The proposed federal budget released by the president today provides one more indication of the indifference of the Bush Administration to the real needs of working families by cutting funds for job training, cutting Trade Adjustment Assistance, refusing new funds to enforce job safety and mine safety and cutting Medicare.

At a time of skyrocketing health care costs, rising poverty, falling wages and vanishing retirement security, these cuts weaken some of the most important lifelines for working people.

• While millions of Americans remain unemployed or underemployed due to outsourcing in virtually all industries as well as continued manufacturing job loss, the president is proposing to further decimate important job-training programs.
  
• The trade deficit for 2005 is expected to shatter records at more than $700 billion, yet the President is proposing to cut the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.
  
• The president’s budget fails to fund increased enforcement of safety standards by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Mine Safety and Health Administration, even in the wake of the recent coal mining tragedies.
  
• The Bush budget slashes vital programs such as Medicare that millions of Americans in need depend upon.

At a time when the president is asking the nation’s vulnerable to swallow painful cuts to vital programs, he continues to push for massive, fiscally irresponsible tax breaks for the wealthy that will leave generations of Americans in debt.

Americans desperately need a budget that addresses the priorities of working families, one that helps create and sustain good American jobs, provides more people with health care and adequately funds programs that protect the safety of workers.

The burden of protecting working families now falls to Congress. Congress has a moral duty to reject the reprehensible cuts to working family-supporting programs and demand that the president offer America’s workers and their families a budget that gives them a fighting chance in an economic climate that’s increasingly harsh and unforgiving.

Contact: Steve Smith 202-637-5018