion for the base budget, an increase of $22 billion above the 2010 appropriation. The White House has touted what it calls “$78 billion” in cuts that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering. But as the Institute for Policy Studies notes: “The Defense Department talks about cutting its own budget—$78 billion over five years—and most reporting takes this at face value. It shouldn’t. The Pentagon is following the familiar tradition of planning ambitious increases, paring them back and calling this a cut.”

Read the full article at:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_budget_freezing_the_poor_20110215/

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Better Believe It

Even with a $3B cut, it's still nearly DOUBLE what it was during the Bush years.

This should be mentioned every time people try to milk this story.

Is it because there is way too much ridiculousness in the Republican Budget that the msm cannot push one issue as hard as the LIHEAP issue is being pushed? From what I've read the Republican Budget is riddled with cuts that will affect everybody including the lowest wage earners.

http://liheap.org/fact_sheets.html

Click on states and see the increases in number of households using LIHEAP since 2008. Take note of how many more households are eligible than are receiving it.

You must be comfortable. No one who's worried about where their next meal is coming from would defend austerity measures against the poor.

And although I can pay the heating bill now, there were many years when we were younger (and lived in extremely cold places) where we had to cut way back on food to pay that bill.

But most important, I don't recall seeing 10,000 posts on this board during the Bush years, when funding for this program was far smaller. Where was the concern then? All I am saying is that when you consider this proposed cut, you are remiss if you don't measure it against the huge increases it received during the last two years and the fact that it will still be far higher than it ever was before.

Furthermore, did you look at that link and take note of how many more people need the assistance now than just a few years ago?

Just because it is being reduced after being increased, doesn't mean it isn't being reduced.

Plus, there are far more people that rely on LIHEAP than did before.

"It will be still far higher than it was before"...cold comfort for those that get cut, maybe the thought that Obama didn't cut the programme entirely will keep them warm next winter...

http://costofwar.com/en/

:hi:

That's bullshit and you know it.

Obama is REDUCING the amount of money being budgeted for LIHEAP. Period. To say otherwise is at a minimum intellectually dishonest, and at worst a flat-out lie...

:eyes:

Even if said politician is super likable.

likable at all.

help has risen significantly, along with apps for food stamps, which cancels out the benefit of the original increase.

:hi:

http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/02/the-obama-budget-truth-or-dare/#more-21556

Really, you can go with easy slogans, or you can try to understand the complexity of these matters. You can choose to say more poor people will be freezing, but when you get down into the actual budget lines, you see that they are trying to make a savings here by cutting what has become a subsidy to energy companies. This isn't the end-all of this matter, but I resent the implication in this thread that facts and details don't matter. They ALWAYS matter.

is the suffering the gov continues to inflict on anyone BUT the wealthy.

Sorry frazzled, didn't mean to frazzle you. :hi:

That energy prices have gone down commensurate with the level that LIHEAP is being cut. Members of Congress and advocates for the poor claim that many people are going to lose their assistance because of these cuts and they will endanger some of our most vulnerable citizens. As it is there are many more people eligible for LIHEAP than recieve it and the number has grown substantially since 2008. These cuts are political posturing at the expense of poor people.

maybe 25% of the households that qualify for aid. The qualification is different for each state. Mine is you need to live at 185% BELOW THE POVERTY LEVEL.

So keep talking about how great it is that we are now going to cut even more families from the ranks because it's still more money than during the Bush administration. It's not like there was anywhere else in the budget that could have been reasonably cut or maybe taxes added to cover these people, most of who are elderly. It's not like there was a choice of things to cut. Or a tax break for people who don't need it. Nothing like that, I mean if that were the case we might look like our priorities are really fucked up.

Since cuts to services to the poor invariably end up being penny wise and pound foolish. Every dollar of aid to the poor returns $1.70 or so back to the economy. So taking it away could have the reverse effect. This is pure political posturing.

the help that LIHEAP provides. Cutting aid when more people need aid is wrong no matter you try to justify it. Instead of cutting programs that aid the poor and the middle class such as LIHEAP and Pell grants we should be getting the hell out of Iraq, Afghanistan and any other country around the world we have our solders. We should be looking at cutting the military budget by at least $100 billion. Also the Bush tax cuts should have expired.

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Good bye!

You haven't "debunked" shit. Put up.

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Better Believe It

Better believe that!

:)

hearing distance!