Cuts in the Senate Budget Proposal
The Senate Budget proposal released Tuesday makes significant cuts to our health, education and environmental infrastructure. On total, the Senate makes $838 million in cuts. These cuts come on top of the $3.6 billion eliminated last year. Last year's cuts will result in thousands of Washingtonians finding higher education unaffordable, tens of thousands of working families losing their health insurance and larger class sizes for kids in our public schools.
As previously mentioned, new revenues (including last year's modest revenue package and the revenue actions proposed in the Senate's budget) would account for only 10 percent of two years of budget-balancing actions. Painful cuts in core services would make up the dominant share (37 percent) of actions taken to balance the state budget from FY2009-11.
The Senate Budget would:
- Eliminate grants ($11 million) that allow community health centers to provide health care to uninsured Washingtonians;
- Reduce financial assistance to lower income families struggling to make ends meet;
- Cut food assistance levels to lower income families;
- Reduce dental rates and services for adults and children;
- Cut funding for hospitals that serve a significantly disproportionate number of low-income patients;
- Reduce investments in higher education would be sharply;
- Suspend voter-approved efforts to reduce class sizes in early grades and improve student achievement;
- Sharply curtail temporary financial and medical assistance through GA-U for people who are unable to work due to disability;
- Further reduce mental health care funding for low-income residents;
- Eliminate assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing, eating, and dressing for many Washingtonians with long-term care needs;
- Cut programs that protect our air and water and clean up toxic spills; and
- Do nothing for the 93,000 (and growing) working Washingtonians on the waiting list for Basic Health.
