DSA is a part of the
Coalition on Human Needs. ( See list at end of post). We ask that each of
you contact your Senators and Congress people to preserve essential human
needs from Republican budget cuts. Sample letter below. Do not allow the Corporate CEO's who
are funding the Fix the Debt campaign to cut the budgets for poor and working
people.
1. NO tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans.
2. NO benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or
Medicaid.
SAVE
for All
Strengthening America’s Values and Economy for All
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear (Representative
or Senator):
Last year,
organizations from across the country came together to endorse basic principles
to address America’s short- and long-term economic and budgetary problems. These
are the imperatives of Strengthening America’s Values and Economy (SAVE) for
All: to protect low-income and vulnerable people; promote job creation to
strengthen the economy; increase revenues from fair sources; and seek
responsible savings by targeting wasteful spending in the Pentagon and in other
areas that do not serve the public interest.
We call on you to
follow these principles as you face budgetary decisions of immediate and
long-lasting national consequence. To achieve sustained growth, fiscal stability,
and economic security for all our people we must invest in job creation, ensure
that job seekers have the opportunity to work, and protect vulnerable people
from hardship. We cannot promote the common good by cutting more and more
services and jobs. But we can meet our nation’s needs responsibly by ending tax
reductions benefiting the wealthiest two percent and by seeking savings that do
not compromise human or military security.
Putting the most
vulnerable people at risk is the wrong response to our nation’s fiscal
situation. Automatic cuts to domestic programs that are scheduled to take
effect in January 2013 under the sequestration provisions of the Budget Control
Act will inflict devastating harm. Estimated conservatively, a year of
sequestration cuts1
will deny WIC nutrition aid to 750,000 mothers and young children,
prevent more than 413,000 adults and youth from getting job training and deny
education and training to more than 51,000 veterans, eliminate reading and math
help to more than 1.8 million low-income public school children, deny child
care to the low- to moderate-income families of 80,000 children, stop nearly
34,000 women from being screened for breast and cervical cancer, prevent nearly
27,000 infants and toddlers from benefiting from special education early
intervention services, force 185,000 households to lose rental assistance
vouchers, and stop 734,000 households from receiving home heating and cooling
aid. These are only a few examples of the impact of the scheduled cuts. They threaten
children’s healthy development, deny security to seniors, throw roadblocks in
the way of a competitive labor force, and allow preventable disabilities to
hold back our children.
These and other cuts
have steep costs, among them hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, lagging
productivity, and escalating medical expenditures in the years to come. Coming
on top of cuts written into law through FY 2021 they will drop domestic and
non-military international appropriations to their lowest levels in 50 years as
a share of the economy. Allowing such a wholesale abandonment of investments in
education, preventive health, housing, public infrastructure, and nutrition is
an affront both to conscience and to common sense. We urge
you to avert these sequestration cuts.
