Open Letter to Toomey Regarding the Incoming Funding Bill

(I realize that a lot of what I post on here is Open Letters - most of my other writing time goes into environmental sites like PittEnvironmental)

If you aren't outraged at the current spending bill that passed the House, you aren't paying attention.
For PA folks, Toomey's address in DC is:
B-40B Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Toomey:

I am a Pennsylvania native and am currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh. I don’t write physical letters to my elected officials - I generally trust that, by and large, government at all levels won’t mess things up too badly. Such is not the case with the budgeting bill that is coming to the Senate, nor, I suspect, will it be the case with the bill that gets proposed for the next fiscal year. I support debt reduction - I’m part of the generation that is going to have to pay it back. But my generation is livid at the cuts in this bill.

The cuts which have been proposed are almost entirely tiny fractions of total spending which target programs that are efficient and effective. They also tend to protect people from abuse by corporations, whether in regulation of toxic chemicals in coal ash or the potential for pricing abuses by telecommunications companies. I fail to see how net neutrality ‘kills jobs’ - the companies will still innovate, and will still have the same customers and sales. And if requiring companies to protect people and waterways from toxic sludge means that they hire a few less people, the benefits are more than worth it - but I have yet to see any evidence that that would happen either. Beyond this,  the EPA acting to limit CO₂ is the best news I’ve heard come out of DC in months. Global warming is a huge problem for all of us - and if you have questions, I’d suggest directing them to skepticalscience.com, or most scientists, including myself. 

Beyond those cuts which eliminate protections, most of the remaining cuts seem to target things which make life better, often for those who need it most - healthcare and STD treatment for low-income women, preschool for kids, and education in general. Does Planned Parenthood provide abortions? Yes - and while I think that probably helps the economic situation for a lot of people, I realize you don’t approve of them. But abortions are 3% of PP’s funding, and none of the federal money is used for them - defunding the group is an ideological attack on a program that does a huge amount of good. The same is true for the foreign aid cuts, education cuts, and for the cuts to the CPB or NEA. 

But I think the biggest reason we’re so angry is that, with very few exceptions, this doesn’t make a difference - it cuts a tiny fraction of the budget which is spent efficiently on useful programs while ignoring or worsening the much larger areas of spending which have far more inefficiency, primarily the military and medicare. If you are serious about the health and happiness of your constituents and/or effective deficit/debt reduction, I suggest that you reject most of this bill and push instead for cuts primarily to these larger areas - cutting foreign military bases, increasing the age limit for Medicare- and I’m one of those affected - supporting the recent health care reform bill, getting rid of the long-term subsidies for fossil fuels producers and huge agribusiness, and supporting the President’s call to reorganize the government to be more efficient. These are billion rather than million dollar cuts that can have a real impact. 

Don’t cut the programs that affect people who need them most - it doesn’t effectively reduce the deficit, and it doesn’t create jobs (and does, in fact, remove them), and it likely makes our communities less safe and less educated, all to meet some ideological goals. That’s poor governance. I look forward to seeing how you and the Senate deal with these issues. 

Sincerely,

Alexander Dale