Earlier this week the nondefense discretionary (NDD) Summit, the body that organizes opposition to spending cuts in education and social programs, held a Town Hall meeting in order to discuss the current issues looming regarding sequestration. Sequestration is a crucial issue for the Career Technical Education (CTE) community, as it would result in a significant reduction in spending on CTE programs.  Among the speakers were Sharon Parrott and Ellen Nissenbaum from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who stated that 72% of the cuts already made had fallen on program spending reductions, with only 28% coming from increased revenue through taxation. They also shared concerns over the possibility that any future deal made in Congress to avoid sequestration could shift even greater cuts onto social programs, rather than the status quo where cuts have been shared fairly evenly between NDD spending and defense spending.

Later in the Town Hall, speakers also discussed potential action and advocacy to ensure no more cuts to social programs were carried out, including the creation of a Twitter hashtag #NDDUnited, a day of action in February and a letter of objection to the cuts which can be found here. The event was rounded off with a summary of important dates, including the President’s budget being revealed in March and the House and Senate budgets being due for completion by April 15th.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2013 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Meetings and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.