Government officials continue to look for corners to cut in the wake to today’s dire debt crisis and now, Washington’s super committee has announced that up to $1 trillion in national spending cuts must be made by 2013. As a result of strong resistance to medical benefit cuts by senior citizen groups like the AARP, along with a resistance by politicians to raise taxes, American children may be positioned to suffer the most from the cuts.
If negotiators cannot reach a budget consensus soon, our nation’s automatic spending cuts could kick in, resulting in as much as a 3.5 billion budget cut for the Department of US Education including 1.3 billion in title 1 funding, according to a study by Federal Funds Information for States. The cuts could force states to decrease spending on institutions of higher education, causing state college students to pay higher tuition as well. Congressman James Jones has called the situation “a generational war,” and notes that those advocating for young people lack the political clout that Medicare does as an organization.
A recent study commissioned by Fight Fraud First made up by AARP and other groups found that a majority of voters want Medicare funding left untouched and found that voters instead believed that the government should cut waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare as well as Medicaid spending. Social security and Medicare for the elderly together cost more than 1 trillion per year and account for 1/3 of the national budget, but speculators agree that the outlook for an agreement on Medicare cuts is slim. “We know without a shred of doubt that we’re bequeathing a lower living standard to the next generation based on the path we’re on,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, “The sooner we grapple with this the more likely we are to avert that.”