As the Senate quarrels over President George Bush’s proposed budget, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has spoken for Massachusetts against the various cuts and losses the budget would provoke.
The budget Bush is attempting to pass will be a close call, with nearly all 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats in the Senate predicted to vote along party lines, according to Kennedy press secretary Jim Manley.
Kennedy, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, strongly opposes the bill for many reasons disclosed in a written statement March 30.
“Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as a free $2 trillion tax cut,” Kennedy said.
Although Kennedy supports a “substantial tax cut,” he has claimed to be against one that “is so large that it crowds out continued debt reduction and investment in national priorities like education, health care and worker training and protection.”
“I do not support President Bush’s tax cut because it jeopardizes Medicare and Social Security,” he explained.
In a study that was delivered to the Senate floor, Kennedy addressed various issues involved with the budget, including the massive interest the proposed tax cut would create, a low emergency spending budget, cuts in education although standards have been elevated, reduced funding job training associated with the recession, a stagnation of the number of low-income families without health insurance and miscalculations of actual costs of plans, such as creating a missile defense system.
The envisioned 7 percent cut to all unprotected programs would cut the number of meals delivered to ill and disabled seniors, nutrition supplements for hundreds of thousands of babies, treatment of mental illness and substance abuse, the number of Superfund toxic waste sites cleaned and the number of air traffic controllers.
“Analysis of the administration’s own budget numbers establishes that the president’s $2-trillion tax cut is not affordable. It will lead to devastating cuts. … It will break the promises that have been made to today’s seniors under Social Security and Medicare. It will return America to the age of deficits,” the report said.
Like Kennedy, Massachusetts Democratic representatives do not support the budget, which passed the House of Representatives last week. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), as member of the House Budget Committee, said the budget would cut programs such as the Community Oriented Policing Services, which reduced national crime by 13.6 percent from 1990-98. He also said the budget “cuts almost every single housing project we have.”
A final vote in the Senate should take place by the end of this week.
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