While everyone is focused on Social Security…
… the Bush Administration is also proposing to completely gut a bunch of social programs, and no one’s paying attention.
Here’s the official press release and here’s the NY Times story on it.
The Bush proposal would take 18 different programs — including the Community Development Block Grant (run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development) and the Community Services Block Grant (run by Health and Human Services) — and consolidate them into a single program based at the Department of Commerce. Why Commerce? Because HUD and HHS actually think helping poor people is part of our mission, while Commerce works for the business community.
Oh, and the total funding would drop from $5.6 billion to $3.7 billion. But if you move the shells back and forth fast enough, maybe people won’t notice that you’ve palmed the ball.
I actually agree that some degree of consolidation would be a good thing — HHS has a few small pure economic development grant programs that clearly belong somewhere else, if they’re worth funding at all. But this is a slash-and-burn operation, not a careful pruning.
