Posts About State Budgets

The Cost of Doing Nothing

· Alex Citrin

Why is child welfare finance reform so important? Because we want federal financing to reinforce good practice and provide incentives to ensure that children and youth grow up in safe, stable and loving families.

Currently, there are numerous prevention programs and evidence-based practice models being implemented across the country to keep children safe and families together. As a result, fewer children and youth are entering foster care. Consequently, as fewer children and youth enter foster care, states receive less federal funding to support child welfare practices.

In order to encourage healthy development for children and youth, it is essential to support and fund efforts to keep families together and reunite them quickly and safely when children do enter foster care. To achieve these results, federal financing must support the services and best practices that have a positive impact on children, youth and their families. Reforming federal financing to provide dollars for prevention and post-permanency services will incentivize child welfare systems to implement best practices that support the healthy development and well-being of children and youth.

A new infographic from The Annie E. Casey Foundation highlights the decrease in two key federal funding sources, Title IV-E and Title IV-B, over the last decade and provides projections for the funding decreases if federal financing does not change. The Cost of Doing Nothing will result in this projected decrease in federal financing for children, youth and families in need of supports and services to live in safe, stable and loving families.  

  

Posted In: Youth, Early Childhood, Federal Budget, State Budgets

The Impact of the Government Shutdown on Children and Families

· Natasya Gandana

While the government shutdown is well into its second week, it is important to keep in mind the devastating consequences that are continuing to impact the most vulnerable children and families. Though programs that directly ensure public health and safety have avoided the spending freeze, including Medicaid and Social Security, most of the programs that are affected are still vital supports and services that help sustain young women and children, low-income families, and the elderly.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which provides temporary financial assistance to help pregnant women and families pay for food, shelter, utilities, and expenses other than medical costs, has stopped awarding new funds, however states have the option to continue providing benefits with state dollars. Since TANF provides significant services in addition to cash assistance, such as GED preparation, vocational training, postsecondary education, vocational rehabilitation, help with child care, work stipends, job retention services and more, discontinuing the program during the shut-down – particularly if it continues for much longer - would be a devastating for families in need.

Head Start programs will also be affected by the shutdown—a total of 23 programs serving 19,000 children will be affected as their grants begin to expire. Those cuts are in addition to the 57,000 children pushed of Head Start as a result of the sequester, on top of a $400 million mandatory cut to the program nationwide. The longer the shutdown continues, the more Head Start programs and young children will be adversely impacted. 

Implications of the government shutdown to nutrition programs are equally alarming. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps over 47 million low-income Americans, will continue providing benefits, but only until the end of October. States have the option of continuing the SNAP program through 2014, but the $2 billion available for contingency funds that would be used to compensate the loss of funding would not be enough to support the program in the long-term, since SNAP provides about $6 billion in support to families per month.

The Special, Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which assists over 9 million at-risk mothers, infants, and young children in accessing healthy food, nutrition information, and health referrals, will also continue until the end of October. Like SNAP, most states have funds to continue WIC for a week or so, but the program won’t be able to continue for very long, with emergency funds running out by the end of the month.

The impact on supplemental nutrition programs is also impacting the elderly. Senior Nutrition Programs have stopped as a result of the shutdown. The Department of Health and Human Services can no longer fund Meals on Wheels, which provides more than one million home-delivered meals to seniors who need them each day. This crucial service has also been impacted by the sequester, which is discussed in this previous post.

The government shutdown is risking the basic supports and services low-income families need to survive. Although there are emergency funds to continue certain programs in the meantime, the long-term consequences will be harmful and widespread. State policymakers should use their discretion to continue the programs that can provide supports and services to vulnerable families; however, the only sustainable solution is for the government to go back to work in serving children and their families as soon as possible to minimize the impact.

Posted In: Federal Budget, Poverty and Economic Stability, State Budgets

The Ongoing Impacts of the Sequester on Communities

· Andrea Barnes

The government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester took effect on March 1, forcing $85 billion in federal budget reductions by the end of September. As we previously described, these cuts, which only affect discretionary programs (i.e. programs for which Congress must annually appropriate dollars) have reduced the budgets of the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Justice and Labor, among others. As the months have progressed we are increasingly seeing how these cuts at the federal level trickle down to impact states and communities, causing multitudes of reductions in services and programming.

A map from the Center for American Progress shows how the sequester is impacting states, including Head Start programs, public schools, housing assistance, tribal programs and programs for seniors. These stories from across the nation reveal just how much states and local governments depend on federal funds to maintain their levels of service. Head Start programs have been forced to develop longer waiting lists, cut children from the program, eliminate or reduce transportation for children to centers, and lay off staff. Some school districts have been forced to sell offices, reduce teacher personal days, lay off teachers and support staff, and eliminate arts, music and physical education programs. The consequence of these moves are larger classroom sizes and a lower quality of education. The sequester is also causing longer waiting lists for housing choice vouchers, and in some places leading to vouchers being taken back and current voucher holders being reverted to a waiting list if they have not yet secured a lease with a landlord.
 
