Our own mayor, Vincent C. Gray, was the lead subject in a New York Times editorial today. The headline? “Budget Battles: The Price of Ill-Conceived Cuts.” The Gray Lady used Gray’s civil disobedience and arrest in protest of local spending restrictions placed on the District by Congress as a way to highlight the lack of outrage over other spending cuts in the federal budget compromise.
Here’s what the Times says: “It ushers in a denuded era of loss to vital government services, mostly at the expense of the most vulnerable.”
The Times was referring to the federal budget, but the commentary also applies to DC’s budget. If the editorial board of the New York Times examined Gray’s own spending plan for DC, they might be disappointed to find that their analysis of “ill-conceived cuts” applies to decisions Mayor Gray has made about the use of our own tax dollars.
Mayor Gray’s budget proposal contains close to $190 million in cuts, most of which would fall on human services and other low-income programs. Two out of every three dollars in cuts comes from human services, even though that part of the budget makes up only one out of every four dollars overall. This area of the budget has been hit hard during the last three years as numerous budget gap closings have relied heavily on cuts to these areas.
The Times editorial emphasized that many of the proposed cuts in the federal budget compromise will put our economic recovery in jeopardy. Many of the cuts proposed in Mayor Gray’s budget would do the same. They might have short-term savings but potential long-term costs and jeopardize our forward movement as well.
Take, for example, homeless services. Mayor Gray’s proposal cuts an additional $11 million from an area that is already so strained that the District stopped taking in new families with children at the DC General shelter as of April. What will happen to these families if they do not have a place to live? Will children have to go into foster care, which will cost the District as well? It’s also important to keep in mind that the costs of destabilizing a family cannot only be measured in dollars.
Or take the mayor’s proposal for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The proposed $8 million cut would reduce monthly cash assistance — which for most TANF families is expected to cover housing, transportation, clothing, and other basic needs — to just $257 per month for a family of three, affecting about 7,000 families. It is not clear how these families, many of whom face low literacy and other barriers to work, will manage to make ends meet.
The Times urges Gray’s fellow Democrats to realize that these cuts run counter to investments in education they fought for. We hope Mayor Gray and the DC Council will think about this as well.
