The cuts to jobs, health care and education proposed by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives this week are a foretaste of what would happen to federal agencies during a second Trump term, a key Democrat in the House of Representatives said Tuesday.
Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told reporters on Tuesday that the major spending cuts in the Financial year 2025 The proposal to fund the Ministries of Labour, Health and Social Affairs and Education would have a significant impact on workers, families and students.
The bill would cut the Department of Labor’s budget by 22%, the Department of Health’s budget by 6%, and the Department of Education’s budget by 14%.
DeLauro referred Project 2025the conservative policy blueprint for a possible second Trump presidency, and said Republicans were already trying to implement the policy through spending legislation.
“As the Budget Committee (Democrats), we will look at Project 2025 and the budget legislation and look at what they are already trying to advance through the budget process,” she said at a news conference Tuesday.
She also pointed to the inability of Republican leaders to pass spending legislation and pointed to the narrowly avoided government switch off in September and a Voting failed on the Legislature’s spending bill this month.
“They can’t govern,” she said. “This is chaos.”
Republican Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama, who chairs the Committee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, called the proposed budget cuts “common-sense reforms” that would “ultimately save taxpayers’ money,” in a Press release earlier this month after the House Budget Committee approved the bill.
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma said in a opinion that the law would protect Americans from President Joe Biden’s policies, which are overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans in Congress.
“Importantly, the bill curbs the Biden administration’s burdensome overreach and divisive political agenda,” Cole said.
Massive cuts at Labour
The law provides for significant cuts in federal funding for work programs. It would reduce the Department of Labor’s budget increased by $3 billion from current levels.
Fred Redmond, treasurer of the national trade union federation AFL-CIO, pointed to the cut of $900 million for job training programs for juvenile people. This would mean a program being cut “at the very moment when young people are looking for good, stable jobs.”
He also criticized Republicans for promoting a pro-worker stance at the Republican National Convention last week.
“We know that was all just talk,” he said. “That’s the platform. No matter how many different ways they’ve tried to embellish it in Milwaukee, that’s what they want to do.”
The bill would cut funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for enforcing workplace safety regulations, by nearly 12 percent. If passed, OSHA would receive $75 million less than it receives in the current fiscal year.
Targeted financing of reproductive health
Speakers at DeLauro’s event also highlighted the bill’s impact on health care, particularly reproductive care.
Kimberly Diaz Scott, vice president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, an advocacy group for family planning providers, said the funding bills are “a long list of attempts” to take away Americans’ access to reproductive health care.
The bill would cut funding for the Department of Health and Human Services by just over 6%, or $7.5 billion, from current levels.
The law would save over $280 million for Title X Family Planning The program provides funding to assist people access contraception, pregnancy testing and counseling, and sexually transmitted infection services. It is designed to provide access to these services to people who are low-income or have no health insurance.
Republicans have targeted the program, which provides funding for reproductive care clinics, including Planned Parenthood, for decades.
Scott stressed that eliminating these programs would particularly impact communities that have difficulty accessing these services.
“These attacks are part of a larger plan to roll back the progress we have made towards gender equality,” she said. “Each of these measures aims to control and restrict bodily autonomy and deny people the right to make decisions about their own bodies and their own lives.”
The bill would also cut spending at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $1.8 billion, eliminating funding for research into suicide prevention, preventing gunshot injuries and deaths, and preventing opioid overdoses.
Cuts in education
The Republican bill would also cut funding to the Department of Education by 14 percent, or $8.6 billion.
Title I grants, which provide federal funding to schools serving students from low-income families, would be cut by $4.7 billion. That decrease represents more than half of the $8.5 billion cut for all K-12 education, including special education. Public schools are required by law to offer special education services to students who qualify.
Michael J. Barnes, superintendent of the Mayfield City School District in Ohio, said federal funding is critical for public schools
“These funds are not just numbers on a balance sheet in my district and in districts across the country. They represent real opportunities for our most disadvantaged students,” he said.
Another vital cut in the bill is a $124 million cut in the cost of mental health services in schools. In 2021, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services issued a advisory on the mental health of juvenile people and highlights how tough the pandemic has hit the country’s youth.
Barnes pointed out that funding public school programs will assist the United States in the long run by promoting economic growth, providing social mobility, and improving public health and safety.
“This is not just an expense,” he said. “This is an investment in our future.”
