Federal funds for poor communities axed

On Feb. 6, former President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, the Barack Obama administration proposed steep cuts in two of the leading programs benefiting America’s poorest communities: community service grants and community development block grants. According to White House Budget Director Jacob Lew, the former will be cut in half, with the balance going to a “competitive grant program.” CDBG funding will be cut by 7.5 percent, or $300 million.

Obama, who proudly promoted his experience as a “community organizer” in his 2008 presidential campaign, will cut organizing jobs in low-income communities more than any president since Reagan.

But the Republican majority in the House of Representatives outdid Obama by proposing reduction of the CDBG appropriation by over $500 million.

On Feb. 19 the House also voted to slash more than $60 billion from hundreds of federal programs, including health care, Title X family planning, education, the environment and 40-percent cuts in foreign-aid programs that fight AIDS, malaria and hunger. If these cuts are implemented, the Social Security Administration would have to furlough employees.

The gap between the Democratic and Republican parties on the federal budget now threatens a government shutdown that would, in one fell swoop, discontinue payments to U.S. soldiers, cut off benefits to veterans, and stop Social Security payments to seniors

Considering that the CDBG program creates more than 100,000 jobs in construction, renovation and community services each year in low-income neighborhoods and generates more than $300 million annually in program income for cities and states, the cuts proposed by both President Obama and the Republican House would have a significantly negative impact on the already floundering national economy.

Signed into law in 1974, the Community Development Block Grant is one of the longest-running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. CDBG funds local community development activities such as affordable housing, anti-poverty programs and infrastructure development.

CDBG has consistently provided about $4 billion per year to more than 1,100 local and state governments to create jobs and desperately needed services, especially in low-income communities. CDBG funding helps provide a range of services targeted to low-income and middle-income residents by helping with homeownership assistance, developing senior and youth centers, providing employment training and offering mental health services.

CDBG also includes a loan guarantee program that provides assistance for financing economic development activities, construction projects and property acquisition intended to aid low- and middle-income residents. Larger cities and counties receive annual entitlements under the program, while smaller jurisdictions compete for discretionary grants awarded through the state.

Yet many Congress members, especially those most recently elected to office from the racist Tea Party, appear to know very little about the program, including how it has been used to directly benefit communities in the districts they were supposedly elected to represent.

Recipients of CDBG grants are required to submit documentation to HUD proving that the grant funds were utilized in areas where 51 percent of the residents were of low or moderate income based on the last federal census. Larger cities and urban counties are required to submit a Consolidated Plan to HUD and hold public meetings to solicit input from the community to ensure that proposed projects are aligned with the community’s most urgent needs.

In the city of Newark, CDBG funds projects such as replacing curbs and sidewalks, paving streets, installing water lines and improving storm drainage. In New York City, CDBG funds housing assistance to local neighborhoods and cleaning vacant lots to reduce the health hazard of rat infestation.

“It is literally the lifeblood for creating affordable housing in Philadelphia,” said that city’s mayor, Michael Nutter. “The program commonly called ‘CDBG’ has helped get homeless people off the street and built up neighborhoods there. Everyone knows that it works. You will hear as much about it from Republican mayors as from Democrat mayors.” (Reuters, Feb. 8)

The willingness of both parties in both the executive and legislative branches of government in Washington to gut a program like CDBG — a program which makes so much sense when measured by the service it provides to the poorest communities and by the positive stimulation to local economies — only proves that these pro-capitalist politicians cannot be relied on to address the needs of the masses of workers and oppressed. For a blueprint of struggle on strategy on how to address those needs, we need only look to developments in the streets of Madison, Wis., and Cairo, Egypt.