ASAN explains the budget request

Introduction: What is a budget request?

Every year, the President sends a budget request to congress. We’re going to explain here what the budget request is, and why it’s important.

Budgets are laws passed by congress. Budgets say what the government pays for over the next year.

A budget request is when the President tells Congress what they would like the budget to look like. The President’s budget request is a recommendation to Congress, not a law. 

Congress can decide whether or not to do what the President asks. Congress usually doesn’t do everything the President asks for. But Congress usually tries to do some of the things because the President asked.

What was released last Friday?

Last Friday the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a preview of the budget request. It is not the full budget request.

It doesn’t have everything in the budget request. It only shows what the President and OMB wanted to tell people about. It doesn’t go into all of what is in the budget.

The budget request preview wants to end a lot of programs that help people. It also wants to give other programs a lot less money or change how they work in very big ways.

It also wants to move a lot of programs around. It wants to put them in different parts of the government. We don’t have all the details. That means we don’t completely know how programs might change if they do all of these things at the same time.

Why is the budget request preview bad?

The budget request preview asks for huge cuts to many programs that people with disabilities need. The cuts are bad. They would make it harder to live in our communities. They would make it harder to get the supports we need to succeed and stay healthy in school, at home, at work and in our communities. The cuts would make it even harder for us to protect our rights.

Some of the things the budget request asks for are:

• Department of Education
  • Cutting funding to the Department of Education by 15%
  • Cutting funding to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) by 35%. The OCR is in charge of looking into schools that don’t give students their rights. Their job is to make sure the schools follow the law. OCR protects students’ rights.
    • Trump’s budget request says that OCR does not need as much money as before. It says that they shouldn’t be protecting groups that Trump does not like any more. 
  • Cutting Title I money. Title I is money used to help schools work. Title I gives more money to schools that have more students who are poor.  This helps make sure that everyone has a fair chance at a good education.
    • The budget says that the changes in money won’t change Title I. This is not true. The budget request says to take away ⅔ of the money in Title I. 
    • The budget also wants to turn this into a block grant. A block grant is a specific amount of money that the government gives to a state or program. Block grants tell states and programs less about how they need to spend the money. 
    • When government programs get turned into block grants, they always end up getting less money and helping fewer people. If Title I is a block grant, the government won’t make sure everyone has a fair chance at a good education any more.
  • Keeping funding for IDEA the same. IDEA is a group of programs that make sure that students with disabilities can get supports to have a fair education. The budget request says it will “simplify” IDEA by turning the programs into one program. It says it will let the states run this program instead of the federal government.
    • This might mean IDEA is also a block grant. This might mean that IDEA gets moved out of the Department of Education and to some other part of the government.  We can’t tell until there is more information.
  • Taking away a lot of programs that help students who don’t speak English, who move around a lot, or who need more education as adults. This will hurt poor students, children of immigrants, and disabled students.
  • Taking away programs to help train teachers, support preschool, and help end racial segregation. The administration says these programs are bad because they try to stop discrimination in ways the administration doesn’t like.
  • Taking away programs that make it easier for low-income students to go to college.
    
• Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
  • We talked earlier about the HHS cuts that the Administration is planning to do in the full budget.
  • The budget request cuts the HHS discretionary budget by nearly more than ¼. The discretionary budget is money the government can only spend when the budget is passed.
  • Cuts Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funding by almost half. They want to move some of the CDC’s work to other parts of the government. This is bad. The CDC has the experts on public health. Other parts of the government do not have those experts.
  • Reorganizes the National Institute of Health (NIH) to get rid of the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities. The administration says that research about the needs of minority groups who have worse health outcomes is bad because it is “DEI”. This includes research about people with disabilities.
    
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
  • Cuts $26.72 billion dollars from rental assistance. This is 43% of the entire rental assistance budget. 
  • Takes away rental assistance programs for helping elderly and disabled people stay in their communities and out of institutions (Section 202 and Section 811).
    • Would change these programs into a single block grant to the states.  This means less money helps people with low incomes and who are elderly or disabled keep housing. More of us will end up homeless or institutionalized.
  • Cuts assistance for people who are already homeless by $532 million dollars.
    
• Department of Justice
  • Big cuts to the Civil Rights Division (CRD). The CRD is responsible for making sure civil rights laws work against discrimination.
    • The administration has said that it doesn’t like how CRD enforced the law to protect voting rights or protect people from police violence.
  • Cuts funding to grants from the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to help people who experience domestic violence and abuse. The administration says they are cutting this funding because they think these programs should only be allowed to help cisgender women who are abused and nobody else. VAWA says the opposite, that VAWA protects everyone.

This is not everything in the budget request. There are more things that will be in the full budget request. We know that there are other programs that the Trump administration plans to destroy or remove.

What can you do about it?

There is action you can take. We can fight back against this budget proposal. We can help our community. 

Call your members of Congress and tell them to reject the budget proposal.

Here’s how:

• Find the number for your members of Congress here.
• Talk to your members of Congress. Tell them why this budget suggestion is bad. Tell them to reject it.
• If you need a script, you can use ours:

Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME]. I am a constituent of [the Senator or the Representative]. I would like to tell [the Senator or Representative] to reject Trump’s budget proposal. The proposal includes cuts or changes to many programs that disabled people rely on in the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and more. It’s important to me that we continue protecting the rights of disabled people. Thank you, and have a good day.

• Your phone call might get picked up by a staffer. Tell the staffer the same thing. They will pass it on to the member of Congress.

Need help knowing what to expect? We have a guide you can use.