The Shriver Brief : Poverty Law Commentary & Insights : Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law : Affordable Housing, Healthcare Reform

The final budget voted by the Illinois General Assembly makes historically deep cuts to medical assistance and other programs that help and provide opportunity for the poor. These cuts could have been mitigated by an assortment of revenue ideas advanced by the Responsible Budget Coalition, among others, but those ideas were never seriously considered. As always, the decision to target programs for poor people was a question of priorities, not necessity.

The $1.6 billion in cuts to medical assistance included the elimination of programs, restrictions in eligibility, new co-payments, and utilization limitations. Here are some of the more significant and potentially worrisome cuts:

• Elimination of the Illinois Cares RX program, which made it possible for 180,000 poor elderly and disabled people to afford prescription medications. Advocates are asking Governor Quinn to amendatorily veto the budget bill to eliminate this cut or at least delay it until January to allow people to adjust and try to minimize the damage.
• Reduction in Family Care income eligibility from 185% to 133% of the federal poverty level, terminating medical assistance to 26,000 parents whose children receive medical assistance.
• Elimination of restorative dental, including fillings, crowns, and dentures. Only emergency dental—teeth-pulling—will be covered.
• Imposition of maximum allowable co-payments for prescription drugs and services received at health clinics.
• Hiring of private vendor to verify income and residency. Accuracy in eligibility determinations is a good thing, but the concern is that private vendors have a history of inaccurate, over-aggressive, profit-motivated caseload reduction.

To its credit, the General Assembly spared children from the medical assistance cuts entirely, including undocumented immigrant children who remain eligible for the AllKids program. The General Assembly also avoided even deeper cuts by raising $800 million in new revenues through an increase in the cigarette tax, an enhanced hospital assessment, and federal matching funds.

In addition to the cuts to medical assistance, many other programs that primarily serve poor people were hit hard.  This included:

• The education budget was cut by $210 million, including a $160 million cut to General State Aid and a $25 million cut to the Early Childhood Block Grant that funds Illinois’s Preschool for All pre-kindergarten program.  Funding for Preschool for All has been cut by $80 million since FY 2009, eliminating services to 26,000 at-risk children.
• Child Care Assistance – program cut of $46 million, most of which will be realized by steep increases in parent copayments. In addition, the state will not adhere to the principle of parity whereby center rate increases have matched home increases negotiated by the Service Employees International Union, which represents home providers.
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) – the effective date for assistance was changed to 30 days after application rather than the date of application. This yields $10 million in savings by eliminating one month’s payment to TANF applicants whose applications are approved.  Thirty-thousand families per year will lose a month of benefits.  
• The budget for the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the state’s child welfare agency responsible for abused and neglected children, was cut by $86 million. It is not yet clear how this will affect the services the agency provides.

Many of the “savings’ generated by these cuts are illusory. Persons whose medical assistance is terminated will seek care in emergency rooms, at much greater cost to the state. Eliminating preventive services will result in much greater costs later from problems that could have been avoided. Every child denied Preschool for All will, later in life, cost the state an average of seven times more in special education, welfare, incarceration, and other costs than the cost of the investment in preschool education would have been. Those who supported the medical assistance and other cuts to poor people’s programs claimed they were doing so in the name of not saddling future generations with unsustainable debt, but the fact is that their short-sighted and expedient decisions will impose far greater costs on future generations.

The Responsible Budget Coalition and others proposed revenue-raising measures that would have ameliorated the need for cuts. These ideas included:

• Closing five corporate tax loopholes ($700 million).
• Broadening the sales tax to include selected consumer services ($550 million).
• Reinstituting sweeps of surplus revenue from non-GRF funds ($300 million).
• Using excess revenue from the Road Fund for the Secretary of State and State Police ($250 million).

