BY SAM SPOKONY | Unprecedented federal spending cuts that will push the country over the so-called “fiscal cliff” will take place on Jan. 2, 2013 — in about six weeks — if President Barack Obama and Congress don’t work together to avoid it. With a total of more than $1 trillion on the chopping block, spread out over nine years, people across the country are becoming increasingly worried about the lasting effects of falling off that cliff.
A report released last week by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer revealed the potentially devastating effects those federal cuts would have on taxpayers, housing, transportation, education and 9/11-related services in New York City.
The report is based on data from the Federal Office of Management and Budget, and was released by Stringer jointly with Congressmembers Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler. Notably, the report states that families earning $100,000 will see a tax increase of nearly $4,000; families earning $50,000 will see a tax increase of nearly $2,000; and those in the bottom 20 percent of income distribution will see taxes increase by an average of 3.7 percent.
And as the sobering impact of Hurricane Sandy is still very much being felt by New Yorkers in every borough, the report also highlighted the $878 million in nationwide cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that will go into effect — a reduction that would certainly weaken the agency’s responses to future natural disasters.
The 600,000 New York City residents who live in public housing would also face an uncertain future if the Big Apple were to slide over the fiscal cliff. Capital funding and operating budgets for the New York City Housing Authority would collectively lose $102 million, according to the report. And Section 8 rental assistance would be cut by $88.8 million — the equivalent of eliminating more than 8,000 Section 8 housing vouchers.
It was fitting, then, that Stringer, area politicians, union leaders and community organizations gathered outside the East Village’s Campos Plaza — a NYCHA complex — to call on President Obama and Congress to negotiate and find a way to avoid going over the fiscal cliff.
“This is not the way we should approach rebuilding New York [after Hurricane Sandy],” Stringer said. “You don’t cut programs, you enact programs. You don’t take it out on the most vulnerable, you lift up the most vulnerable. And the fact that we could go backwards in Congress now, after we won the election, is simply unacceptable.”
He added his belief that Republicans in Congress “just don’t get it,” if they think that middle- and lower-class people across the city can survive with such crtitical cuts.
One congressmember who does get it, at least from the perspective of Stringer and her own city constituents, is Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, who was elected to yet another term in the House on Nov. 6. She appealed to a sense of unity, especially in the wake of the recent hurricane, and also repeatedly slammed far-right Republicans who claim that the government should be extremely small and provide few services.
“To the Republicans: You must recognize that the Tea Party cannot be dictating the legislative agenda of our nation,” Velazquez said. “To [House of Representatives] Speaker [John] Boehner: The election is over, now show leadership and do what is right for working families in this country. We cannot allow the economy or the education of children, public housing, etc. to be held hostage by the Tea Party.”
Jeanette Toomer, an organizer with the community group Good Old Lower East Side, or GOLES, asserted that further cuts to NYCHA complexes and other low-income communities would be dangerous mainly because of poor infrastructure — something many people fully realized only after the hurricane struck.
“After decades of budget cuts and underfunding, we know that NYCHA doesn’t have the resources available to fix its boilers and restore heat to all of its buildings before it gets even colder out,” Toomer said, referring to the fact that some public housing buildings are still without heat or hot water as a result of the hurricane.
Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh claimed that the results of this year’s presidential election should show Congress — especially Republicans — what kind of government the nation wants.
“We need Congress to recognize that the American people made a choice in this election,” he said, “and that we want a government that genuinely responds to people, that genuinely meets the needs of Americans here in New York and across the country.”
Other major New York-specific cuts flagged in Stringer’s report include $75 million in cuts to the city’s Department of Education, $24 million to the Sept. 11 Victims’ Compensation Fund, nearly $28 million to capital investments for the Second Ave. subway project, $10 million for homeless services, and $2.5 million to H.I.V. testing, among other things.
The fiscal cliff was created after last year’s debt-ceiling crisis, when President Obama faced a showdown from House Republicans — mainly Tea Party members — over the need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
The ceiling was eventually raised, the day before Republicans had threatened to shut the government down. The congressional act that allowed for the ceiling to be raised also created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — known as the “Supercommittee” — tasked with identifying $1.2 trillion in additional spending cuts and/or revenue increases over the next 10 years.
But because the Supercommittee failed to reach an agreement, an automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts, “the fiscal cliff,” was scheduled to kick in at the start of 2013. If we do in fact go over the fiscal cliff, $492 billion will also be cut from the defense budget.
