Dear Congressman Ryan:

I am weary of hearing about the “block grants” for medicare and medicaid offered by your budget, which seem to address health care by local management of funds.  Your budget is a smokescreen for sharply curtailing benefits and depriving the most needy of essential services.

I remember block grants for education in the 1980’s. I was a high school English teacher, working in an urban district in Massachusetts.  Our English department was thriving with young, enthusiastic professionals meeting the needs of an influx of Cape Verdean migrants and children who had moved out of Boston into the outlying cities and suburbs.

Suddenly the city was so cash-strapped that it had to lay off its youngest and most dynamic teachers. We were arrayed on RIF (“Reduction-in-Force”) lists and watched as these new teachers were chopped from their positions without hope for re-employment. All the schools in Massachusetts faced with the same predicament. There were no jobs to re-hire them.

Class sizes ballooned to 35, 40 and in rare cases 50.  Students who had been supported by special education and ESL teachers were neglected as the caseloads exploded. The teachers’ union was driven to striking if only to protect class sizes, but years of no cost-of-living increases ensued as well. Morale was never lower in public schools in that decade.

Concurrently the “Nation at Risk” report was issued, and we learned about all the shortcomings of our schools in the light of international competition and the raising of entry level job requirements.  We could only shake our heads in despair, realizing there were no funds available to change our programs. Funding for curriculum development, new courses and professional development was non-existent.

If you had ever been on the receiving end of “block grants,” you would never  so blithely offer them as solutions to our budget crisis. Your top-down world view obscures the actual impact of your so-called solutions to trimming the deficit.  You have no idea how many teachers left the profession forever in the 1980’s because they could not find a job. You have no idea how many students left school, because they could not get the services they needed to pass their courses.  These are the long-term, irreversible effects of block grants.

Your budget is the triumph of conviction over experience.  You and your Congressional colleagues can not comprehend the effects of your Grand Design on ordinary citizens and their children. If you could, you would not offer untenable reductions alongside tax relief for the most wealthy.  You could not claim to be serving the interests of your constituents who send their children to public and charter schools.

If we can not afford to pay the best teachers, provide the best services, both educational and medical, and to cover life-saving drugs and nursing care, what can we afford to pay?  Block grants will never adequately address these needs.