Posted in: Kids Not Cuts, Moving in Congress

New Ryan budget continues worst policies of the old Ryan budget

Tag Budget, Medicare, Paul Ryan, sequestration

Today, U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled the House budget for Fiscal Year 2014. Education Votes will release our full analysis on Thursday of both the Ryan budget and the soon-to-be-released budget by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), but we wanted to share the following statement from high school math teacher and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel on the Ryan budget with you tonight.

Chairman Ryan’s latest budget follows the same, devastating path created by his previous budget, and continues to make a mockery of shared sacrifice. His budget would inflict tremendous pain upon our most vulnerable citizens—children, low- and moderate-income Americans and seniors—while failing again to ask nothing more from the rich and big corporations. The Ryan budget will take the country in the wrong economic direction at the time when the nation is making steady progress.

For starters, the Ryan budget keeps in place through 2021—then adds two more years—the harmful and short-sighted ‘sequester’ cuts to education programs and services on which the nation’s 50 million students rely. Students in high-poverty communities and students with disabilities will directly feel the brunt of these continued cuts—larger class sizes, less individualized attention and support in class, and fewer teachers and aides for students with special needs. But the budget won’t just slash investments in K-12; it also threatens to derail the American dream for students who rely on Pell Grants by preventing any increase over the next decade.

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If Chairman Ryan gets his way, he would replace Medicare with a voucher and make seniors fight the private insurance companies on their own. After a lifetime of hard work, our seniors deserve to expect that Medicare will continue to guarantee their health coverage.

It’s wrong to balance budgets on the back of students and the most vulnerable without demanding corporations and the rich pay their fair share in taxes. Congress has a responsibility to come up with a balanced approach to get our nation’s fiscal house in order without inflicting irreversible harm to 50 million students—risking their future and the future of our nation.”

You can read the complete statement at NEA.org.