How does President Trump's budget 'make America great again'? By cutting funding for Meals on Wheels to pay for his precious Mexican wall
In fact, this was one of the first major campaign promises he made on the day that he announced his candidacy...on June 16, 2015.
On that now fateful date, Mr. Trump said, "I will build a great wall - and nobody builds better walls than me, believe me - and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words."
Fast forward to March 2017, and we see that Mr. Trump ordered that great wall to be built, but couldn't make Mexico pay for it after all.
The 1,900-mile-long Trump Wall is hardly inexpensive. According to a report by Reuters, the wall is estimated to cost up to $21.6 billion, and will take at least three years to build.
Those $21.6 billion won't be coming out of Mexico's central bank. Nor will they be coming from Mr. Trump's fortune.
Nope, those billions will be paid by Mr. and Mrs. American taxpayer.
Of course, Congress can't magically make those billions of dollars appear from nowhere. And the budget can't simply be adjusted by adding a "Mexican wall" item on the list of federal programs that require funding without making cuts somewhere.
Logic suggests that if any cuts are to be made, they could come from the defense budget.
Per the U.S. Defense Department, the current fiscal year's budget (authorized by President Obama) is a whopping $582.7 billion. This makes the U.S. the number one spender on defense in the globe. Currently, defense spending makes up 3.3% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to data from the World Bank.
Clearly, cutting $21.6 billion from the Pentagon would be significant but hardly detrimental to our overall defense. We could buy a smaller number of Virginia-class nuclear submarines, which have a per-unit cost of $2.688 billion for some of the savings. Or maybe we can get rid of some our old nuclear weapons and not build any new ones; we have enough nukes to destroy any potential adversary as it is.
But, no. Mr. Trump wants to cut social programs that his budget guy, Mick Mulvaney, says "don't work."
“We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. And great, Meals on Wheels sounds great. Again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion, to take the federal money and give it to the states, and say look, we want to give you money for programs that don’t work. I can’t defend that anymore. We cannot defend that anymore.”
According to the New York Times, this is an inaccurate statement.
False. Meals on Wheels helps 2.4 million people each year, including 500,000 veterans and 226,000 older citizens in the three states Mr. Mulvaney specified. And a body of research shows that it does work.
Evaluation of the home-meal delivery program found that participating helped reduce feelings of loneliness and the risk of falls while improving nutrition and food security, and even decreasing government spending.
The New York Times explains that some of this program's federal funding is mandated by the Older Americans Act, and that it is not clear whether those funds are covered in the cuts. (Trump's budget is not clear on specifics. One wonders why.) However, other sources of funding for Meals on Wheels do come from block grants which are on the Administration's chopping block.
Again, per the Times:
The White House does propose to eliminate the Community Service and Community Development Block Grants, two programs that provide assistance to antipoverty efforts. These are characterized by the budget as having little effect, but are used by many state and local Meals on Wheels programs to cover gaps in funding, said Jenny Bertolette, the vice president of communications at Meals on Wheels.
At the same time that President Trump is asking his minions to cut spending to help the poor in the U.S., he wants to add $54 billion to an already bloated Pentagon budget.
If this is what Mr. Trump means by making America great again, he is doing so at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens.
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-wall-exclusive-idUSKBN15O2ZN
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/wild-donald-trump-quotes/14/
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/652687/department-of-defense-dod-releases-fiscal-year-2017-presidents-budget-proposal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/us/politics/fact-check-mick-mulvaney-trump-budget-director.html?_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/16/politics/donald-trump-defense-budget-blueprint/
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