Reconciliation Cuts Between the Lines
New data analysis & CWW's first guest contribution
Welcome, Wonks!
This week, we’re launching Child Welfare Wonk’s inaugural contributor series, interrogating the concept of prevention itself.
Plus, we visualize how an obscure policy could lead to budget reconciliation containing even more cuts to child and family programs.
Let’s get after it.
NEW Contributor Series: Say Less
This week we are kicking off Child Welfare Wonk’s first piece by contributor.
We will be launching a variety of new offerings from contributors in the coming weeks, spanning perspectives from across the field and political spectrum.1
Say Less is a new series from Kimberly Martin, which will explore the contradictions and policy tensions contained in the seemingly simple words we take for granted.
Say Less: Do We Mean the Same Thing When We Say “Prevention…?”
By Kimberly J. Martin, JD.
The layered language of child welfare reform obscures the paradoxes those words contain. Seemingly obvious words like “prevention” contain deep policy tensions.
Sometimes prevention means making sure families never need the system in the first place. Policies that promote economic development and a strong safety net promote family autonomy. Think quality jobs, stable housing, and direct financial support.
Sometimes prevention means community programs, like federal Community Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) grants. This too has layers; it can prevent or address a looming crisis, so families never encounter the child welfare system, or it can keep families “near but not in” the system, preparing them to enter it.
Other times, it means the system itself delivering services– case plans, compliance checklists, and conditional services offered under threat of removal. The Family First Prevention Services Act funds services to prevent foster care. But eligibility happens once you’re at imminent risk of entering foster care, which is the backup plan.
All of these are called prevention, and that’s the problem. One word is doing and hiding too much. When everyone’s using the same word for radically different things, families caught in the middle pay the price for the lack of clarity.
Prevention can be safety and it can also be surveillance. What are we preventing when a family isn’t “in the system” but is surrounded by it?
Bipartisan federal investments in prevention have grown in recent years, including:
Title IV-B. Last year’s bipartisan reauthorization included $75M in new mandatory annual funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program;
Family First Prevention Services Act. Starting at $13M in federal funds in FY2020 it has continued to rise, to $172M in FY2023;
CBCAP: From under $40M in FY2019 to $70M in FY2025.
The challenge is that funding follows framing. We’ve defined prevention in relation to the system, so 54% of federal Title IV-E funds still go to foster care; $5B in FY2023.
If “risk” is defined by poverty, disability, or race, then prevention becomes racialized prediction. That’s why last year’s Title IV-B reauthorization saw bipartisan commitment to ensuring poverty alone can no longer be considered neglect.
Even with this progress, too many families still encounter the system unnecessarily. One study found that 53% of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child-welfare investigation by the time they turn 18.
If you find that alarming, you should know that the base rate is also staggering; nearly one-third of all children nationally receive a child welfare investigation by age 18. That’s not prevention, it’s profiling – with paperwork.
I’ve personally experienced an inconvenient reality; in child welfare, proximity to the problem can disqualify you from defining it, while distance can buy you the authority to do so.
Until we agree on what prevention is and isn't, reform will keep misfiring, and families will continue taking the hit.
If prevention doesn’t restore agency to families and communities, it’s just another program pretending to help.
Say less.
About Say Less
Each edition of Say Less interrogates the language of child welfare policy, revealing the contested conversation underneath.
Written by policy strategist Kimberly Martin, the series draws from her lived experience and legal expertise to unsettle euphemisms and bring precision to policy.
Policy News: Reconciliation Update
On May 22nd by a vote of 215-214, the U.S. House passed budget reconciliation legislation with huge child and family policy implications.
Reminder on Reconciliation: Our reconciliation overview explains how this fast-track simple-majority legislative process works.
It matters for child welfare since it could include funding cuts and policy changes for:
Medicaid;
the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG); and
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
What Passed the House: The House-passed bill includes over $700B of health cuts, including changes to Medicaid like:
Reporting requirements for work;
New cost-sharing for Medicaid beneficiaries;
More frequent eligibility determination paperwork
Financial penalties for states using their own funds to cover children and families who are not lawfully present in the U.S.; and
Elimination of state financing mechanisms for expanding access to specialty services like mental health.
The bill would also make nearly $300B in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including new reporting requirements related to work.
The bill now moves to the Senate, which will take up consideration after this week’s Congressional recess.
Senate, Not So Settled: While the bill passed the House, its path in the Senate is far from certain, especially in its current form.
Major tension points make for a complex path forward with little margin for error.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), called Medicaid cuts a “hidden tax on working poor people who are trying to get health care.”
