President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal lifts all restrictions on the use of local government money for abortions in Washington and includes nearly $20 million for “permanent supportive housing programs” in the city and $12 million to keep the D.C. school voucher program alive.
The massive $3.4 trillion plan released Thursday includes some hits and misses for D.C. compared with previous years. Obama, for example, nixed a $7 million payment to the D.C. Public Library, a priority of the former administration. But he includes $42.2 million for public schools, $20 million for charter schools and $12.2 million for private school vouchers.
The budget language does not allow new students into the voucher system, but it does authorize the 1,700 current enrollees to receive their up-to-$7,500-a-year grants until they graduate.
The president also eliminates long-standing language barring the District from funding abortions or health coverage that subsidizes abortions. Instead, D.C. will only be banned from using federal money for those purposes.
“Low-income women should be in no way disadvantaged in having access to a full range of reproductive health care,” said Laura Meyers, president of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington.
The D.C.-based National Right to Life vehemently disagreed.
“If Congress goes along with the Obama proposal, the predictable result will be tax funding of several thousand elective abortions annually, including roughly 1,000 abortions annually that would not otherwise occur,” Douglas Johnson, the group’s legislative director, said in a statement.
Also in Obama’s budget is $14 million for the District’s forensics laboratory and $5 million “to support programs aimed at reconnecting disconnected youth,” which D.C. Councilman Harry Thomas argued belongs with parks and recreation programs. There is $19.2 million to boost the city’s Housing First program, which places the homeless in permanent residences and then provides treatment for their problems.
Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells, chairman of the human services committee, said Housing First was “innovative” and “really working.”
What wasn’t in the budget? Any money for Metro. But Metro officials, including Board Chairman Jim Graham, said they would push Congress to add $150 million in dedicated funding for the transit system.
