The outrage is palpable, and the uproar deafening, as the mainstream media rage against the “unprecedented” cuts to welfare being made by the Trump administration.
In his 2018 budget, termed the “America first” budget, President Trump made some cuts to parts of the welfare program provided by the federal government to help the poorest Americans. The new budget made cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program which is a program that provides part funding for the Meals on Wheels program.
The meals on wheels program which serves seniors by providing ready to eat meals to them twice a day is very popular with seniors who depend on it for meals when they live alone and cannot afford maids to cook for them. The Community Development Block Grant program (CDBG) isn’t a major source of funding of the Meals on Wheels program, and just provides a small part of its funding. The primary source of funding for the Meals on Wheels program is the Older Americans Act (OAA) which supports senior nutrition programs including Meals on Wheels.
Meals on Wheels’s own national website, meanwhile, quotes its CEO and president Ellie Hollander being appropriately cautious and conditional: “We don’t know the exact impact yet,” she said. Big cuts “would be a devastating blow.” According to the website, “Details on our network’s primary source of funding, the Older Americans Act, which has supported senior nutrition programs for 45 years, have not yet been released.” but that hasn’t stopped the news anchors in the mainstream media who I believe know this truth, from raising the hue and cry over the issue.
The point of this write up, however, is to point out the hypocrisy of the mainstream media which seems to decide when to be against government actions depending on who the president it. Many people don’t know that one of the first actions of the Obama administration, after winning a second term, was to sign a cut of $8.7 billion dollars from the Food Stamp program that provided nutritional help to millions of poor American families into law. It was as a part of the Farm bill which he needed to pass, but it was still a cut to welfare just like this one made by the Trump administration, but you did not get this outrage and uproar at the time. Why?
This writer believes that any cuts to any source of funding for welfare programs is bad, no matter how small, especially in this time of dire economic and financial straits for American citizens. Another, and the more important reason is that these cuts, little as they appear when looked at individually, so add up over time. Our government has been slowly but gradually chipping away at welfare programs for our country’s poorest citizens and that is very unacceptable to me.
What this write up wants to point out is that it’s not just one party doing it, as the mainstream media wants you to believe. It must be recalled that President Bill Clinton signed the biggest major cut to welfare in modern times into law with his Welfare Reform Bill in 1996. That was the start, and what has given all the presidents that have come after him the belief that welfare programs is somewhere to go when you need to “cut spending.”
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were Democrat presidents, and that makes the point of this write up that it’s not one party responsible;- it’s both parties united in their resolve to punish America’s poorest citizens.
