Blog: State-By-State: House Republican Budget Bill Would Harm Students, Workers, Health Care, and the Economy

Statement

By Shaun Donovan

Congressional Republicans have started to show how they plan to budget at discretionary levels that are the lowest in a decade, adjusted for inflation. House Republicans are proposing to shortchange students, workers, our nation's health, and the economy by cutting overall funding for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services by roughly $15 billion, or 9 percent, compared to the President's Budget. Through a combination of funding cuts and ideologically-motivated provisions, the Republican bill being marked up in full committee in the House today would, for example, leave millions of Americans without health insurance, reduce access to early education, make college students more vulnerable to poorly performing career colleges, and jeopardize worker rights and safety.

The deep cuts in the Republican bill are a direct result of their decision to lock in funding cuts imposed by sequestration. Sequestration was never intended to take effect: rather, it was supposed to threaten such drastic cuts to both defense and non-defense funding that policymakers would be motivated to come to the table and reduce the deficit through smart, balanced reforms. The President's Budget would reverse these cuts going forward, replacing the savings with commonsense spending and tax reforms in order to make investments important to families, the economy, and our national security. Unfortunately, the bills and appropriations targets released to date double-down on a very different approach.

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