Congressman Miller: ‘GOP Spending Bill Puts Working Families’ Futures at Risk’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, today released the following statement after House Republicans issued their proposed Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year.“With this effort, House Republicans are telling America’s working families that their future is on the chopping block. From our youngest children to workers in need of training and workplace safety, the Republican leadership has made it very clear that they’re not interested in helping families to get ahead in this economy; instead, they’re threatening our economic recovery and global competitiveness by eliminating jobs and programs that middle class families need.”
Impact of cuts within the jurisdiction of the House Education and the Workforce Committee:
EDUCATION
The massive cut to the Head Start program would remove 218,000 low income children and families and close more than 16,000 Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms across the country. It would leave 55,000 teachers, teacher assistants and related staff without jobs.
The cut to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would mean 2,400 schools that serve nearly one million disadvantaged students would lose funding for teachers, tutors and afterschool programs. Nearly 10,000 teachers and aides could lose their jobs.
Reducing the funding for IDEA would mean approximately 7,000 special education teachers and staff would lose their jobs.
The Pell Grant scholarship maximum award would be reduced by $845 from $5,550 to $4,705. Many of the 9.4 million students who are projected to receive a Pell Grant in the 2011-2012 school year would see a lower grant award, requiring them to take out more loans to afford their college tuition and fees.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
80,000 AmeriCorps members working in food banks, community centers and organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, Goodwill Industries, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and the United Way will no longer be able to provide resources and support, leaving these organizations short staffed and under managed.
1,000 community based non-profits would lose more than $312 million in volunteer labor secured through the work of the VISTA program and its 8,000 VISTA consultants.
The harmful cut to juvenile justice efforts would deny at-risk youth access to crime prevention and treatment programs, increasing juvenile crime and making communities less safe.
JOB TRAINING
Cutting job training by more than $3 billion would phase out state and local programs beginning between April and July of this year, closing 3,000 One Stop career centers. This cut would also eliminate summer youth employment programs , denying access to job training and education to up to 7,000 disadvantaged students who would otherwise have benefited. Getting rid of the Green Jobs program would impact more than 6,000 workers.
The cuts to Job Corps would mean as many as 10,000 fewer people would have access to jobs and training opportunities.
Eliminating the job training opportunities provided through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) would cut training for more than 200,000 unemployed who need new skills to compete in the workplace. With the additional investments made by the Democratic Congress in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more than half a million Americans received training services provided through WIA programs.
WORKER SAFETY
Rolling back funding levels to 2004 levels for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would mean reducing staff by more than 415 people, including 200 inspectors and 17 whistleblower investigators. As a result there would be approximately 8,000 less workplace hazard inspections and 740 fewer whistleblower discrimination investigations.
No more data would be collected on workplace health and safety trends by OSHA. OSHA’s website would be eliminated.
Safety for workers in mine would be less secure by reducing the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) budget to the levels from the 2010 fiscal year. Without additional funds, MSHA would have to lay off staff recently hired to work on backlog reduction in July 2011, and pull back on efforts to improve operations in West Virginia and purchase mine emergency response equipment.
Next Article