The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) board in late June voted to mount an emergency national mobilization, on the order of the community’s pro-Israel lobbying, to protect endangered human service programs, including many funded by a combination of Jewish philanthropic money and government funding, and to educate Jews about the potential impact of the mushrooming budget crisis.
“This was a spontaneous response to frustration with the situation and a touch of embarrassment over the community’s lack of action so far,” said Hannah Rosenthal, JCPA’s executive vice chair. The JCPA is comprised of representatives from 122 community relations councils and 13 national organizations.
Among Jewish groups, only the Reform movement challenged the two big tax cuts enacted since Bush was inaugurated in 2001.
Last week the Rabbinical Assembly, representing Conservative rabbis, came to Washington in part to lobby against new tax cuts.
The JCPA moves come just days after last week’s release of the 2002 New York Jewish Community Study, which revealed that one in five Jewish households in New York City is at or below the poverty line and that Jewish poverty has more than doubled in the past 10 years.
They also come less than three weeks after a Jewish Week story detailed widespread silence in the community on Bush’s tax and budget policies.
Rosenthal described a meeting in which a presentation on rising Jewish poverty in New York “really generated a lot of passion. You could feel it growing.”
The result was the creation of an “emergency task force” to formulate recommendations for political advocacy in Washington and in state capitals “as a Jewish communal response to the fact that every day, the funding pie is getting smaller, while needs are growing,” Rosenthal said. “There was a real feeling that we, as a national agency, have to find a vehicle to do what we can, at this late hour, to address this awful situation.”
The JCPA task force will also present a plan for educating local communities about the huge impact of budget decisions being made this year in Washington.
The crisis mood was reflected in the time frame. The task force was given six weeks to complete its recommendations, with the hope that Jewish community activists would be able to influence the heated appropriations fights in Washington this fall.
Rosenthal said JCPA’s position on tax cuts is unchanged.
“Our position has been that Congress should meet these critical human needs first, and then, once these needs are met, consider tax cuts,” she said.
But the rising threat of major government spending cuts and dramatic new evidence of rising Jewish poverty are convincing more and more Jewish activists that that standard has not been met.
David Stierman, co-chair of JCPA’s equal opportunity and social justice task force, said that after Monday’s meeting a “significant number of people realize these social programs are not being funded in adequate ways.”
The Jewish community’s first priority, he said, is to redouble political advocacy in Washington and in statehouses across the country to protect vital programs.
But other participants said JCPA and other Jewish groups are likely to resist if congressional Republicans and the Bush administration push for still more tax cuts, as they have promised.
“The real key to the discussion was the question of whether the tax cuts are a ‘Jewish issue,’ ” said Bob Zweiman, past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans (JWV). “Yesterday there was agreement that it is. There should have been previous discussions of this issue and how it affects the American public in general and the Jewish community.”
At Monday’s meeting, Zweiman teamed with Leonard Fein, executive director of the Reform movement’s Commission on Social Action, to push through the resolution calling for an all-out national mobilization.
Zweiman said the JWV, generally regarded as on the conservative end of the Jewish political spectrum, led the charge because of the huge impact budget cuts are already having on Jewish veterans, many of them elderly.
World War II veterans, in particular, are feeling the pinch as low-interest rates and the declining stock market reduce the value of savings and pensions, and as government-funded programs for the elderly face big cuts.
Fighting new tax cuts at a time of rising social needs and declining government funding is a “compassionate issue,” he said.
Zweiman said Jewish leaders were slow to realize the connection between big tax cuts and the budgetary pressure that will force huge reductions in federal funding in the years to come.
“There really is a feeling that yes, we should have been doing something about it, but that nothing had, in fact, been done,” he said.
Other participants said that with this spring’s big tax cuts already signed into law, the community’s first priority should be to fight for its fair share of a rapidly shrinking funding pie.
“We don’t see asking Congress to rescind the tax cuts; they’re not going to do that,” said William Rapfogel, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. “What we do have to do is organize in an unprecedented way, the way we’ve organized on behalf of Israel, to make sure people get the services they need in this environment.”
JCPA and its constituent agencies, he said, have to work at the federal, state and local levels to “talk about the issues of hunger, job training, housing, services to the elderly, medical care. People in Congress have to hear from their own constituents, not just from the liberals in New York.”
New York, Rapfogel said, may be the leading edge of a crisis that will afflict Jewish communities from coast to coast.
Rapfogel said he was surprised by the emotional reaction from the JCPA board.
“It was a very responsive group. We didn’t expect our presentation would create that kind of furor,” he said.
Rosenthal said Rapfogel’s presentation created a “real buzz. People really picked up on something he said — that it’s going to be a very hard winter for many people in our community if we don’t make this a summer of advocacy.”
