The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF), and the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs will all be reduced by 5.7 percent this coming year due to sequestration.
The ten-year Budget Control Act of 2011 that set up budget caps from 2011 to 2021 included a trigger of across-the-board budget cuts for some “mandatory” spending programs if Congress exceeded those caps. While that never happened, every two years, Congress would negotiate a temporary (usually two years) lift of those spending caps. Those deals, however, left some of the mandatory “sequestration cuts” in effect. Not only that, but as congressional leaders suspended the spending caps in a series of two-year budget deals, they agreed to offset some of those spending increases by extending the sequestration—now all the way until 2030. In addition to the programs just mentioned, Title IV-E Chafee administrative funds are subject to the same 5.7 percent cut, some Medicare spending is cut by 2 percent, and some mandatory defense spending is reduced by 8 percent.
The bottom line: SSBG is cut by $97 million, PSSF reduced by $28 million, Home Visiting is cut by $23 million, and Chafee administrative costs are reduced by $2 million.
