Bill Shore: Statement on Federal Budget Cuts
Posted by Billy Shore on Wednesday, February 16, 2011
On Monday, President Obama released his much anticipated 2012 federal budget proposal. Most notable for those of us in the anti-hunger community, and weary of budget cuts that could potentially impact critical child nutrition programs, is that these programs will actually retain their current level of funding, with $7.9 billion for discretionary nutrition program support.
The President’s total federal budget is $3.73 trillion; with $145.6 billion of that dedicated to the USDA which funds key federal child nutrition programs such as WIC, SNAP and improvements within the recently passed Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.
The President calls for a $2.2 billion restoration of SNAP cuts that helped to fund the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act; budgets $25 million for state challenge grants; provides $10 million for school breakfast expansion grants; and funds WIC at a level that recognizes expected growth in the program.
Though the budget does reflect a 1.5% decrease from last year, we recognize that decrease is the result of difficult choices during a challenging economic climate. Budget cuts will certainly never be well received, but we commend the President for his decision to focus on continued investments in child nutrition programs and for his recognition in their expected growth levels and increased participation.
While nonprofits and community organizations can be expected to oppose such cuts, the real issue lies in whether nonprofits will have the vision and courage to go beyond merely opposing, and to proposing policy alternatives instead, while also diversifying their own revenues to reduce their dependence on such politically fragile funding.
The lives of too many Americans are so dependent on the health of the nonprofit sector that we can no longer allow budgets and the policies they represent to be something that just happen to us.
We need to build capacity to influence policy as surely as we need to build capacity to deliver the highest quality human services. This means making investments in research, staff, and advocacy that may not pay off until the long-term.
Nonprofits need to do more than wait for wealth to be redistributed in their direction, they need to create their own wealth, community wealth, that will go directly back into the communities they serve. This too requires specific actions: auditing assets, recasting the culture of an organization to embrace market forces, a more expansive vision of what’s possible, including nonprofits making profit.
Only when the nonprofit community can embrace such strategic actions that bring about long term solutions and real change, can we face another budget proposal without the fear that millions of American will be at risk of losing critical social services.
February 16, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: budget, food stamps, Obama, SNAP, white house, WIC
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