Sequestration will hurt Ohio children and communities
Posted March 13, 2012 in Press Releases
Contact Wendy Patton, 614.221.4505Link to full reportDownload press releaseStudy finds $312.6 million in federal cuts next year alone
Federal cuts under the 2011 U.S. “Budget Control Act” will take $312.6 million in federal funds out of Ohio in 2013, according to a new report by Policy Matters Ohio, based on an Ohio Legislative Service Commission analysis. Similar cuts will continue year after year until 2021.
Ohio elementary and secondary schools, already slashed by $1.8 billion because of state budget cuts, will lose $126 million in federal funds, with eight long years of cuts like this pending.
Last summer, Congress refused to allow the Obama administration to boost the debt limit to pay its bills, and insisted on direct budget cuts and spending control mechanisms in exchange. The Budget Control Act that resulted raised the debt limit by an amount estimated to be sufficient through early 2013; in exchange, it cut funding for public services by $2 trillion over the next decade. Half of this will be imposed through automatic across-the-board cuts of about 9 percent in 2013 followed by additional reductions in each of the following 8 years. This process, known as ‘sequestration’, will start in January 2013.
Federal Funds and Ohio’s Public Services
About a third of Ohio’s state budget comes from the federal government. Some programs, particularly in health and human services, get most of their funding from the federal government. The sequestration will also hurt universities, local governments and municipal housing authorities. Some programs are exempted from the federal law, including Social Security, Medicaid and other help with infrastructure, energy, poverty relief and tuition. But an estimated $3.6 billion in federal support for Ohio programs will be cut.
The Policy Matters brief is based on an Ohio Legislative Service Commission memo that projects costs to Ohio of the federal sequestration. The memo is based on assumptions and the LSC warns that predictions are inexact.
Cuts will hurt schools, services
“The result of sequestration will be larger class sizes for our children, reduced support for clean water, less job search assistance and workforce training, and weaker emergency management services,” said Wendy Patton, report author and senior project director at Policy Matters. Some of the worst cuts from the sequestration include:
- Ohio’s K-12 schools to lose $126 million in 2013