Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley stands to lose foreclosure mitigation, home weatherization and furnace repair funding. Vote in the NEWS POLL.
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Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley stands to lose federal money for home weatherization projects, among other efforts that help the poor.
People who can’t afford to fix their furnaces sometimes turn to dangerous alternatives such as space heaters or heat from their ovens.
Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley Executive Director Alan Jennings said he hopes the Bethlehem group’s clients don’t resort to such dangerous methods if imminent federal spending cuts reduce the group’s furnace repair funding.
Furnace repair is one of many local programs that would be cut if the so-called sequester cuts start taking effect Friday as expected, local officials said Wednesday.
“That literally could be life-threatening because if you don’t have heat, you could die of hypothermia,” said Jennings, who said the cut to CACLV would reduce the number of furnaces the organization can replace by 15 to 20 this year.
CACLV’s foreclosure mitigation and weatherization programs also stand to lose money through the sequester, Jennings said.
“A reduction could kill the Lehigh Valley’s foreclosure mitigation effort,” said Jennings, whose organization is the chief entity in the Lehigh Valley helping residents facing foreclosure.
The poor would be negatively affected in many different ways because of the sequester cuts, Jennings said. Another way they would be affected is through reductions to Meals on Wheels, said JoAnn Bergeron Nenow, executive director of the nutrition program in Northampton County.
Hitting meals, environment, schools
Statewide, Meals on Wheels stands to lose $1.9 million in funding under the sequester cuts, or the equivalent of 1 million daily meals, said Nenow, who is president of the state Meals on Wheels association.
Meals on Wheels programs that rely more heavily on government funding would be hit harder than those whose bulk funding source is fundraisers, as Northampton County’s program is, Nenow said. Northampton County Meals on Wheels gets only 27 percent of its funding from the government so should be able to survive the cuts, she said.
“If someone needs a meal in Northampton County, they’re going to get a meal,” she said.
The sequester cuts affect a wide variety of programs, including federal environmental subsidies that protect water and air quality. Combined, Pennsylvania and New Jersey stand to lose more than $12.5 million in federal environmental funding.
But aside from the funding loss, the states are also likely to experience diminished services from federal environmental agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Parks Service, said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
Those agencies would lose 5 to 10 percent in funding, Tittel said, which would mean reduced hours for national parks such as Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and delays in restoring severely polluted Superfund sites such as Curtis Specialty Papers in Milford.
"I hate to say it this way because I really hope they come to an agreement and keep things moving forward. But maybe if it (the sequester) does happen, the lesson will be how important these programs are because right now people take them for granted," Tittel said.
Schools would be hit, too. Pennsylvania would lose $47.8 million in federal education funding and New Jersey would lose $28.7 million, according to the White House.
Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, said schools with high numbers of low-income and special education students would lose the most money. The funding on the chopping block is for programs that help those students.
“It is critical government restores the money,” Belluscio said.
Federal funding makes up a smaller percent of school budgets in New Jersey than any other state, he said. But New Jersey school boards still are likely to find themselves compromised.
New Jersey law limits how much school boards can raise taxes. So when federal funding is cut from mandatory programs, he said, school boards might divert money from other programs into special and low-income education.
Federal blame spread
The Senate is expected to vote today on competing Democratic and GOP plans to deal with Friday’s automatic spending cuts. But Democrats were poised to vote down a GOP plan to give President Barack Obama flexibility to redirect money from lower priority accounts to top priorities such as air traffic control, federal law enforcement and military readiness.
Republicans, in turn, were set to kill by filibuster a Democratic measure that would forestall the automatic cuts through the end of the year, replacing them with longer-term cuts to the Pentagon and cash payments to farmers and installing a minimum 30 percent tax rate on incomes exceeding $1 million. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., on Wednesday sent out a statement in favor of the latter plan.
“Rather than slashing programs that are critical to job growth and vital to our communities in Pennsylvania, we need a balanced approach in the best interest of our economy,” Casey said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican who represents Lehigh County and part of Northampton County, said the House has twice passed bills to replace the sequester cuts with better-distributed cuts, but the Senate and Obama failed to act on the cuts until recently. Dent said he is especially troubled by cuts to defense programs and those that will temporarily release many illegal immigrants from federal detention centers.
“This sequester will be disruptive, but I’ve tried to replace it twice,” Dent said. “We can get these cuts, but we can do them through re-balancing and a better distribution.”
U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, a Republican who represents part of Warren County, feels it’s up to Democrats to avoid the sequester, said Maggie Seidel, his spokeswoman.
“Mr. Garrett joined his colleagues in the House -- twice -- to replace the sequester,” Seidel said. “He now awaits action from President Obama and his former colleagues in the Senate. Until then, all harm falls squarely on their inaction, again.”
Reporter Douglas B. Brill and The Associated Press contributed to this story.