Funds for tribal programs have also faced extreme cuts, including 21 percent cuts in tribal housing grants; a 23 percent cut to Native job training; and a 35 percent cut to Energy Assistance. The sequester is being felt much heavier in tribal lands because unlike states, tribes cannot levy property taxes on lands held in trust, or gain significant revenues from income taxes, given the chronically low incomes of most residents on Indian reservations. Although the federal government pays about 10 percent of the budget for a typical U.S. public school district; on federal lands, it contributes as much as 60 percent. This can translate to the reduction or elimination of education programs and services, including the elimination of summer school, vocational training for high school youth, and can lead to the inability to fill vacant teacher and support staff positions (such as school guidance counselors and mental health counselors). The effects of cuts for mental health programs in tribal schools can have devastating consequences for tribal communities because research shows that Native American children and youth have disproportionately high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.
 
The across-the-board cuts of the sequester are reducing services for people who immediately need them, but they also have long-term fiscal consequences.  For example, states have had to roll back on theMeals on Wheels program, reducing the number of visits seniors receive, and creating a waiting list for seniors in need of delivered meals.  This is a crucial service that enables seniors to remain in their homes. Not only does the delivery of meals provide nutrition assistance to seniors, but it serves as a check-up and social interaction for those who live by themselves and are sometimes otherwise socially isolated. Cutting these services actually costs taxpayers more money in the long term, because a tax dollar spent providing support services to someone at home can prevent having to spend many more tax dollars on providing full-time care to the same person in a nursing home or an assisted-living facility.
 
To deal with these, and likely future cuts to the federal budget, states will need to focus on policies that maximize their use of federal funds and intelligently and efficiently prioritize their own funds.  To make the best use of funds during tough fiscal times, it becomes increasingly important to budget using a results-based public policy framework. First, states should set priorities for budget decisions by engaging stakeholders and focusing on measurable results.
 
State and local policymakers are being forced to do more with less, and innovative strategies are needed to make this happen. Facing the current fiscal year of sequestration as well as other budget cuts, it will be ever more important for policymakers to support policies that maximize federal dollars, maximize return on investment and generate savings to invest in what works. This includes maximizing funds for theSupplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, utilizing the Food Stamp Employment and Training Program, taking advantage of the flexibility of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds to target priority areas, and ensure that families are aware of the benefits of filing for federal tax credits.    
 
 
Posted In: Federal Budget, State Budgets, Community Change

The Sequester Goes Into Effect: Bad News for Low-Income Families

· Andrea Barnes
Recently Congress passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through the remainder of fiscal year 2013, but unfortunately the sequester was not eliminated. Because the sequester contained $1.7 trillion over 10 years in across-the-board cuts to non-defense discretionary programs, all areas impacting children and families will be affected: education, health care, juvenile justice, child welfare and social services just to name a few.
 
Federal agencies have already implemented the scheduled cuts. Head Start and child care programs havecut their 2013 budgets by about 5 percent by reducing the number of children served, cutting back schedules, and making many other difficult choices. Official reports about sequestration outline a $115 million cut to the Child Care and Development Block (CCDBG) which funds child care subsidies, along with a $400 million reduction for Head Start. Estimates show that this will translate into 30,000 fewer children being served by the child care subsidy program and 70,000 fewer children being served through Head Start.
 
$1.7 billion in cuts over one year to four programs serving children with disabilities and their families will result in: 1,163,607 children with special health care needs would not receive care; 63,000 adults and children with disabilities and elderly individuals would lose their housing vouchers; 7,400 special education teachers, aids, and other staff serving children with disabilities will be laid off; and 75,000 persons with disabilities would lose vocational rehabilitation services for employment.
 
In 2012, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) released an analysis that demonstrated the consequences of the sequester for children if the cuts had gone into effect on January 2, 2026 as originally intended. Although the cuts were implemented in March, the numbers of children adversely affected will not be much lower:
  • $270,790,425 less funding available for heating and cooling assistance through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).  Nearly half of the families receiving LIHEAP assistance have at least one child.
  • Title I grants (for low-performing schools) will serve 1.8 million fewer students.
  • 26,949 fewer children will be served by early intervention special education grants.
  • 1,133,981 fewer students will be served by grants for career and technical education.
  • 51,577 fewer students will receive financial aid through the Federal Work Study program.
  • 18,611 fewer youth will be served by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which provides training services to underemployed adults, and youth who have dropped out of high school and want to go back to school or enter the labor market.
  • 4,350 fewer youth will receive education and training from Job Corps, which targets economically at-risk youth.
In light of the federal government’s final FY2013 budget, states will have important decisions to make regarding their spending for programs and services. Cutting children from the budget now will cost us later. Eliminating early education investments now would increase a child’s chances of going to prison later by up to 39 percent. And paying for that prison will cost us nearly three times more a year than it would have cost to provide him with a quality early learning experience.  Making investments in children, their families and communities, is exactly that – an investment- and not making those investments now will be costly for all of us moving forward.
 
For policies aimed to balance state budgets while protecting public well-being, see the Policy for Results page on Strategies for Tough Fiscal Times.
Posted In: Federal Budget, State Budgets