Alliance Action Alert: Contact Federal Representatives

Here's yesterday's Action Alert from the Alliance for the CSU:

CALL YOUR FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES NOW!

Tell them you oppose another $50 million cut to the CSU

A delegation of CFA leaders and students are in Washington, DC this week trying to stop another $50 million cut to the CSU budget because of the federal stimulus "trigger" adopted by the California State Legislature.

Your help is needed to support the trip with phone calls to your congressional representative.

CALL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OFFICE TODAY!

Tell Congress it is wrong to use federal recovery money as an excuse to make more budget cuts to our four-year universities.

To find the district office of your congressional representative, go to: http://www.calstate.edu/federalrelations/service_area_chart.shtml

Please call them today and tell them:

• California's governor and legislature are ignoring the goals Congress and the President set forth in providing federal stimulus money to the state.
• Using the federal money as an excuse to make more budget cuts will hurt public higher education as well in-home and other health care services - this will harm many of the very constituents that the federal money was meant to help.
• They must call their counterparts in state government, and the Governor, to tell them to stop using the so-called trigger cuts to undermine state services and access to public university education.

HOW WE GOT HERE. LEARN ABOUT THE TRIGGER AND WHY WE NEED CALLS TO YOUR U.S. REPRESENTATIVES THIS WEEK.

In the state budget deal cut on February 19, the state legislature adopted ABX3 16 - the so-called trigger.

This trigger would cut the CSU's state funding yet again if State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and California Department of Finance Director Mike Genest determine that California will not receive at least $10 billion in federal money by June 2010 to offset general fund cuts.

If this new cut is made, the CSU will lose $50 million. That is equal to the cost of about 10,000 classes in the CSU - lost. Students already can't get the classes they need to graduate on many CSU campuses.

Rather than wait to see exactly what federal money California actually will receive, the legislature and governor are requiring Lockyer and Genest to make this determination by April 1 - NEXT WEEK!