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National Disability Radio: Spilling the Tea on All Things

National Disability Radio: Spilling the Tea on All Things

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 Congress? The budget? What’s the whole deal there? You asked, we brought someone on who answered! NDRN’s Deputy Executive Director for Public Policy Eric Buehlmann came on the podcast to explain what’s going on with the budget and how it impacts the funding NDRN and the Protection and Advocacy network receives. Full Transcript Available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-may25/ Tell Congress to Protect our Programs: https://secure.everyaction.com/I6avR5LSvUamWdNZNIgMew2 Jack Rosen: And Michelle, do you want to kick us off? Michelle Bishop: Are we recording? I’m totally sending a text message. Okay. Okay, I’m ready. Stephanie Flynt McEben: Well, now we have our whole… Blah. Now we have our cold open. Michelle Bishop: Of course we do work on these. We somehow put out an episode every month. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Are we doing the opening for the whole episode or are we just getting our conversation with Eric started? Stephanie Flynt McEben: I thought we were doing the conversation with… Wait, I don’t care. Jack Rosen: I guess just with Eric. If we have time at the end, we’ll do an open and close, but here, I think I can- Michelle Bishop: I know, but I don’t know how to frame what this conversation is. It might be- Stephanie Flynt McEben: Like spilling the tea on all things. I don’t know. Jack Rosen: That will be the podcast title, but- Stephanie Flynt McEben: I love that. Michelle Bishop: Thank you. Jack Rosen: Just ask me who our guest is today and I think I can take it from there. Michelle Bishop: Okay, deal. *Intro Music Plays* Jack, tell the people who our guest is this month. Jack Rosen: So today, we have on Eric Buehlmann, NDRN’s director of public policy and Stephanie’s boss. He is here today to… Folks have a lot of questions about what’s going on with our funding. We’ve seen a lot in the news about proposed cuts to various programs that the P&A network supports, and folks within and throughout the network have a lot of questions about what’s going on right now. So we’re bringing in Eric Buehlmann, NDRN’s director of public policy, congressional insider, and expert on all things budgetary. Stephanie Flynt McEben: And fierce leader of the public policy duo here at NDRN, so yeah, Eric, if you want to spill some tea. Eric Buehlmann: Thanks for inviting me on today. So I feel overwhelmed by the introduction in terms of being a congressional expert on the budget, but it is a very confusing and hidden process in a lot of respects, but also very scary because as you all well know, our members, the protection and advocacy and client assistance programs depend on the federal funding to provide the great advocacy work they’re doing. I guess from the beginning, the president is supposed to propose a budget, and we haven’t really seen a full budget yet proposed. We have seen some things leaked which were very devastating to our network in terms of getting rid of what I call the mothership program or defunding the mothership program, the Protection and Advocacy for Developmental and Disabilities program, but also in the same breath, the voting program, and then also severely curtailing the mental illness program, PAMI. So that leaked budget was very scary, but is also one of those steps that most people don’t ever see. It usually takes place the year before, so in this case, this would have taken place in 2024. That kind of discussion between the Office of Management and Budget and the agency, Health and Human Services would have taken place. But because we have a new president that came in, those discussions were taking place earlier in 2025, but that’s also just one step. So the agency does get to push back on any proposal that they get from the Office of Management of Budget, and our understanding is that there was some pushback. We don’t know exactly what that pushback is, but that could mean that there aren’t defunding those programs. It could mean reductions in the amounts of cuts that existed. It could mean anything. Most recently, the president released what’s called a skinny budget, and that is usually what happens when a new administration, a new president comes in, because they haven’t been working on it for the last eight, 10 months. It’s hard to produce a 1,200-page document, 1,200 pages plus that the president’s budget usually is, so you get what’s called a skinny budget, which just has top line numbers. You can see the problems that may exist in those top line numbers with huge reductions in what they released in what’s called discretionary funding. That’s what’s done by Congress, and especially the non-defense side, which is where all our funding is. But you can see by just the sheer fact of a 23% reduction, which is just a massive reduction in that kind of funding, that that probably has a negative impact on our programs, but it doesn’t get down to the detail of those kinds of levels in terms of being able to know what ...
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