Domestic programs gird for sequester - Seung Min Kim - POLITICO.com
So I’ve been trying to find some good stories on what will get hit if/when we go over the “fiscal cliff” because, well, unemployment and the payroll tax cut are things people know about, but cuts like these are liable to get lost in the shuffle, never restored unless someone screams about them. Or more importantly, lots and lots of someones.
This is what “cutting government spending” really looks like—it comes off the backs of children, the sick, those using drugs, the working poor and the unemployed.
As Dean Baker noted this morning, this isn’t a “fiscal” crisis at all, it’s an austerity bomb.
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Markey obtained one of the early detailed answers from the Obama administration about the budget pain of the automatic cuts — formally called a sequester — in a letter released last week from the Department of Health and Human Services. Among those cuts: the elimination of 2,300 National Institutes of Health research grants; nearly 100,000 children losing Head Start services; and no more child care assistance for 80,000 kids. Not to mention 12,150 fewer patients with access to AIDS Drug Assistance Program benefits and 169,000 people who would not get access to substance-abuse treatment programs. But concerns over the Pentagon cuts have dominated the conversation in Washington — the defense industry is blitzing the town with news conferences, advertisements and layoff warnings — and that’s left liberals such as Markey frustrated that social welfare programs aren’t getting the same attention.
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