National and local Jewish organizations are trying to assess the impact on the Jewish community of the massive budget cuts proposed by President Reagan and to devise means of dealing with this new situation.
But although the Administration will not formally introduce in Congress until March 10 its proposed budget for the 1982 fiscal year, which begins Oct. I, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in a survey it conducted, found that most organizations expect many of their programs to be hit, particularly those dealing with the poor, the elderly, the young.
This is because Reagan’s Administration has already announced plans to cut $41.4 billion from 83 federal programs in 1982 and make even deeper cuts in succeeding years. The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to attempt to pass the President’s budget as swiftly as possible, but there are signs that the Democratic-controlled House may seek to delay action in an effort to prevent some of the cuts.
Meanwhile, Reagan announced yesterday that he wants to cut another $3 to $5 billion so that the Administration can hold to its goal of a federal spending ceiling of $695.5 billion in 1982.
REASONS TO BE ANXIOUS
No one is against taking steps to “tighten up programs,” Albert Chernin, executive vice president of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), said. He said the NJCRAC has not “arrived at a definitive judgement” on the proposed reductions, but there is “reason to be somewhat anxious.”
The NJCRAC’s Commission on Equal Opportunity and the Committee on Public Issues of the Council of Jewish Federations (CJF) will hold a joint meeting here March 13 to assess the “implications” of the Administration proposals and to decide “what posture” to take toward them. He said that along with assessing the impact on the Jewish community, the “broader implications” for the entire county will also be discussed. The CJF will discuss the issue at its quarterly board meeting in Washington April 8-10.
The American Jewish Congress, at the meeting of its Executive Committee and Governing Council March 7-8 here, plans to launch a “national mobilization” to “prevent the undoing of the progress that has been achieved in recent years in the area of social justice.”
Locally, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York (FJP) has scheduled a meeting March 2 to “develop a priority list of major programs to at least minimize the cuts,” according to David Liederman, the FJP’s director of government relations. He said the FJP plans to work together with the federations of the other large cities all of which have similar problems.
AREAS AND PEOPLE THE CUTS WOULD AFFECT
The proposed cuts would have “a serious impact on a lot of programs that we care about,” Liederman said. He explained that they effect social services, senior centers, day care centers, home care for the elderly, child care programs, in fact, “almost every major program we have.”
Rabbi David Cohen, executive director of the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, said there were an estimated 250,000 Jewish poor and near-poor in New York City. He said most of these Jews are the near-poor: the elderly; large families, such as the Hasidim; and new immigrants, particularly Soviet Jews.
It is the near-poor that the budget cuts will hurt the most, since the essence of the Reagan proposals is to reduce the number of people eligible for social programs. “That’s where our people find themseves,” Cohen said.
As an example, Cohen pointed to the Administration’s plan to reduce those eligible for food stamps by lowering the maximum earnings a person could make and still be able to receive the stamps. Many elderly Jews on Social Security who have been getting food stamps will then be no longer eligible, he added.
Cohen said thousands of Jews in New York are now receiving food stamps. Liederman put the figure at tens of thousands, although he said it probably was not as high as 100,000.
Another example given by Cohen was the Administration’s plan to have the states take over Medicaid. He said this would eventually result in a cut in money available for the program and thus lead to reducing those eligible for Medicaid.
The same goes for the proposal to reduce federal rental assistance. Cohen stressed that in most cases it is not different people being hurt by cuts in each program, but the same people who need assistance from a wide variety of programs.
PROGRAMS WILL ALSO BE HURT
In addition to the impact on individuals, the cutbacks will also hurt programs sponsored by Jewish organizations. All the persons who spoke to the JTA noted the serious problem that would result from the Administration’s plans to phase out the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).
Many Jewish organizations are able to get workers at reasonable salaries to perform essential services, Cohen noted. Many special programs operated by Jewish organizations have CETA workers. Liederman pointed out that CETA uses people who otherwise would be on welfare and who, in many cases, would now have to go back on welfare.
The Reagan Administration also has proposed combining much of the social programs which fund senior centers, day care centers, home care for the elderly and combine them with other categorical grants to give them to the states in block grants and then cut the total figure by 25 percent.
Cohen was especially concerned about the block grant proposal which is based on the Administration philosophy that the states should have less federal control over their programs. He said that with categorical grants, the states and cities are required to
use the funds for programs approved by Congress. But with block grants, the states and cities may use the money for other purposes, Cohen warned. He said that since states and cities now face budget “crunches” they might want to use the funds for what they consider “essential services”–police, fire protection, sanitation–rather than to meet social needs.
OTHER ISSUES OF CONCERN
There are also other concerns within the Jewish community that other types of programs may be harmed. Frieda Lewis, president of Hadassah, at a recent seminar on educating retarded children, said that while she understands “the effects of inflation and the need for austerity,” the U.S. “must be discriminating. When apolitical agencies such as UNICEF would be cut back to its 1980 budget, we urge that Congress consider not only the lifesaving role played by such an agency, but the deleterious effect of the perception of the United States as a compassionate and as a dependable ally. The preservation of other people also contributes to our own security.”
Phil Baum, associate executive director of the AJCongress, said that “We will be watching very carefully to see whether the President’s budget calls for any reduction in the funding for an enforcement of the law prohibiting U.S. companies with complying with the Arab boycott of Israel and with the search and prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the United States. Thus far, there is no indication of any such cuts.”
Meanwhile, more than 100 Congressmen led by Reps. Hamilton Fish (R. N. Y.) and William Lehman (D. Fla.) have sent Reagan a letter urging that no cuts be made that might adversely affect the work of the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigation which is charged with prosecuting any Nazi war criminals living in the U.S.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
