Posted on 01/13/2006 8:45:20 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) - A $40 billion budget-cutting bill nearing final House passage would badly hurt welfare and children's services programs in California, according to an analysis Friday by a group that advocates for low-income people.
Among the bill's costs to California, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington:
-$2 billion over the next five years to comply with new welfare rules requiring many more recipients to participate in work training and other programs.
-$1 billion in child support payments that would go uncollected over the next five years because of cuts in funding for child support enforcement.
-$270 million over five years in lost federal foster care money.
"The federal bill is a combination of cuts and what we believe are unfunded mandates, and it's the unfunded mandates that may generate the biggest cuts to the states," Bruce Fuller, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said on a conference call with Center for Law and Social Policy officials.
Among the biggest unfunded mandate: the new rules requiring higher levels of participation in work programs by welfare recipients would require single or married parents from an additional 60,700 families to participate, but provide only $3 per day for them to find child care funding, Fuller said.
The five-year budget bill was written by majority Republicans and touted by them as necessary to install fiscal discipline in Washington. When an earlier but nearly identical version passed the House last month, the California delegation split along party lines, with Democrats supporting the bill and Republicans opposing it.
"The budget reconciliation bill makes necessary adjustments to the growth of vital government programs serving the truly needy, without negatively impacting essential services provided to the most vulnerable members of our society," said Jo Maney, spokeswoman for California Republican caucus head Rep. David Dreier. "Fiscal responsibility is key to the long term viability of these critical programs."
The Center for Law and Social Policy study focused on welfare and children's programs, which make up just part of the bill. The bill also achieves budget savings through cuts in student loan programs, fee and premium increases for pensions, delaying advance subsidy payments to farmers, and other changes.
It's not clear what the total cost of the bill is to California, though it's in the billions. Center for Law and Social Policy officials called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pressure California's Republican House members to oppose the bill, which is expected to pass the House when it comes to a vote around Feb. 1.
The Schwarzenegger administration hasn't taken a position for or against the bill.
"A bill of this size and magnitude is going to have a number of different effects," H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger's finance department, said Friday.
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The bill is S.1932
California is doomed. We threw Davis to the dumps, and we got Arnold, who is delivering the same failed policies. I would rather cut my dick off than contribute to the California GOP and Arnold. They can suck my ass.
That may just happen any minute now.
'Tis a cruel world.
So by asking them to work and not paying for their babysitter we are creating an unfunded mandate ?
Why don't they use some of that money that they earned from working to pay for their sitter ?
Possible the same issue as Pittsburgh: Republicans don't fall from the Democratic run machine....
Sheesh (...and I'd lol if there weren't so many alleged Americans who **do** believe that coercing the taxpayer to pay their assorted incidental expenses is absolutely a Constitutional right.)
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