How White Lawmakers Obsessed With Reducing the Debt End Up Short-Changing Children
/Republicans often portray reducing the debt — which they insist must be done entirely through spending cuts — as a matter of principle as well as good policy. “In my view, it’s not just bad economics,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in August. “It is immoral for us to pass these burdens on to coming generations.”
But a new report from the Urban Institute, flagged today in The New York Times, found that spending and tax exemptions that protect children from poverty and invest in their future will decline from 3 to 2.3 percent of the economy by 2022 — largely as a result of attempts to reduce the debt.
Much of the effect is due to the exhaustion of the 2009 stimulus combined with the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which averted the debt ceiling crisis. Some elements of support for children were exempted from the BCA, particular health care programs and income support. But other areas such as tax provisions, education, and nutrition support will see a significant hit...
