Activists warn Houston seniors could ‘starve’ under budget plan

Warning that elderly people in Houston could “starve” if Meals on Wheels programs are sharply curtailed, activists and community service groups rallied Sunday in opposition to the president’s proposed cuts to federal community support programs.

A handful of leaders, including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, laid out their case from a podium inside the Houston headquarters for Meals on Wheels, a national program that would lose funding through the proposed elimination of certain Community Block Grants administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“If they come through and make these cuts, our seniors will starve,” said Allison Booker-Brooks, CEO of the Houston YWCA, which also administers Meals on Wheels in the Houston area. “This cannot happen and should not happen in America.”

Since news of the president’s sweeping budget proposal broke late last week, Booker-Brooks said she’d taken phone calls from worried seniors who rely on Meal on Wheels.

Five main organizations administer Meals on Wheels in the Houston area, the largest being Interfaith Ministries, which hosted the press conference Sunday. The group’s president, Martin Cominsky, said Interfaith Ministries serves daily hot meals to 4,018 elderly people in the Houston area and has a waiting list of more than 800. His group spends about $7 million each year on the meal program, Cominsky said, $4 million of which comes from federal funds.

He said the program, which is planning an expansion into Galveston County, doubles as a nutrition service plus a daily safety check and friendly visit to elderly people who are often homebound and alone. Recently, Interfaith Ministries started offering additional meals for pets, Cominsky said, once it was discovered that some seniors were sharing their meals with their animal companions.

Dr. Bill Gilmer, a neurologist at Houston Methodist Hospital who treats elderly patients, praised Meals on Wheels as preventative care, noting that it can feed a senior for a year for the cost of one visit to the emergency room or two weeks in a nursing home.

Jackson Lee vowed to fight in the U.S. House against the president’s budget proposal.

“We have reached a new low in America,” she said. “Over my dead body are they going to take away from individuals who cannot speak for themselves.”

She also took aim at the president’s proposals to cut funding for other federal programs, including the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program; the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program for students; a 31 percent cut to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; $6 billion cut to the National Institute of Health and a $3.7 billion cut to funds for after-school programs.

Erica Lee Carter, a trustee of the Harris County Department of Education, said the county serves more than 10,000 students in after-school programs that she said keeps students away from gang influences or drugs.

She called the proposal to revoke federal funding “shameful and devastating.”

President Donald Trump has dubbed his proposal an “AmericaFirst” budget, which scales back spending on a host of federal agencies to fund a $54 billion hike in military spending. The president said in a statement released with his budget Friday that the shifting of federal dollars was necessary for “urgent warfighting readiness needs and to begin a sustained effort to rebuild the U.S. Armed Forces.”

The president’s proposed budget would also move $3 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for design and construction of a wall along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and to “increase immigration detention capacity.”

Jackson Lee, a member of the House Budget Committee, said that she will “insist” that the committee hold a hearing on likely effects of the proposed budget and will support efforts by House Democrats and caucuses to issue alternative budget proposals that will be incorporated into a final budget.

The president’s budget was only a proposal, still subject to change, she said, noting however that “when you have the House, Senate and White House controlled by one party, there is a question about how much changing will go on.”