Reagan Budget Will Cut City Services

The city of Cambridge last week released a report detailing the effects of budget cuts proposed by the Reagan administration on social services the city officers and on other institutions in the city that receive federal funds.

The report concludes that there has been a fundamental change in the attitude of the federal government towards helping those who cannot help themselves: whereas before the federal government took from the more fortunate to help the less fortunate, it is now content to let people move out of the cities if the cities cannot help them, the report states.

The net effect of the loss over the next five years of some $106 million in federal aid to Cambridge combined with revenue lost under Proposition 2 1/2, will be "poverty, misery, and more people on the welfare roles. Life will become desperate," Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 said when the report was released.

Divided into five sections, the report presents a detailed analysis of how lost funds will affect the city's low-income recipients of human services such as welfare, medicaid, food stamps, the effects on education and manpower, community development and housing, and transportation, the humanities, criminal justice, and economic development.

More Losses

Cambridge not only stands to lose from the cuts in federal spending, but will suffer losses from higher costs created by the cuts, especially where the city has to pay for administering programs the federal government scales down and where the city has to provide missing social services.

In the area of human services, Cambridge stands to lose because responsibility for administering programs has been shifted to the city while no funds have been provided to cover the costs.

Cuts in food stamps will affect 124 Cambridge families who currently qualify. Cuts in medicaid payments will mean that Cambridge Hospital will be forced to operate at a deficit next year because of federal reimbursements will not cover costs.

In Cambridge, reductions in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program--a federally funded nutrition and health-care program--will eliminate money for 600 of the 1800 people currently in the program. The report says that cuts in this program will eventually lead to increased infant mortality and incidents of birth defects; the combined cuts in WIC and Medicaid will strain Cambridge's ability to provide health care.

The Cambridge city schools stand to lose $983,805 in federal aid next year for programs like occupational education, for programs for disadvantaged students and students with special needs, and in funds to help implement desegregation.

No Work

Though the city's report was supposed to describe the effects of budget cuts on all institutions in the city, Duehay said last week Harvard and MIT had not yet given the city information on how federal cuts would affect them.

Duehay said he did not think the economic crisis in America was so severe that the federal government should "turn its back on the people of the cities," adding that he "had faith in the budget process" to make people reduce these cuts when they see it is impossible for local governments to make up the difference."