In addition to these immediate sources of additional revenue, the most important long-term revenue initiative is the Fair Tax Coalition’s proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate the flat tax provision of the Illinois Constitution and permit a graduated income tax. Until this occurs, Illinois’s revenue shortfalls will be chronic and increasingly severe.

Watch for future issues of the Shriver Brief that will provide more detail on the resolution of medical assistance and other FY 2013 budget issues as well as other substantive issues of significance to low-income people.      

John Bouman contributed to this blog post.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Yesterday the Congress passed a bill that will fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011.

Overall, the very worst cuts—ones that would have devastated vulnerable Americans and taken us off the road to economic recovery—were avoided. For instance, the appropriations to implement the Affordable Care Act were preserved, which will improve the lives of millions of Americans and save the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars. Our federal funding of education at all levels—from Head Start to K-12 to Pell grants for college, will hold steady. The appropriations to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are intact.

However, there were many deep and important cuts that will negatively affect low-income Americans and their communities.

• 7%, or more than $500 million, cut to WIC, a food program for pregnant women and mothers.
• Nearly a billion dollars from the Community Development Block Grant, which helps communities all over the country with development goals.
• $30 million from the Legal Services Corporation which provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans.
• $900 million from community health centers.
• Nearly $400 million from the low-income home energy assistance program.
• More than $1 billion in key job training and education programs.

There are tough choices and important work ahead, including the fiscal year 2012 budget, which is being debated now. The cuts made to the federal fiscal year (FFY) 2011 budget, difficult as they are for many low income people, are dwarfed by some of the proposals for cuts being floated for FFY 2012, including the House Republican version that passed the House today on a partisan vote. And the standoff and political difficulties that surrounded the finalization of the FFY 2011 budget six months after the fiscal year began now look easy compared to the fundamental and high-stakes debates that will take place before there is an FFY 2012 final budget. Stay tuned.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Published reports indicate that Illinois Governor Quinn’s office may soon announce extraordinary, mid-year (FY11) cuts in human services funding in the order of $400 million. There are published reports that the child care assistance program (CCAP) alone could be slashed by $100 million.

Cuts of this magnitude would cause devastating cuts in services under any circumstances. However, the effect of these cuts would be greatly magnified by the fact that there would be only four months left in FY11 when the cuts take effect. This means that services would have to be cut by three times as much as they would have been cut at the start of the fiscal year to obtain comparable savings. Looking to the future, the service levels after these mid-year cuts would likely be the baseline for future budgets.

Just what effect would the FY11 mid-year cuts under consideration have on program services? As of December 2010, there were approximately 188,000 children in the CCAP. A $100 million cut in the CCAP's budget for the remaining four months of FY11 would be approximately a one-third cut in the CCAP's budget. The number of kids affected, and exactly how they would be affected, would depend on how the cut was implemented. But, the straight math, for estimation purposes, is that at least 63,000 children would have to be cut from the program over the remainder of FY11 to save $100 million.

One strong possibility is that intake would be stopped. This would mean that when a low-income single parent gets a job, she would no longer be eligible for the child care assistance she needs to get her child into quality care and make it possible for her to work. An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 children per month would be unable to access child care assistance if intake is frozen. Illinois has never instituted a waiting list since the CCAP began in 1997.

Cutting child care assistance is bad public policy all the way around. It is about the worst policy decision there is in terms of killing jobs during a recession with unemployment rates hovering around 10 percent. Every dollar of child care assistance both makes it possible for a low-income single parent to work and pays the wages of a child care worker. It also has the third important benefit of enhancing the life prospects of the child receiving care. Let’s hope the Governor and his advisers step back from the precipice and decide not to proceed with the threatened cuts to child care and other vital human services.

• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In the waning hours of the lame duck legislative session, the Illinois General Assembly approved a temporary increase in the state income tax along with a series of spending restrictions designed to ensure that the new revenues go towards paying down the state’s massive debt and bringing financial stability to our state. The passage of this revenue package is the culmination of the efforts of the Responsible Budget Coalition, an unprecedented coalition of anti-poverty, human services, education, labor, good government, seniors and faith-based advocates.     

