As lawmakers move through the national budget creation process, poor people’s advocates say Congress is still sacrificing programs for the nation’s neediest residents in order to prop up defense spending and provide tax cuts to the wealthy. The most recent versions of the 2006 budget proposals -- passed separately by the Senate and House of Representatives on March 17 -- shocked and distressed human services advocacy groups and left a deep divide between the respective legislative bodies.

"[The budget] is a very complicated and opaque issue," said Rachel Gragg, senior policy analyst with the Center for Community Change, a progressive organization that coordinates campaigns to support low-income and working class people. "The more Americans know about it, the more outraged they will be."

Both the House and the Senate readily approved over $100 billion in tax cuts disproportionately beneficial to the wealthy.

Both the House and the Senate budgets, as currently posed, would erode domestic social service programs, though the two spending blueprints put forth by the legislative chambers differ in the extent of the cuts.

The House voted by a margin of 218-214 to pass a budget resolution that would severely gut funding for "mandatory" programs by as much as $69 billion over five years -- $18 billion more than the widely feared budget proposed by President Bush.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank focusing on economic and public policy affecting low- and moderate-income families and individuals, estimates that about half of the cuts to mandatory or "entitlement" programs will impact low-income people. Among those targeted by the House are Medicaid, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, child and foster care and adoption assistance.

The Senate rejected the president’s and the House’s proposal for mandatory spending, allotting only $17 billion in cuts to mandatory programs and protecting Medicaid from cuts this year through the Smith-Bingaman amendment. Most significantly, the Senate proposal would require $2.8 billion in cuts for Agriculture programs, some of which would likely be taken out of spending on food stamps.

Annually appropriated discretionary programs, such as early education, housing programs and veterans’ benefits, also face over $200 billion in spending cuts in both the House and Senate proposals. Head Start and Even Start are on the chopping block as well as the Perkins Student Loan program, the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program and the Community Services Block Grants.

Advocates also say the cuts would pit various groups against each other to clamor for funding; in effect, grandchildren would be fighting grandparents for health care.

Entitlement programs require the government to pay benefits to anyone who is eligible under the program guidelines and do not rely on the appropriations process for detailed budgeting. Rather, congressional committees are given a figure to reach and the authority to determine which programs to cut according to their priorities. For example, under the House version of the proposed budget, the Agriculture Committee would establish how to cut $5.3 billion, choosing between such programs as farm subsidies and food stamps.

"These are not simply numbers that are printed and then ignored," said Sharon Parrott, director of Welfare Reform and Income Support Division of CBPP. "These figures are assigned to congressional committees who will be required to actively cut programs and reduce the number of people that benefit from them. This really sets the stage for how deeply the cuts will be required to go in the coming months."

Despite the differences between the budgets, both the House and the Senate readily approved over $100 billion in tax cuts that are disproportionately beneficial to the wealthy.

Committees in both the Senate and the House will reconvene in early April to hammer out a compromise before taking the budgets back to the floors for a vote, hoping to pass a final version by April 15.

In the meantime, advocates for the poor are sounding the alarm and making urgent calls to voters about the foreseeable effects of such a severe budget hacking.

According to Parrott, the cuts in low-income programs could increase the level of poverty for seniors and people with disabilities, reduce nutrition assistance for needy families, reduce financial and child care support for low-income working families and increase the number of Americans lacking any or adequate health insurance.

Advocates also say the cuts would pit various groups against each other to clamor for funding; in effect, grandchildren would be fighting grandparents for health care.

"It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are fighting for the life of Medicaid," said Cindy Mann, Research professor at Georgetown University and one of the main presenters during a conference call organized by the Children’s Defense Fund on March 23.

"If all the programs under the Ways and Means committee were cut by the same percentage," said Parrott, "222,000 [people] would be taken off of [Supplemental Security Income]," a program providing income assistance to millions of poor seniors and people with disabilities.

Some opponents of the budget argue that cutting low-income programs will deeply affect on children for generations to come.

"[The budget] is short-sighted," said Meredith Dodson, director of domestic campaigns for Results, a nonprofit organization that works to create the political will to end hunger and poverty. "It’s not investing in kids. Studies show that investing in kids early… is essential for brain development. But we’re putting that off."

The recently published High/Scope Perry Preschool study confirms Dodson’s argument. The study, which was conducted over four decades, followed 123 low-income, African American children into adulthood, breaking the children into two groups: one consisting of kids who participated in early care and education and another group of kids who did not. The study concluded that students who participated in early care and education programs, such as Head Start, were more likely to complete high school, hold steady jobs and earn higher wages than those who did not.

The priorities for Congress, Dodson said, do not reflect the findings this study or other reasoning to support low-income programs.

"This is all about who has political power," Dodson concluded. "Low-income families, who are working two to three jobs and struggling to put food on their tables, aren’t always engaged in the political process. So it’s easy to overlook them. This isn’t about, ‘how can we take care of everyone?’ It’s, ‘how can we screw certain folks who don’t have a lot of power without making everyone have to sacrifice?’"

Supporters of the budgets say the cuts are a necessity to reduce the deficit and render the government more "fiscally responsible."

But Gragg says the slashes in social spending really indicate skewed priorities and misrepresented aims. "They are increasing defense spending and making tax cuts, and they’re hoping to offset it by cutting low-income programs," Gragg said. "This is all being done under the auspices of reducing the deficit. But the irony is, it doesn’t reduce the deficit at all."

Analysis from the CBPP shows that the budget proposals would actually increase the deficit by $217 billion as the tax cuts and increased spending on defense offset the cuts to domestic programs.

Meanwhile, thousands of organizers and activists across the country have been mobilizing to fight the budget cuts.

Gragg said the Center for Community Change is urging lawmakers not to support the final budgets when they are presented after negotiations between the House and the Senate.

"We know that they can’t improve the bills enough in conference for us to support them," Gragg said. "So we’re urging members of Congress to vote against the conference report."

United For a Fair Economy, a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about wealth inequities, has produced a website called, TaxCutsHurtKids.org as a creative communication campaign to help people connect the dots between reduced taxes and cuts in programs that benefit children. The site uses provocative posters and information pamphlets to change public perception about tax cuts and gain media attention. One poster reads, "You just got a tax cut. He just lost his after school program."

The Congress and Senate have been on recess for that last two weeks, and organizations have used this time to reach out to the elected officials.

"While the Congressmen have been home for recess, we have been urging voters to call them continuously to tell them, ‘I am watching. I see the value these programs bring to my community,’" Dodson said. "So even as these decisions are made behind closed doors and in a very non-transparent way, we’re still making an outcry. And when they go back after recess, they can say, ‘Hey, people at home really don’t agree with this.’ It will then give them political cover to do the right thing."