> Trump has turned out to be much more conservative than
> some of us thought last year (I had read he had a much more
> moderate history).
Well yeah, that. But also it’s becoming more apparent by the day and by the hour (as if it wasn’t all along) that Trump is just totally clueless about how government works and what government does and what government ought to be doing. And he has surrounded himself by a cadre of the equally clueless (at best) and overtly destructive (at worst) people like Bannon. And that elected Repubs in Congress, generally, are all just about as clueless or destructive. And that conservative Republican voters, even more generally, have been propagandized into cluelessness by the right-wing media.
What kind of monster eliminates funding to help low-income and elderly pay their heating bills (LIHEAP-$3.4 billion)? And Meals on Wheels (Community Services Block Grant- $715 million), for pete’s sake? And a reading program for students with disabilities (Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program- $190 million)?
To contrast: It’s costing NYC $500,000 per day to continue securing Trump Tower for Melania-- on pace for $183 million/year. In his first month in office, his three trips to Mar-A-Lago cost taxpayers upwards of $10 million-- that will be $235 million over four years…if he cuts his travel there in half. By comparison, Obama’s eight-years of travel cost taxpayers $97 million. Trump spent over 10 percent of that in one month.
This budget has no chance of passing Congress, but it really does show this man’s soul.
ETA: Here’s a nicely itemized listof everything, with price tags, this White House wants to eliminate from the federal budget.
Think of the constitution he’d be violating if he did that. Don’t like the travel ban? What makes you think the president can overturn drug laws (passed by Congress)?
The budget is a proposal not an executive order. It has to be enacted by Congress. Trump could do the same thing with drug decriminalization; propose to Congress that they repeal all federal drug laws. No constitutional issue with that.
I know. Totally out of the blue, am I right? Because the members of this board have been so supportive of Trump up to now. But cutting funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission has always been the third rail of American politics.
If you want to cut government spending, you make two lists. The first list is all the programs that you cannot really cut, that are really important. The second list is everything else.
Then you throw the second list away. We don’t spend enough on those programs to matter. All the cuts have to come off the first list, or you won’t cut spending.
However, the question you ask misses a big point. Are those programs duplicates or are there additional programs that provide the same kind of services? Also, do the programs work?
Do you know? I don’t.
One of the problems with beginning any sort of handout program is that if, at a later point, anyone wishes to cut spending the ‘Think of the children!’ logical fallacy comes out.
Given that there are a limited set of resources, there will have to be rationing of some sort. What do you think the first criteria for funding a program ought to be? Pity? Or maybe something more concrete like effectiveness and cost?
Trump claims “LIHEAP is a lower-impact program and is unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes.”.
The question then becomes whether or not that is true. I don’t know but instead of just calling Trump a horrible person, I actually looked into the matter.
Here is one for you. Obamasuggested cutting funding for LIHEAP for FY 2012. Why? Because in 2009 the LIHEAP funding doubled.
Make the bastard pay for his own travel and security costs if they exceed normal parameters. As for the budget items…I actually agree on about a billion dollars of them. But boosting military spending is just stupid.
I can tell you with absolute confidence that Meals on Wheels is an effective program, and that there are no other programs like it. MOW delivers to people 60 and older who have disabilities or who are very low income. In some cases, it is the only meal they have for the day.
It allows a lot of older folks to stay in their homes and not end up in a care facility. “So what?”, you say. Well, who do you think ends up paying the high costs of those facilities in the case poorer folks? That’s right, the taxpayer in the form of Medicaid. The cost for a month’s care in a facility pays for lunches for one person for seven fucking years.
The federal government does not foot the entire bill for MOW. The drivers and many of the workers are volunteers. Funding also comes from state and local governments and donations from individuals and companies in the form of both money and food.
MOW drivers provide a wellness check for the people on their routes. There are endless stories about drivers finding someone in dire distress when the delivery is made. I have personally made two 911 calls when we’ve discovered that someone has fallen or is having other problems.
Of course, billionaires would have no idea about any of this, because all they see are dollar signs, not people. Fuck Trump and his budget. I hope the Senate sticks it up his fat ass.
Meals on Wheels is more a collection of smaller programs than one federal one, and, as you mention, not dependent on federal funding only. So the idea that this is irreplaceable and any cuts will result in seniors dying is not quite accurate.
Do you volunteer with them? Do you do anything whatsoever to help those who are unable to do for themselves? I would suggest that you have no fucking idea how precarious these people’s lives are, nor how thin a financial line the program walks. The woman we found on the floor of her apartment, where she had been lying for eight hours, soiling herself in the process, would almost surely have died if we had not been delivering a meal that day. Cutting government funding would shut down most of the satellite MOW prep facilities in this city and probably most others. Glib comments about things you know nothing about is just ignorant.
But Trump is not proposing eliminating a bunch of lower effectiveness programs while increasing spending on a limited number of higher effectiveness programs. That would be something many of us would support. Instead he just wants to gut the safety net.
Don’t we already have social security and TANF programs?
Don’t we already have food stamps?
Don’t we hire teachers for schools?
Why do we need these 60+ additional federal programs (along with administrators to run them) when other programs (with administrators) are supposed to be doing the job?
How is it “monstrous” to suggest that families and neighbors should be looking after the elderly instead of the federal government with limited, enumerated powers?
This type of hysteria is why no real budget cutting can ever be done. Just because a politician wants to get rid of a pet program that does something for children doesn’t mean that he wants children to starve to death, nor will that happen.