Under the legislation, S.B. 2505 amdt. 3, the individual income tax will increase from 3 to 5 percent for the tax years 2011-2014, revert to 4 percent for the next ten years, and then go to 3.5 percent thereafter. The corporate income tax will increase from its current level of 4.8 percent to 7 percent for the tax years 2011-2014, revert to 5.6 percent for the next ten years, and then go back to 4.8 percent thereafter. 

It is estimated that increasing the individual income tax from 3 to 5 percent will yield over $6 billion in revenue. Increasing the corporate income tax to 7 percent will yield another $1 billion.

The legislation includes a number of spending restrictions designed to ensure that the new revenues go towards paying down the state’s debt and addressing the structural imbalance that has resulted from state revenues failing to keep pace with needed expenditures. These spending restrictions are:

• A hard cap on spending for the next four years. The cap will be $36.8 billion in year one (FY12), or 10 percent more than FY11 estimated spending of $33.5 billion, and will then increase by 2 percent each year for the following three years. The reason that the first year cap in 2012 is higher is so that it can include all of the spending lines from 2011 that the state simply did not pay--the pension payment, bills to providers, making up for the loss of federal  stimulus funds, debt services, and more. Once that “base” is set, then limits for the three following years are very tight.
• The hard cap encompasses all state spending, including general funds, continuing appropriations (pensions), and general funds transfers.
• Within 60 days after the General Assembly passes a law authorizing state spending from state general funds (e.g., the state budget), the Illinois Auditor-General will have 60 days to review the legislation and determine whether the spending in the bill exceeds the hard cap. If he determines that it does, then the General Assembly has 45 days to reduce spending below the cap or, failing that, the Governor then has 15 days to do so. If spending is not reduced below the cap, then the individual income tax rates revert to the existing rates of 3 percent for individuals and 4.8 percent for corporations.
• The spending cap can be exceeded only if the Governor declares an emergency and neither the Comptroller nor the Treasurer notifies the General Assembly that they do not concur with the Governor that there is an emergency.
• Statutorily mandated spending of any kind may be reduced by the Governor if he determines that doing so is necessary to remain within the annual spending cap.

The cumulative effect of these spending restrictions will require further assessment, so stay tuned for a future blog on that topic. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the spending cuts that would have been required had the revenue package not been approved are unimaginable and would have imposed grave hardship on millions of Illinoisans and consigned our state to a very bleak future. Illinois would also have begun defaulting on loan payments and missing payrolls, becoming a financial pariah.

The revenue package also provides that in 2015, after the spending restrictions expire and the individual income tax reverts to 4 percent, a defined amount of funds will be set aside for education, and the same amount will be set aside for human services. The education and human services set-asides will be 3.1 percent of increased revenues from 2015-2024 and 3.6 percent thereafter.

The revenue package approved by the General Assembly is also noteworthy for what it did not include. Despite the fact that Illinois’ individual income tax is highly regressive, with all taxpayers subject to the same 3 percent rate, the final package did not include any provision to lighten the burden on the working poor, such as an expansion of the state’s earned income tax credit. On the positive side, while the package includes tough restrictions on spending over the next four years, they are temporary and will expire. The General Assembly did not pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would have permanently locked in spending at levels that would have eventually led to drastic cuts in services.