At the same time, Senators like Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) oppose the bill for making too small of cuts and not eliminating the deficit.
Further complicating the process is uncertainty around President Trump’s position. After boosting the House bill, he said of possible Senate changes:
“I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want. It will go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them. In some cases, those changes may be something I’d agree with, to be honest. … I think they are going to have changes. Some will be minor, some will be fairly significant.”
Next week, we’ll be tracking the Senate’s reconciliation process, keeping the focus on what’s really on the chopping block.
Original Analysis: Cuts Contained Between the Lines of Reconciliation
In addition to last week’s House vote, a new development worth monitoring emerged. An arcane budget rule could create major cuts to programs including the:
Social Services Block Grant (SSBG);
Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program; and
Title IV-B Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program.
What’s Happening: If budget reconciliation didn’t feel complicated enough, it’s time to talk about the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go-Act of 2010 (S-PAYGO, P.L. 111-139).
S-PAYGO is a product of its 2010 environment; much like Adele’s hit single, Congress was Rolling in the Deep deficits that came out of the Great Recession response.
Congress is best at doing things it forces itself to do (like debt limits and spending cliffs), and S-PAYGO brings that to deficit reduction.
What S-PAYGO Does: The thinking is simple; surely Congress won’t leave new spending or tax cuts unbalanced if the price of doing so is automatic painful cuts?
Instead, much like the debt limit this convoluted measure is usually more of a bargaining chip in negotiations. Usually Congress simply votes to waive it later on.2
S-PAYGO Now: The twist is that CBO estimates this reconciliation bill would add so much to the deficit that these are not your typical across-the-board percentage cuts.
On May 20th, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sent a letter to U.S. House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-PA) regarding the S-PAYGO interaction.
The letter confirms that if enacted, the reconciliation bill’s addition of over $2T to the deficit would trigger across-the-board budget sequestration cuts.
These would hit an array of mandatory programs,3 which are those whose funding continues without needing new approval from Congress each year.
What’s New: Beyond a required reduction in Medicare spending, CBO says S-PAYGO would require eliminating all funding for every other program subject to sequestration. For 10 years.
“After accounting for the reduction in Medicare spending, the required reduction in spending for other programs would exceed the estimated amount of resources available to those programs in each year over the 2027–2034 period. If OMB sequestered all of the funding for those programs, the total amounts would be less than the reductions required by S-PAYGO.”
The Cuts at a Glance
$1.7B/year Social Services Block Grant (SSBG)
You can see more here on SSBG’s major role in child welfare.
It was on the reconciliation chopping block but then seemingly spared.
Now it’s back in the mix.
Over $600M and Rising/Year: Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program
In many ways the gold standard of bipartisan evidence-based child and family policy.
MIECHV was just reauthorized in 2022 by massive bipartisan margins.
$289M/Year for States in Title IV-B Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program.
If S-PAYO hit, it wouldn’t just erase those gains, but the entire mandatory funding distribution in Promoting Safe and Stable Families.
So Are These Cuts Guaranteed? Definitely not.
Practically every time Congress faces automatic cuts, they waive the requirement in later legislation. That includes the expiring 2017 tax cuts this bill extends.
Why this Warrants Attention: 2025 is not a year that has followed any typical playbook when it comes to political incentives or policy processes.
The razor-thin vote margins needed to advance legislation make nothing a guarantee.
In addition, the backdrop of tensions over unilateral executive spending and staffing cuts make this more complicated; automatic cuts sound different with DOGE.
Analysis: Projected FY2026 Sequestration Cuts to SSBG, MIECHV, and Title IV-B
At Child Welfare Wonk, we don’t traffic in vibes and vagaries. We know you need clarity about what these cuts would mean for programs you care about.
So we built you a projection that shows the state-by-state cuts just from SSBG, MIECHV, and Title IV-B, which range from ~$6M to ~$250M.
Projected Sequestration Cuts By State without S-PAYGO Waiver
Data from ACF, CRS, & HRSA. Projection analysis and visualization by Child Welfare Wonk.
10 Biggest State Sequestration Cuts in FY2026: SSBG, MIECHV, and Title IV-B
To further drill down on the possible impact, this chart shows the 10 states that would see the biggest cuts under this scenario.
It’s a mix of both large states and those that have been recent electoral battlegrounds.
The tension will remain while these cuts persist as possible. We’ll be watching for what comes next.
Thanks for reading, Wonks!
And if you’re interested in becoming a contributor, here are the details.
Because Congress foresaw this dynamic, so they aren’t allowed to just waive it as part of the reconciliation vote. So instead they come back later.