02.15.18
Trump's FY19 Budget Would Be Devastating for the Country
On February 12, 2018, President Trump released his Fiscal Year 2019 budget.
The Trump Budget is not a moral budget. It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us.
What follows is a list of some of the most egregious proposals from the Trump Budget:
- Eliminate health insurance for 32 million Americans by repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. This plan would slash funding for Medicaid, weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and cause havoc in the health insurance market.
- Cut Medicare by $554 billion. Medicare, which provides universal health insurance to those 65 and older, has contributed to an increase in life expectancy and a sharp reduction in poverty among the elderly.
- Cut the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs by $72 billion. SSDI provides needed benefits to nearly 9 million Americans with disabilities and SSI brings 3.2 million Americans above the poverty line.
- Cut Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years – 34 percent in 2028 alone. Medicaid provides funding for more than 60 percent of all nursing home residents, 40 percent of all children, 60 percent of children with disabilities, and nearly half of all births in the U.S.
- Slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) by $213.5 billion, potentially eliminating nutrition assistance from 10.3 million Americans, 88 percent of whom live in households with at least one child, elderly person, or a person with a disability. Providing a “Blue Apron”-style, government-issued box of canned goods to make up for some of this cut is merely a cruel joke.
- Eliminate nutrition assistance for 874,100 pregnant women, new moms, babies, and toddlers by cutting the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program by 13 percent in the final year of this budget.
- Deny heating assistance to 6.1 million households – 70 percent of which include at least one elderly person, one person with a disability, or one child under five years old – by abolishing the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
- Cut off affordable housing assistance to 200,000 families, putting them at immediate risk of eviction and homelessness by slashing “Section 8” Housing Choice Vouchers.
- Cut Head Start by $13.3 billion over 10 years, which – in any given year over the next 10 – could eliminate high-quality child care and early education for 103,480 low-income children.
- Eliminate after-school programs for 1.2 million students by zeroing out the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.
- Make college more expensive by completely eliminating the Direct Subsidized Loan program that 5.8 million students benefit from each year and by eliminating grants to some 1.5 million students through the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program. The Trump Budget also eliminates the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and cuts Federal Work Study by 80 percent.
- End a home energy weatherization program that for over 40 years has helped make 7 million residences more energy efficient. This program saves the average homeowner nearly $300 a year on energy bills.
- Eliminate federal funding for 981 community action programs that provide thousands of low-income Americans emergency food, shelter, heating assistance, transportation, and health care.
- Cut $3 billion in Community Development Block Grants that provide funding for affordable housing, transportation, and economic development.
To see this document as a PDF, click here.
To see a fact sheet depicting how the Trump Budget would affect your state, click on the links below:
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