In closing, nothing threatens a politician’s career more than voting to raise taxes, especially an increase of this magnitude. In the end, the members of the General Assembly who voted in favor of the revenue package, and its leadership, must be lauded for their courage in doing the only responsible thing they could do to restore financial stability to the State of Illinois and ensure that it lives up to its obligations and does not forsake its children, its teachers, its mentally ill and developmentally disabled, and all of its other most vulnerable residents. The Senate vote is available here, and the House vote is available here. Be sure to thank those who voted yes and rally to their defense if they are attacked for their vote.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Yesterday, Governor Quinn signed into law the bills that amount to the Illinois state budget for fiscal year 2011. These are the bills the General Assembly sent him, together with roughly half of the money needed to pay for them. The Governor made some alterations and revealed a host of decisions around the funding for agencies and programs. The budget includes cuts of over $240 million for elementary and secondary education, $100 million for higher education, and $312 million for human services. Ninety percent of Illinois general fund spending is aimed at education, health care, human services, and public safety. It follows that those are the vital things being cut, like it or not.

Governor Quinn and his Administration made it clear that they are not happy with these cuts, necessitated by the failure of the General Assembly to produce sufficient revenue to responsibly fund the government. The Governor himself has repeatedly explained the need for and expressed support for the significant new revenues needed to sustain Illinois financially. He has been criticized for failing to engineer support for those revenues from the General Assembly, but he at least was clear about the need and his own position. 

Interest groups, representatives of needy populations, and others will be making specific points about the decisions and priorities in the Governor’s actions to implement this budget. Those are important debates and worth close attention. Yet they have the feel of a desperate squabble over scraps. 

Most of the cuts in this budget are harmful and unwise. They are not driven by policy considerations or evidence-based program evaluations, but by the brutal calculus of the state’s fiscal default. These are the kinds of sorry, no-win decisions that must be made when the Legislature hands the Governor a budget with a shortfall that is HALF of the needed money. The truth is that the budget does not contain the resources to ensure that the items not being cut will in fact be paid for. Some will, some will not. All will have to wait far too long. 

The bigger picture here is that the crisis cries out for responsible leadership and a comprehensive solution that includes adequate new revenues. An election season is not the time to hide from responsibility, take shelter behind a self-justifying poll (“my poll says my constituents do not want to pay higher taxes”), or blithely assert with no specifics that there is a magic way the crisis can be solved without new revenues. It is the time to tell the truth, to teach the constituency what is needed to solve a historic crisis, and then to lead the effort to win it. Illinois voters are capable of adult decisions--nobody wants to pay higher taxes, but most will understand the need. A comprehensive solution is one that puts in place the revenue infrastructure to navigate through the crisis over at least two years. A comprehensive solution will include pain--we have that part already--but it must also avoid making unwise and harmful cuts to essential services. And it must have adequate new revenues to back up strategic borrowing that is also needed to get through the crisis.

For now, we have the embarrassing and sad spectacle of the distribution of scraps and the dismantling of important policies and programs by default. Illinois needs a responsible budget that stops cutting vital programs, meets the state’s needs, keeps the state’s promises, and pays the state’s bills.   

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The Los Angeles Times recently posted an oddly inviting “state budget balancer" that allows you to have a go at balancing California’s $26 billion budget deficit by clicking on services to cut or items to tax. The “deficit meter” keeps track of how well you’ve done at solving the state’s massive budget shortfall at each click. Other states and cities have these online budget balancing tools as well—for example, in New Jersey, there’s the “You Be the Governor” challenge; for a crack at the federal deficit, see the American Public Media’s flashy “Budget Hero”.

Of course, the consequences of states’ fiscal distress are more complex and varied than these simplistic tools reflect. Among the consequences is an increase in demand for help from legal aid programs when people lose access to vital services (such as those available for “cutting” in the “deficit meter”).

Budget-related advocacy is underway across the country to help those affected by fiscal cuts. For example, the California Budget Project has reported on “Assessing the Impact: How Proposed State Budget Cuts Would Affect Women in California and What You Can Do to Help.” In Illinois, the Responsible Budget Coalition has an ongoing campaign to “Save Our State”; the Shriver Center is an active member of the coalition. And, in the District of Columbia, the Legal Aid Society is urging an equitable approach to the District's fiscal crisis.

