Unless Congress and the President reach a new budget agreement, both non-defense and defense discretionary program areas will face deep cuts in 2020 and 2021, forced by tight funding limits and additional cuts (known as “sequestration”) mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA).  Without a new agreement, overall funding would revert to the BCA levels, which would require severe cuts to both defense and non-defense programs.

Since 2013, lawmakers of both parties have broadly agreed that the BCA-mandated caps are too low to meet national priorities in both defense and non-defense areas, so they have enacted a series of temporary bipartisan budget agreements to raise the spending limits.  The most recent bipartisan budget agreement, which covered fiscal years 2018 and 2019, provides a model for a new agreement: it eliminated the sequestration cuts on discretionary programs and provided additional resources for new investments in key priority areas.

Today, the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign’s multi-sector Steering Committee sent a letter urging Congress to invest an additional $5 billion in rental assistance for vulnerable people, if Congress can reach a new budget agreement that lifts the spending caps in a meaningful way.

Please read the letter below:

OSAH Letter on Budget Negotiations FINAL 4.9

To download the letter, click here.