The House Republicans unveiled their budget proposal, and it unsurprisingly guts nearly every form of assistance for American families.
The GOP wants to freeze the maximum Pell Grant at $5,775 per student for the next 10 years to save money.
More than 8 million students in America received Pell Grants in the 2015 fiscal year, and the program costs the United States about $30 billion.
In 1980, Pell Grants used to cover the entire cost of education for community colleges and about 77 percent of the cost at a public university. Those numbers have dwindled to 62 percent at community colleges and 36 percent at public universities.
The current yearly cost of attendance at LSU is $27,288 for on-campus, in-state students. The maximum Pell Grant would only cover about 21 percent of a student’s education.
Luckily, Louisiana has programs like TOPS and Go Grants to help bridge that gap. But with our unreliable flow of revenue and recent budget cuts, students can’t fully rely on Louisiana’s state programs to fund their education.
Essentially, the generation in charge now benefited from the government investing in them and their education when they were in school. Now that they’re in power, they want to take those investments away from our generation.
When we call them out, they call us entitled and lazy. We’re supposed to work for our education, but it’s impossible for someone to make $27,288 in a year, go to school full time and graduate in four years.
Louisiana can’t afford for the federal government to gut programs because our state is in such turmoil.
Aside from education, the GOP budget is trying to gut health care. Whatever your opinion of the Affordable Care Act might be, it helps low-income Louisiana residents get health insurance. About 40,000 Louisiana residents receive tax credits because of Obamacare at about $3,610 per person to help pay for their health insurance.
As long as Obama is president, the GOP won’t get to defund the Affordable Care Act because it’s his legacy. But the fact they try to take health coverage away from low-income families while offering no alternative is disturbing.
House Republicans also want to indirectly cut spending for food stamps and Medicaid. Under the GOP budget, states would get funding for those programs via block grants. That would give more states control over who receives assistance.
The last time the federal government turned an assistance program into a block grant was in the ’90s, with the temporary assistance for needy families, or TANF, program. The after effects were disastrous.
Funding for the program essentially froze, and fewer people became eligible. States could set their own requirements, which meant families received unequal benefits. This should not happen to food stamps and Medicaid.
While more local control may sound like a good thing, it would give conservative states like Louisiana more leeway in denying their residents benefits. If we happen to have another budget shortfall as massive as the one we’re about to face, our governor could use that block grant money to fill in budget holes, effectively leaving our neediest residents hungry and without assistance.
The House Republicans argued that they need to make budget cuts to eliminate our deficit spending, which is understandable. America needs to get its debt under control, and we can’t keep running a deficit if we want to remain a strong nation.
However, the GOP’s budget hurts American families and increases defense spending by $94 billion. If we can’t afford to feed families and send students to college, then we certainly can’t afford war money.
Overall, the Republican budget would slash the deficit by $5.5 trillion over the course of a decade at the expense of American families and college students.
The budget doesn’t do anything to address our massive income inequality, and it doesn’t make any long-term investments that are good for the economy.
Multibillion dollar corporations would still pay fewer taxes than middle-class families. The one percent in America still wouldn’t have to pay their fair share of taxes.
We saw what happened when Republicans controlled budgets in the past. Their budget plans caused the financial crisis under Bush, and Jindal’s budget plans destroyed higher education funding over the years.
Republican presidents have had increased deficits since George H. W. Bush. In contrast, Democrats have eliminated or reduced deficits. The GOP can’t be trusted with our federal budget.
You can’t run a country just by cutting benefits to the neediest families. People need to pay their fair share of taxes, and our generation needs to have a fair shot at life.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.