House Republicans' budget will hurt young Americans

Much of what happens in the halls of Congress does not directly affect college students and young adults. A recently proposed budget by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does.

Although it was rejected outright by the Senate, it reveals the values and priorities of the House and can help explain why there is so much gridlock in Congress.

The fiscal 2014 budget proposed and passed by the House last week is as austere as it is reckless. One of the main components of the bill is to repeal the Affordable Care Act in an effort to balance the budget in 10 years.

Unfortunately, repealing the landmark health care law would do nothing to reduce the deficit, only cause hardship. According to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing the Affordable Care Act would actually increase the deficit in the short term.

Repealing the law will also hurt young people, especially those just out of college. The law provides for individuals to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they are 26 years old. This means recent college graduates will have health care even if they cannot immediately find a good job with benefits.

This provision affects more than six million young people, and if the law is repealed as the House budget proposes, it would remove a vital safety net that many use during the challenging transition between graduating college and finding a career.

Directly assaulting financial aid for college students, the House budget freezes Pell Grants at current levels of aid for a maximum grant of $5,645 for the next 10 years.

Pell Grants are federal aid provided to low-income students who could otherwise not afford the opportunity of going to college, and the grants currently help 9 million students pay for college, including many attending IU. The proposed “freeze” on Pell Grants actually acts as a deep cut because college costs have continually risen at a faster rate than inflation.

According to a study by the Center for American Progress, an estimated 1 million students could lose their

Pell Grants and likely their opportunity for a college education.

A final and very important component of the House budget is the proposal to cut the top marginal tax rates from 39 percent to 25 percent.

Although this proposal does not explicitly affect college students, tax rates are the key point of impasse in Congress, namely Congressional Republicans’ complete unwillingness to allow higher tax rates or revenues.

Any bill that contains an increase in tax revenue is voted down by the Republicans despite the fact income inequality is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression.

The Democrat-controlled Senate’s budget includes both budget cuts and tax revenues, and polls show such a balanced approach is what the American people want, too.

Republicans refuse to consider this option, and their budget goes even further by cutting tax rates by almost 15 percent, with students, young people and other vulnerable Americans footing the bill.

Presenting budgets comes with its fair share of political posturing, and this budget had no real chance of passing. Regardless, the House budget is particularly out of touch.

Many of the budget proposals are positions that Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney ran and lost on last November. These ideas were already presented and soundly rejected. The House budget should not be a starting point for negotiation, and denying poor students aid to college while cutting taxes for the rich should never be a starting point for anything.

­— samblatt@indiana.edu