The Impact of the Government Shutdown on Children and Families

While the government shutdown is well into its second week, it is important to keep in mind the devastating consequences that are continuing to impact the most vulnerable children and families. Though programs that directly ensure public health and safety have avoided the spending freeze, including Medicaid and Social Security, most of the programs that are affected are still vital supports and services that help sustain young women and children, low-income families, and the elderly.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which provides temporary financial assistance to help pregnant women and families pay for food, shelter, utilities, and expenses other than medical costs, has stopped awarding new funds, however states have the option to continue providing benefits with state dollars. Since TANF provides significant services in addition to cash assistance, such as GED preparation, vocational training, postsecondary education, vocational rehabilitation, help with child care, work stipends, job retention services and more, discontinuing the program during the shut-down – particularly if it continues for much longer - would be a devastating for families in need.

Head Start programs will also be affected by the shutdown—a total of 23 programs serving 19,000 children will be affected as their grants begin to expire. Those cuts are in addition to the 57,000 children pushed of Head Start as a result of the sequester, on top of a $400 million mandatory cut to the program nationwide. The longer the shutdown continues, the more Head Start programs and young children will be adversely impacted.

Implications of the government shutdown to nutrition programs are equally alarming. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps over 47 million low-income Americans, will continue providing benefits, but only until the end of October. States have the option of continuing the SNAP program through 2014, but the $2 billion available for contingency funds that would be used to compensate the loss of funding would not be enough to support the program in the long-term, since SNAP provides about $6 billion in support to families per month.

The Special, Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which assists over 9 million at-risk mothers, infants, and young children in accessing healthy food, nutrition information, and health referrals, will also continue until the end of October. Like SNAP, most states have funds to continue WIC for a week or so, but the program won’t be able to continue for very long, with emergency funds running out by the end of the month.

The impact on supplemental nutrition programs is also impacting the elderly. Senior Nutrition Programs have stopped as a result of the shutdown. The Department of Health and Human Services can no longer fund Meals on Wheels, which provides more than one million home-delivered meals to seniors who need them each day. This crucial service has also been impacted by the sequester, which is discussed in this previous post.

The government shutdown is risking the basic supports and services low-income families need to survive. Although there are emergency funds to continue certain programs in the meantime, the long-term consequences will be harmful and widespread. State policymakers should use their discretion to continue the programs that can provide supports and services to vulnerable families; however, the only sustainable solution is for the government to go back to work in serving children and their families as soon as possible to minimize the impact.

The Ongoing Impacts of the Sequester on Communities

The government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester took effect on March 1, forcing $85 billion in federal budget reductions by the end of September. As we previously described, these cuts, which only affect discretionary programs (i.e. programs for which Congress must annually appropriate dollars) have reduced the budgets of the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Justice and Labor, among others. As the months have progressed we are increasingly seeing how these cuts at the federal level trickle down to impact states and communities, causing multitudes of reductions in services and programming.

A map from the Center for American Progress shows how the sequester is impacting states, including Head Start programs, public schools, housing assistance, tribal programs and programs for seniors. These stories from across the nation reveal just how much states and local governments depend on federal funds to maintain their levels of service. Head Start programs have been forced to develop longer waiting lists, cut children from the program, eliminate or reduce transportation for children to centers, and lay off staff. Some school districts have been forced to sell offices, reduce teacher personal days, lay off teachers and support staff, and eliminate arts, music and physical education programs. The consequence of these moves are larger classroom sizes and a lower quality of education. The sequester is also causing longer waiting lists for housing choice vouchers, and in some places leading to vouchers being taken back and current voucher holders being reverted to a waiting list if they have not yet secured a lease with a landlord.

Funds for tribal programs have also faced extreme cuts, including 21 percent cuts in tribal housing grants; a 23 percent cut to Native job training; and a 35 percent cut to Energy Assistance. The sequester is being felt much heavier in tribal lands because unlike states, tribes cannot levy property taxes on lands held in trust, or gain significant revenues from income taxes, given the chronically low incomes of most residents on Indian reservations. Although the federal government pays about 10 percent of the budget for a typical U.S. public school district; on federal lands, it contributes as much as 60 percent. This can translate to the reduction or elimination of education programs and services, including the elimination of summer school, vocational training for high school youth, and can lead to the inability to fill vacant teacher and support staff positions (such as school guidance counselors and mental health counselors). The effects of cuts for mental health programs in tribal schools can have devastating consequences for tribal communities because research shows that Native American children and youth have disproportionately high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.

