A Congressional Budget Dictionary

Congressional Republicans are using complicated — and likely poll-tested — language to make their budget plans’ deep spending cuts and dramatic structural changes in key programs for low- and moderate-income people sound benign and even positive.

As Budget Committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) noted before the plans’ release, “From the standpoint of a budget, the less words of the English language you use, the better off you are.”

While it’s common practice for lawmakers to use language that puts their plans in the best possible light, it’s important to understand exactly what they mean.  Here are three key “translations”:

The House budget summary says:
It will make Pell Grants, which help more than 8 million students from low- and modest-income families afford college, “permanently sustainable.”

This turns out to mean:
The House budget would institute sharp funding cuts in Pell Grants, which in turn would make it harder for millions of students to afford college at a time when those costs are rising quickly.  Over time, this likely would reduce economic opportunity and the readiness of the U.S. workforce.

The House budget summary says:
The budget would convert both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid to “State Flexibility Funds.”  It states that this would give state governments “the power to administer [SNAP] in ways that best fit the needs of their communities with greater incentives to achieve better results,” and also would “empower state policymakers to tailor their Medicaid programs based on the unique challenges they face.”

This means:
The budgets would convert SNAP and much or all of Medicaid to “block grants,” with fixed — and sharply reduced — federal funding.

The programs would no longer respond automatically to increased need due to rising poverty and unemployment during economic downturns.  And the combination of block grants and big funding cuts would leave states having to figure out whose benefits to cut or terminate.  The magnitude of the cuts would leave them without good options.  The SNAP cuts would force states to shrink or eliminate food assistance for millions of low-income families, while the Medicaid cuts would force them to make eligibility and benefit cuts that would likely leave millions of beneficiaries uninsured or underinsured (on top of the loss of coverage that millions of poor Americans would face due to the House and Senate budget plans’ repeal of health reform and its Medicaid expansion).

Finally, sometimes even silence needs a translation.  The House and Senate budgets make no mention of extending crucial provisions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for low- and modest-income working people now slated to expire at the end of 2017.

This means:
The plans would allow these provisions to expire,  thereby pushing more than 16 million people — including almost 8 million children — into or deeper into poverty and squandering the opportunity to help promote work, reduce poverty, and support children’s development.

Once you get beyond the euphemisms and flowery language, a clear agenda stands out in these plans:  shrinking government in substantial part through steep reductions in programs for low- and moderate-income Americans that, in turn, would lead to higher levels of poverty and inequality, less opportunity, and a future workforce that’s less able to compete with its counterparts overseas.