Letter: Bush budget cuts hurting the poor

Thursday, March 10, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.

Your newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, is absolutely right in its assessment of President Bush's proposed budget cuts. In your March 4 editorial, you stated: "While Bush is focused on making the rich richer, his proposed Medicaid cut is forcing states to focus on ways of making the poor poorer."

You noted that the president wants "... to cut $60 billion from Medicaid over the next decade." Medicaid is an essential program that assists the elderly, the disabled and the poorest of the poor. It is not the cause of the massive federal deficit.

Huge tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthy caused the federal budget deficit. Now, the Bush administration wants to make those tax breaks permanent and pay for them by cutting needed programs to the poor.

Bush's budget significantly cuts key programs that assist low-income families. Food stamps, housing assistance and child-care assistance are all on the cutting block, even though the number of Americans living in poverty went up for the third straight year in 2003.

The Sun's editorial said it best: "Bush's priorities are dead wrong."

PAUL R. BROWN Editor's note: The writer is the Southern Nevada director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.