Democrats Again Criticize Republican Budget

From a new press release issued by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee:

Republicans are defending their proposed cuts to the Social Security Administration (SSA) budget by seeking to downplay the impact of reducing the SSA’s spending level to $10.7 billion this year.

The facts are clear: this represents a 9.3 percent decrease from Fiscal Year 2010 spending levels of $11.8 billion. It would leave the already cash-strapped agency with fewer resources with which to process claims for seniors and people with disabilities. In fact, SSA says that the GOP proposal is equivalent to up to four weeks of furloughs at the agency.

The Republican budget plan calls for $10.7 billion in overall spending for SSA in 2011, $1.7 billion less than the Social Security Administration needs to fulfill its obligations. They claim their budget represents a 1 percent cut from last year to SSA – but to get there they ignore more than $600 million in additional cuts to the reserve account and funding budgeted for a National Computer Center. The math is simple:

• $10,675,500,000 in general operating expense funding for the Social Security Administration
• $485,000,000 for continuing disability reviews and redeterminations
• $161,000,000 in collected fees
• $500,000,000 cut to Social Security Administration’s reserve account
• $118,000,000 cut to what has been budgeted for the National Computer Center

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• $10.7 billion TOTAL