Meals on Wheels in jeopardy funding slash in new Trump budget

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President Donald Trump recently unfurled his budget proposal for 2018, and the budget could slash programs for older, impoverished Americans, such as the Meals on Wheels program.

One of the proposed budget cuts would slash Department of Housing and Urban Development funding by about $6.2 billion, which would mean a 13.2n percent decrease from this year. Most of that would come from cutting the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which helps funds programs like the Meals on Wheels program, which takes food to the poor and elderly.

“The federal government has spent over $150 billion on this block grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results,” the budget blueprint says.

There is not enough detail in the budget to say for sure what specific programs will be affected, but spokeswoman Jenny Bertolette said, “It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which they will not be significantly and negatively impacted if the President’s budget were enacted.”

The budget outline states that the programs should be dealt with at a state level, which makes it hard to gauge the impact that slashing the budget would make.

“Each state allocates this funding differently, so it’s difficult to summarize the total impact on the nationwide network,” Bertolette said. “We know for certain that there are Meals on Wheels programs that would lose vital funding if this proposal went through.”

It will be easier to tell how programs like this one will be affected in more detail when the full budget proposal is released.