The Current Climate: This week Congress has turned its attention away from the budget reconciliation process (temporarily) – to focus on funding the government. This week the House, mostly along party lines, passed a temporary spending bill, called a continuing resolution, to fund the government for six months. The Senate still has to take action, and it is unclear if it will have the votes to pass. The continuing resolution includes many troubling components, including cuts to Social Security.
On Medicaid: Since the last update, the House took action on step one of the budget reconciliation process, passing their budget resolution that did include $880 billion in cuts for the Energy and Commerce Committee, which would come through Medicaid. The Senate also passed their resolution that did not include those cuts. For the reconciliation process to move to phase two, the House and Senate must agree on a single budget resolution. Because only one version includes the major cuts to Medicaid, it is incredibly important to engage with members in both the House and Senate to educate them on Medicaid and ensure they don’t allow these massive cuts to become law. One really important point of is ensuring that everyone knows what Medicaid is called in their state, here is a resource from our allied organization Caring Across Generations:
On Education: Linda McMahon was confirmed to be the Secretary of the Department of Education, and in her short tenure has made a sizable impact: Just this week half of the staff for the DOE was laid off, and massive budget cuts are underway, including possible attempts to entirely defund the agency. We are especially concerned about the potential harmful impacts to the 7.5 million students with disabilities who are covered by the IDEA, especially because the new Secretary couldn’t define IDEA. This is also concerning for the security of the Vocational Rehabilitation program, that is funded through and overseen by the Department of Education. The Department of Education also recently cut nearly half of their staff which will have an outsized impact on students with disabilities of all ages.
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The time is now to weigh in with members of Congress: please visit the Autism Society of America’s Action Center that includes three timely action alerts on Medicaid and IDEA and provides an easy way contact Congressional offices. We also hope many of you can join TASH and many allied organizations at the Disability Policy Seminar in Washington DC from April 7-9. |
Image credit: Romain Pontida, Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, some modifications.