CEDAR RAPIDS -- Advocates for such federal programs as Medicaid and food stamps hope Hurricane Katrina has blown away anticipated cuts to those programs.
Matt Russell, a program organizer for the Iowa Citizen Action Network, was in Cedar Rapids last night on the fifth stop of a six-city state tour to build a lobbying effort to protect human service programs. About 80 people turned out at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church to discuss how cuts to Social Security and anti-poverty programs would affect them and what to do about it.Post-hurricane rebuilding needs forced Congress to reopen its budget-writing process, an opportunity Russell and others hope to use to head off social spending cuts. They want to keep hurricane recovery spending separate from the rest of the budget and head off a round of program cuts in late October.
"We have an opportunity which, six weeks ago, we didn’t think we had,” Russell said.
The church and ICAN, along with the Mount Vernon-based Iowa Policy Project, are assembling attendees’ stories into a report to be delivered to the state’s congressional delegation.