The across-the-board cuts of the sequester are reducing services for people who immediately need them, but they also have long-term fiscal consequences.  For example, states have had to roll back on the Meals on Wheels program, reducing the number of visits seniors receive, and creating a waiting list for seniors in need of delivered meals.  This is a crucial service that enables seniors to remain in their homes. Not only does the delivery of meals provide nutrition assistance to seniors, but it serves as a check-up and social interaction for those who live by themselves and are sometimes otherwise socially isolated. Cutting these services actually costs taxpayers more money in the long term, because a tax dollar spent providing support services to someone at home can prevent having to spend many more tax dollars on providing full-time care to the same person in a nursing home or an assisted-living facility.

To deal with these, and likely future cuts to the federal budget, states will need to focus on policies that maximize their use of federal funds and intelligently and efficiently prioritize their own funds.  To make the best use of funds during tough fiscal times, it becomes increasingly important to budget using a results-based public policy framework. First, states should set priorities for budget decisions by engaging stakeholders and focusing on measurable results.

State and local policymakers are being forced to do more with less, and innovative strategies are needed to make this happen. Facing the current fiscal year of sequestration as well as other budget cuts, it will be ever more important for policymakers to support policies that maximize federal dollars, maximize return on investment and generate savings to invest in what works. This includes maximizing funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, utilizing the Food Stamp Employment and Training Program, taking advantage of the flexibility of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds to target priority areas, and ensure that families are aware of the benefits of filing for federal tax credits.    

For more results-based public policy, visit Policyforresults.org.

Child Nutrition All-Year Round

Springtime means that many schools across the country will soon break for the summer. When school lets out, millions of low-income children lose access to the school breakfasts, lunches and afterschool snacks they receive during the regular school year. Summer Nutrition Programs are designed to address this problem by providing those needed meals - often times along with educational and recreational activities. The Food Resource Action Center (FRAC) provides a number of useful resources about Summer Nutrition Programs, including highlights of model summer meal programs, a summer food site locator, and a summer nutrition tool kit.

The federal government provides two sources of support for summer meals including – the Summer Food Service Program and the National School Lunch Program. For state policymakers – considering policy options to support children during their out of school time and to ensure that children do not go hungry is an important responsibility. State policymakers can help ensure that an increased number of children are served by the Summer Nutrition Programs by growing the programs through site recruitment and family outreach and passing mandates requiring that some schools operate the Summer Nutrition Programs. According to FRAC, Florida and Ohio recently passed such mandates.

For results-based policy strategies to ensure that children are healthy visit PolicyforResults.org.

SNAP: Supporting Families and the Economy

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program served approximately 45 million Americans in fiscal year 2011 and in doing so is credited with preventing a dramatic increase in hunger and food insecurity in spite of the historically high levels of unemployment and underemployment throughout the recession and its slow recovery. A new report from the Center for American Progress highlights the importance of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in not only lifting 3.9 million families out of poverty (in 2010) – but also its strong impact on the U.S. economy. According to the report, the program plays an important role in sustaining demand for groceries provided by businesses across the country. The paper states that each $1 billion spent by recipients enables nearly 14,000 Americans to find or keep their jobs. That means approximately 1 million workers were employed last year because of this program.

The report, The Economic Consequences of Cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, highlights both the economic benefits of SNAP and the potential consequences for the economy if the SNAP program is reduced, including:

• Each $1 billion reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eliminates 13,718 jobs.
• A 10 percent reduction in the size of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would cause more than 96,000 job losses.
• These losses would be particularly strong in food-related industries, which would lose as many as 11,000 jobs under a 10 percent cut to the program.
• Job losses will likely have the greatest impact on younger workers, since they account for a disproportionate share of workers in food-related industries— nearly one-third of grocery employees are under 25, compared to just 14 percent of workers in all industries.

