Cities brace for bad news in Obama's next federal budget, top mayor says

The Obama administration is preparing its 2013 federal budget proposal and is letting some allies know how spending cuts will affect them. For Antonio Villaraigosa, president of the US Conference of Mayors, the news has not been good. 

|
Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor
US Conference of Mayors President Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles speaks to reporters at a Monitor-hosted breakfast in Washington on Wednesday.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, president of the US Conference of Mayors, says “bad news is coming” for the nation’s cities in the federal budget the Obama administration is preparing to release in early February.

“Anybody who saw the [budget] deal last summer and then the failure of the super committee … knew that there were going to be serious and draconian cuts,” Mayor Villaraigosa said at a breakfast for reporters hosted by the Monitor.

As part of an August deal to raise the debt ceiling, the president and Republican leaders in Congress agreed to a $1 trillion spending cap. The concern is that, to meet that obligation, the federal government will pull back from programs that help cities, such as community block grants or assistance to help pay for fire and police personnel. 

Moreover, cuts in other ares could hurt cities, too. If the federal government curtails welfare programs or spending on housing for the homeless the problems won't disappear – it's just that cities will have to increasingly pick up the tab, mayors say.  

Gene Sperling, director of the White House's National Economic Council, has been meeting with Obama administration allies to warn them about the stringent outlines of the president's 2013 budget, the Hill newspaper reported.

Mayors gathered here for their winter meeting will “put pressure and put a light on a Congress that has been an abysmal failure” on job creation, Villaraigosa said.  A key goal is to get Congress to pass a long-term transportation bill to help cities fund rapid-transit projects.

The economic outlook for the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas varies widely.

The good news is that all but three of the nation’s metro areas will see a gain in employment in 2012, according to a new report prepared for the Conference of Mayors by the IHS Global Insight forecasting firm. But only 26 areas have already regained the jobs lost in the recession and only another 26 will recover all their lost jobs in 2012, IHS said.

“Most of our cities will be struggling with their economies for another five years,“ Villaraigosa said.  “In other words it will take about five years for many of our cities to regain the jobs that were lost before this recession.”

Slower government spending will play a role in the long recovery time. The IHS report predicts that federal, state, and local spending will decline by 2.5 percent in 2012, leading to reductions in wages and salaries.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Cities brace for bad news in Obama's next federal budget, top mayor says
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2012/0118/Cities-brace-for-bad-news-in-Obama-s-next-federal-budget-top-mayor-says
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe