The big squeeze

BY PAUL BROWN

Kids and grandmas love hugs. But the big squeeze low-income kids and seniors will get from the proposed federal budget cuts -- that total nearly $500 million over five years in Nevada -- is anything but lovable.

President Bush and Congress say the cuts are necessary to reduce the federal budget deficit. If they really want to cut the deficit, they should rescind the enormous tax breaks they showered on the wealthy. Those tax breaks are the main reason we went from budget surpluses to mega-deficits.

Unbelievably, they want to make the tax breaks permanent at a cost of nearly $2 trillion.

They want to pay for these gifts to the wealthiest of the wealthy by cutting essential programs to the poorest of the poor. Can they get any more callous or greedy?

Nationally, Bush and Congress aim to cut essential programs by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years. And that includes huge cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care for seniors, the disabled and low-income families. More than two-thirds of seniors in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid. These cuts will hurt our frail grandparents.

Nevada stands to lose at least $166 million in Medicaid funding over 10 years, in addition to the nearly $500 million above (perhaps twice that amount, if the extremists in Congress get their way). Since these cuts are occurring at the same time that our population is exploding (and that includes our Medicaid population), Nevadans will suffer more than people in other states.

We are already hurting -- Nevada ranks 51st in per capita Medicaid spending.

I never thought we could do worse than last place. But at the rate we're going, Third World countries may end up with better programs for their sick and poor than we have in Nevada.

Nevada already has one of the highest rates of uninsured kids in the nation, yet the feds want to cut the Medicaid budget that provides health insurance to our poor children. When kids get sick without insurance they end up at UMC's emergency room. This is an expensive way to provide health care and it shifts costs from the federal government to local governments.

And that's what these federal cuts are all about: cost-shifting from the federal government to state and local governments. That's why a bipartisan group of governors has come out against the proposed federal cuts.

In addition to the Medicaid cuts, the feds wants to slash Nevada's education, food stamps, Head Start and other vital programs by at least $432 million. Nevada's social safety net programs are already poorly funded. We rank 49th in per capita public welfare expenditures. These cuts are on the chopping block, even though the number of Americans living in poverty went up for the third straight year in 2003.

Some ultra-conservatives consider the federal government a beast. By cutting taxes, they want to starve the beast. In reality, we're not eviscerating some mythical beast -- but we will be starving the sick, poor children and low-income seniors.

Do we really consider kids and grandparents beasts?

PAUL R. BROWN IS THE SOUTHERN NEVADA DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE OF NEVADA.