Sequester doesn't hurt the poor: Column

Most of our national leaders dislike sequestration, the blunt process that has enforced federal deficit reduction with across-the-board spending cuts. While some fiscally conservative groups will cheer spending cuts any way they can get them, Republicans generally don’t like the sequester because it imposes serious cuts on defense spending. Democrats don’t like it either, because it cuts domestic spending by just as much and in their view, weakens the social safety net that supports the poor. The defense hawks have a valid point; the safety net protectors, not so much.

Sequestration, of course, was not meant to be. The original plan — the 2011 Budget Control Act — was conceived as a way to force Congress to deal with the deficit by threatening across-the-board draconian cuts totaling almost $1 trillion. The idea was to push lawmakers to find a better compromise. This didn’t happen, and the first sequestration cuts took place in 2013. Another round of punishing cuts is slated for January 2016.

Liberal Democrats often express outrage at Republicans for not reversing sequestration: Nancy Pelosi called the sequester “draconian.” President Obama said “these cuts are not smart. They are not fair.” Steny Hoyer argued it would hurt “the poor and most vulnerable in our society.” For Democrats, prioritizing economic fairness for low-income Americans requires fighting the sequester, while going along with it confirms that Republicans do not care about the poor and want to eliminate government support altogether.

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What is being left unsaid by Democrats, and will be again surely, is that almost none of the most important programs that help poor Americans are cut under sequestration. SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as the Food Stamps Program) and other child nutrition programs, such as the school lunch program, are not affected. Neither are health care programs. Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicare Part D’s low-income subsidies, and the subsidies provided through the Affordable Care Act are not touched. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program are also exempt from sequestration. Funding for child support enforcement, foster care and pregnancy programs, and mandatory funding under the Child Care and Development Fund has been maintained. All Social Security benefits and the Supplemental Security Income program, which serves low-income disabled adults and children, are untouched. Federal Pell grants that help low-income students afford college are also exempt. All of these programs are explicitly protected from any cuts by Sections 255 and 256 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act.

When scholars (liberal or conservative) talk about the most important programs to reduce poverty, they single out SNAP, the EITC, and Medicaid among others — key programs which were not cut at all. The only major programs having an impact on reducing poverty which have been cut under sequestration are rental vouchers and unemployment compensation. Rental vouchers have been cut by 6 percent but are supplemented by HUD with additional funds to mitigate shortfalls. Unemployment compensation has been mostly protected — only extended benefits and temporary emergency compensation are cut.

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American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks often tells conservatives to "declare peace" on the safety net for the poor. The sequester essentially does just that. In the tension between the “guns” of defense and the “butter” of domestic spending, sequestration imposes caps on Pentagon spending while protecting our most important domestic programs from any cuts. Fewer guns, but still all of the butter where we need it most. This arrangement is hardly deserving of moral outrage.

No one argues sequestration is good budget policy. Deep defense cuts are dangerous for our national security. And low and high-income Americans alike would benefit from substantial reforms of the entitlement programs that actually do threaten to bankrupt the nation in the long-run. But when the accusations and attacks resume as we get closer to these fiscal deadlines, it’s worth remembering that sequestration’s supposed massive cuts to the safety net are not actually real.

Robert Doar, the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, was the commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration. 

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