Trump’s budget hits poor
CUTS VITAL AID
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S budget proposal would, if passed, literally let hungry housebound senior citizens starve.
The $4.1 trillion budget sent by the White House to Congress on Tuesday proposes razing the social safety net, slashing Medicaid, gutting food stamp benefits and eliminating entirely federal funding for Meals on Wheels programs, which deliver meals to homebound senior citizens who can’t buy or make their own food.
“It’s important for seniors. It’s a miracle for me,” said 77-year-old Zoila Chunoo, a retired bookkeeper who relies on daily deliveries from Citymeals on Wheels. The charity provides more than 2 million prepared meals to over 18,000 elderly city residents each year.
“It’s a program that doesn’t help with words, but actions,” said Chunoo, who is disabled and has trouble leaving her Hell’s Kitchen apartment. “These meals keep me healthy, they keep me alive.”
Citymeals is just one piece of a broad network of more than 5,000 local, independently run programs providing homebound seniors with healthy meals delivered by staffers or volunteers and served in group settings like senior and community centers.
Such programs are funded with both federal money and by donations. But under Trump’s budget proposal, funds for the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which helps pay for the meal-delivery services, will be slashed entirely, while the SNAP food stamps, which also alleviate costs, will be cut by $191 billion.
And the Department of Health and Human Services — charged with carrying out the federally run Older Americans Act Nutrition Program and the 1965 Older Americans Act, which helps fund at least 35% of the programs — would itself see its budget cut by more than 20%.
Those cuts would “leave our most vulnerable citizens, including seniors, without a basic safety net,” Citymeals on Wheels Executive Director Rachel Sherrow told the Daily News. “Older Americans who have worked hard, raised families, fought in wars,
and given so much to their communities deserve better.”
Nearly two-thirds of Citymeals recipients are over 80, while nearly a quarter are over 90, the organization said. More than 10% are veterans, and nearly 60% of them live alone.
In addition, 25% are on Medicaid, meaning they could experience twice the pain because of the proposed cuts.
Trump’s plan calls for $3.6 trillion in federal spending cuts over the next decade, including more than $610 billion in proposed cuts to Medicaid and a 20% cut to its Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health care support for poor children.
The huge Medicaid slash comes on top of $880 billion in Medicaid cuts already included in the House bill to repeal Obamacare.
Trump, throughout his presidential campaign, had promised that he wouldn’t cut Medicaid.
The budget also proposes slashing $72 billion from Social Security disability programs — an agency Trump also promised not to touch — as well as cutting $143 billion from student loan initiatives and eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program which helps poor families pay to heat their homes during the winter. Planned Parenthood is also targeted: The budget would prohibit any abortion providers from receiving federal funds.
The plan, which would reduce spending by $272 billion for welfare programs and $57 billion for nondefense domestic programs, represents a cut of more than 10% overall.
“We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off those programs,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. The plan boosts military spending by tens of billions and calls for $1.6 billion for a border wall with Mexico that Trump has said Mexico will pay for.
Democrats slammed the proposal, titled “The New Foundation for American Greatness,” and so did some high-profile Republicans.
“It’s basically dead on arrival,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.
“The great irony is that this budget hurts many of the people that supported Trump during the campaign,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).