Cities should question what programs Congress is sparing from cuts

The budget imbroglio seizing Congress (and most state legislatures) throws an ominous shadow over America's cities and towns — and their people.

It's time for our local governments, which deal with the day-to-day impacts of rising needs and insufficient revenues, to roar back and demand fresh thinking.

The grassroots America famously advertised for its strong communities is on the fiscal ropes. It will be hurt more deeply by many of the budget cuts now being voted on.

It's easier to excuse governors and legislatures with balanced-budget requirements, grappling with the grim impact of recession-undermined revenues and fast-escalating health costs. But the Republican Congress and President Obama deserve failing grades for focusing all their budget-cutting efforts on the 15 percent of the federal budget accounted for by non-defense discretionary spending.

The result has been a carnival of knife-wielding that may get even worse with the next fiscal year. While massive farm subsidies are left intact, we're in danger of shrinking or killing programs that provide some relief from poverty, assist public transportation and Amtrak, underwrite Head Start and parts of college tuitions, and support the Legal Services Corporation, family planning counsel and technology innovation programs.

Other targets include the new, extraordinarily competitive TIGER (for transportation) and Sustainable Communities (housing-environment-transportation) grant programs. The knife may also terminate the Hope VI public-housing program with its signature achievements in substituting economically integrated and stable neighborhoods in place of poverty-laden, crime-battered projects.

Of special concern is the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, destined for termination by the House GOP.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak points out the flexible funding CDBG allows is used differently in different communities — "and that's the whole point, to respond to special local needs and encourage innovation, based on the judgment of local officials 'most in touch.' "

In Minneapolis, Rybak notes, block grants have covered initiatives ranging from bio-terrorism protections to anti-foreclosure counseling to helping prevent kids' exposure to lead. The city has also used CDBG to fund a youth-violence prevention initiative that's significantly cut juvenile crime. It's also enabled a Neighborhood Employment Network that's moved 12,000 people into jobs through community-based providers.

With city budgets "devastated" by state funding cuts, the assistance is needed more than ever, Rybak contends. Arguably, the issue goes a lot deeper: It's the danger of budget cuts stripping a range of federal activities to keep our communities strong and viable, even while vastly bigger parts of the federal budget escape deep scrutiny.

The harsh fact, trumpeted most loudly by former Sen. Alan Simpson (co-chair with Erskine Bowles of the budget reform commission), is that long-term federal budget stability can't be achieved until virtually all major federal expenditures are "on the table." This means Social Security, Medicare and other "entitlements" set to balloon in cost as the baby boomers retire. It means the tax code's vast array of special deductions. It means farm subsidies. And it means defense.

America's defense budget today is double what it was on 9/11. Today, with military forces in 150 countries, the United States' armaments budget is nearly equal to the sum total of all other nations'.

Is there a chance the escalating trillions in deficits and national debt will open frank debate — not just about defense, but about taxes, Medicare/Medicaid and skyrocketing medical costs, even Social Security benefits and retirement age?

The Simpson-Bowles commission set the stage. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., have assembled allies into a senatorial "Gang of Six" willing to examine and challenge the entire array of federal outlays.

But the opposition will be ferocious. That's why America's broad local government sector — mayors, county leaders, council members — needs to mobilize their constituencies to join the struggle. Because their future, and ours, collectively, depends on it.

Neal Peirce's email address is nrp@citistates.com