Three Tucsonans traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for a “Financial Vulnerability Fly-In” sponsored by Jewish Federations of North America.
Fifty participants from across the country, including Carlos A. Hernández, president and CEO of Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona; Sophie German, director of older adult and community services at JFCS; and Andrew Gale, legacy officer at the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, spent April 1-2 lobbying members of Congress to preserve funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other social safety net programs.
The fly-in came as the U.S. House and Senate struggled to formulate budget resolutions. With the individual income tax cuts passed in 2017 due to expire at the end of this year, extending the cuts for 10 years would cost an estimated $4.6 trillion, according to JFNA, which could mean Congress would seek cuts in Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs to offset that cost.
The Senate passed a budget resolution on April 5 that would make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, but that’s only a first step toward passing a budget bill, which requires identical resolutions from the Senate and House.
German noted the importance of JFNA’s bipartisan approach, ensuring that Democratic, Republican, and independent members of Congress heard its message.
The Tucson delegation met directly with Sen. Ruben Gallego. They chatted briefly with Rep. Juan Ciscomani and met with Ciscomani’s legislative correspondent.
“Gallego was very receptive” to JFNA’s message and spoke of the need for Democrats “to work together and fight the [budget] changes, and then if possible retake the House or the Senate. And that even now, with the changes that have happened, rebuilding will take years,” German says.
Gallego talked about Section 8 housing vouchers for low-income individuals and was well aware of how proposed budget changes could impact his constituents, she says.
JFCS would also feel the impact.
“JFCS is lucky,” German says, “in the sense that we don’t have a lot of federal grants. Except for our SASIC program, most of our funding comes from the city, the county, and the state.”
SASIC is Services to Afghan Survivors Impacted by Combat.
“However, we do see a lot of community members who use AHCCCS (the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Arizona’s Medicaid program) and these changes would drastically impact our ability to provide services and their ability to engage in services for behavioral health,” German says.
Although her work is not in behavioral health, she says, “for the people that I work with the most, any kind of changes to Medicaid, nutrition benefits like SNAP and WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) and school breakfast and lunch programs, all of that would impact most if not all of the community members I work with, because I work with people who are very financially vulnerable.”
Part of German’s work is helping clients access those benefits.
“It’s important to note that this is for children, adults, older adults, this is Holocaust survivors, too,” Hernández says.
He stressed that “so much of the mental health treatment that we provide is in jeopardy” if Medicaid is cut because federal contributions to Arizona Medicaid funds are 75% or more.
“It’s not just about Tucson or JFCS. It’s about all Medicaid recipients,” he says.
“It’s devastating for people that are enduring such psychological trauma, and when you talk about the low-income population that we serve, that’s significant because these are people who have trauma because they’re financially vulnerable, because they face systemic barriers that impact their ability to make ends meet,” he says, adding that sometimes it is the psychological trauma that comes first.
The proposed cuts to social service programs would be “a big hit for our system, in ways that I’ve never witnessed in almost 30 years of doing what I do,” Hernández says.
“One of the things that members of Congress maybe realize, but maybe they don’t, is that all those issues, the mental health problems, the financial vulnerability problems that these individuals have, it’s only going to make it so much worse,” he says. “And then we’ve really got a problem.”
JFNA fly-in participants also championed the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, says JCF’s Gale.
Supplemental Security Income provides support to people with disabilities, including children, and to older adults in poverty. One-third of Holocaust survivors are recipients..
The act would raise SSI’s asset limits. Last set in 1989, they severely limit how much recipients can save for basic needs and emergencies. The act would raise the asset limit for individuals from $2,000 to $10,000 and for couples from $3,000 to $20,000. It would also index these limits to inflation moving forward.
Gallego has backed the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, Gale says.
“With Sen. Gallego, we do have an ally,” Gale says. The senator mentioned he has a child who is Jewish. He has visited many Jewish organizations in Phoenix and Tucson and understands their impact, says JCF’s Gale, who notes that according to JFNA, one in five Jewish households nationwide are financially vulnerable.
Ciscomani’s staff member “listened very intently to stories from our community,” says Gale, who notes that Ciscomani joined seven other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in signing a letter indicating that any cuts to social safety net programs would severely affect his district.
Gale notes that JFNA’s recently opened D.C. office will “be a hub” that will make continued advocacy at the federal level easier.
Hernández says he is grateful to JFNA and Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona for making the fly-in possible and to Hava Leipzig Holzhauer, JPSA president and CEO, for alerting him to the opportunity.