For state policymakers, creating a policy agenda aimed at rebuilding their state’s economic health demands investing in working parents and their children. As states work to serve families in need, considering the budget decisions at the federal level for programs like SNAP is important. To learn more about the SNAP program click here. For fact sheets on creating jobs, economic growth and an educated workforce for the future visit PolicyforResults.org.

Strengthening State Fiscal Policies

As the economy slowly begins to recover, many families are still facing difficult challenges. For state policymakers to successfully support these families it is critical that they make decisions that lead to effective and efficient policy solutions. A new report issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Strengthening State Fiscal Policies for a Stronger Economy, provides guidance on fiscal policies that can create jobs now and lead states to long-term economic prosperity. The report suggests that in this year’s legislative sessions policymakers should:

• Restore state revenues quickly and target investments to get the economy back on track;
• Avoid ineffective strategies and gimmicks that weaken the state’s economy;
• Protect state services and investments that create jobs over the long term to ensure a sustained recovery; and
• Strengthen opportunities for families and children to contribute to the economy by avoiding cutbacks in their purchasing power while also making sure they have the supports they need into the future.

Each recommendation in the report links to analysis describing the best practice in greater detail.

For more resources on making sound policy decisions for families in difficult economic times visit our Policymakers’ Corner, which provides a fact sheet series on Jobs, Economic Growth and an Educated Workforce for the Future.

For results-based public policy strategies for families visit PolicyforResults.org and check-out What Works.

The President's FY13 Budget: Aligning Resources with Results

On Monday, the administration released their budget proposal for FY13. The president’s budget proposal outlines the administration’s policy agenda and federal spending proposal for the upcoming year and sets the tone for the national policy agenda. The federal budget becomes the guide by which every major spending and revenue decision is made, making it one of the largest policy vehicles for supporting children and families. Children and families across the country need support as they continue to face difficult challenges in the aftermath of the recession. While many states are beginning to see some progress, state budget shortfalls are still present and families are still facing very difficult circumstances as the economy slowly begins to recover.

One way that policymakers can support families around the budget is through developing and strengthening partnerships with the community. These partnerships can lead to more efficient and effective policymaking. In our new publication, Aligning Resources with Results: How Communities and Policymakers Collaborated to Create a National Program, we highlight the collaboration between community organizations in Philadelphia with state and local policymakers. This collaboration, centered on the result of improving the health of children, led to the development of the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The state initiative provided funding for 88 fresh-food retail projects in 34 Pennsylvania counties, creating or preserving more than 5,000 jobs and improving access to healthy food for more than half a million Pennsylvania residents. The success of this collaboration led to a national budget initiative, the National Healthy Food Financing Initiative, aimed at improving the health of children across the country by providing access to fresh-food. Earlier this week, in the administrations FY13 budget proposal, the president proposed a total of $400 million in financing to community development financial institutions, other nonprofits, public agencies and businesses with sound strategies for addressing the healthy food needs of underserved communities.

To review key line items for children and families proposed in the president’s budget and to learn more about how a local initiative, through a partnership with state government and great state leadership, can lead to a federal budget initiative read our full issue brief.

New Resources on the Budget!

While the long and unconventional Congressional budget process for FY2012 is barely over (4 months into the fiscal year) – we are fast approaching the release of the President’s FY2013 Budget Proposal. In an attempt to simplify what is an increasingly confusing process we thought we would assemble a list of common budget vocabulary to help untangle some of the terminology frequently used. Additionally, CSSP’s Investing in Community Change blog is also running a series on the FY2012 budget process aimed at assisting community members and community-based organizations. As the 2013 process moves forward we will continue to provide resources and updates on the policy agenda articulated through the President’s Budget Proposal as well as appropriations as they are addressed in Congress.

For a great introduction to the federal budget process visit the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For a breakdown of the key budget issues for children and families in the FY2012 Budget visit the American Humane Association.

For policy solutions to meet the needs of children and families in difficult economic times visit PolicyforResults. Click here for PfR’s Federal Budget Vocabulary Tip Sheet.