What can legal aid do about state budget cutbacks? This is one of the article topics suggested by a participant in an April 20th conference call sponsored by Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, a publication of the Shriver Center. Fifteen attorneys from eleven states offered ideas ranging from health care reform to obligor defenses in child support enforcement to medical-legal partnerships.

Which of these topics would you most like to see covered in an upcoming issue of Clearinghouse Review? Vote now in a new two-question survey. Or post your additional suggestions on the Shriver Center’s Facebook discussion page—we value your input!
 

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

When newly-installed Governor Quinn gave his budget address March 18, 2009, he put forth the case for a combination of budget cuts and tax increases necessary for the indebted state of Illinois to get through this devastating recession. Although he pushed this message throughout the legislative session and the Senate approved a substantial tax hike, in the end the budget signed into law on July 15 relies instead on borrowing and harsh cuts to essential services in Illinois.

In a year of many notorious firsts within Illinois politics, this year’s budget is unprecedented in many ways. It relies tremendously on borrowing, jeopardizing the state’s credit-worthiness and resulting in a massive projected deficit of $10 billion for next year. It grants the Governor unheard of discretion by appropriating lump sum amounts to agencies under his control and leaving up to him the decision as to which programs to cut, rather than providing line-by-line programmatic spending authority as in past years, in an attempt to push the blame for the required cuts onto him. To the devastation of the state’s most vulnerable, it makes deep cuts in many programs on which thousands of residents rely.

The full impact of this year’s budget will not be realized until the Governor and his agencies make the tough decisions the legislature chose not to make, deciding which programs will be fully funded, which will be cut, and which will be eliminated. But the ultimate impact of this budget will continue to be felt for years, as the state will cope with addictions that could have been treated, violence and homelessness that could have been prevented, and increased expenses from seniors forced into nursing homes.

Before this budget was even signed into law, the uncertainty caused by the failure to adopt a new budget before the start of the state’s fiscal year and the massive cuts being proposed led to hundreds of social service providers being laid off and thousands of Illinois residents in need of assistance being turned away. Since the adopted budget funds social services at about 85% of the Governor’s requested budget, which already contained cuts, more layoffs will occur and additional services will be cut. But the fight is not yet over. With continued advocacy by the thousands who have written letters, called legislators, attended rallies, and struggled to make their voices heard, the legislature will return in January to renewed cries for the tax increase the state so desperately needs. Perhaps then, when the cuts are real and the legislators see the suffering their cowardice created, they will step up and meet the needs of the people and state they supposedly serve.

To read the Shriver Center's complete analysis of  the Illinois State budget, click here.  

• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The Illinois General Assembly meets this week to attempt to resolve the budget.  Failure carries with it incalculable costs that prolong the recession and hit every legislative district. 

The impending cuts directly impact hundreds of thousands of children, seniors, people who are sick and hurt, the unemployed, and workers.  The costs to them are staggering, but there are other costs:

• The state will get sued repeatedly.  Some of the cuts would violate federal or state laws.  Some would violate existing court orders and consent decrees.  The Attorney General’s office must defend all these cases, but it has its own shrunken budget and would be swamped.
•  Proposed cuts violate the condition in the federal stimulus law that states not cut Medicaid.  This will cost us billions in federal stimulus funds.    
• The state would also lose massive sums of federal matching funds and block grant dollars across a range of programs.
• These lost federal funds come out of the Illinois economy – it is money not spent on goods and services in our state.
• The Department of Human Services estimates that the cuts to its budget would cause a loss of 170,000 jobs outside of state government.  These are entrepreneurs, independent caregivers, and employees of non-profit or for-profit businesses that provide or support the programs in various ways.
• Legislators have spent their careers building important programs that will be gutted or eliminated by this process.  Time, talent, and hard-won accomplishment would be wasted. 

The General Assembly’s budget would prolong the recession and hurt the state, not just those who need the programs.  We need to fund the government and not bring about all of the above incalculable costs.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link