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Trump threatens Meals on Wheels funding (Tax cuts for the rich need to be paid for) [1]
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Date: 2025-04-27
“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A country in which poor older people go hungry will never be great. I don’t give a damn what your politics are; if you believe a tax cut for the rich must be paid for by the elderly starving, you are a monstrous shit of staggering scope. Which brings me to this story in the New York Times:
Trump Cuts Threaten Agency Running Meals on Wheels A tiny division responsible for overseeing services for people with disabilities and older Americans is being dismantled as part of an overhaul by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.
The ‘tiny division’ mentioned above is the Administration for Community Living. The report offers details:
The small government agency responsible for overseeing programs like Meals on Wheels is being dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly half its staff has been let go in recent layoffs and all of its 10 regional offices are closed, according to several employees who lost their jobs.
This cost-cutting isn’t just a DOGE raid. It is also more than a sop to the so-called fiscal conservatives who argue that balanced budgets can exist even as the government cuts taxes on the rich. It is part of Trump’s wilful sadism. Trump is unworried about deficits and debt. He enjoys people suffering. Especially if they aren’t members of the master race — heterosexual, bigender, healthy whites who don’t expect a federal handout unless they are very rich.
The report continues:
In President Trump’s quest to end what he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” one of his executive orders promoted cracking down on federal efforts to improve accessibility and representation for those with disabilities, with agencies flagging words like “accessible” and “disability” as potentially problematic. Certain research studies are no longer being funded, and many government health employees specializing in disability issues have been fired.
You must be conscience-free to be the sort of person who believes that helping the less fortunate is a criminal and sinful act. But that’s the MAGA mind for you. ‘If I’m not getting mine, then it has to be some disabled person’s fault.’ Dear God, if Jesus were to return to contemporary America, he’d be sentenced to a life term in a Salvadoran gulag.
Aside: I think if Jesus did return, he would be on the phone with his dad, gobsmacked that so many right-wing Christians have lost the plot. It is an American paradox that many evangelicals put Jesus on a pedestal yet dismiss his clear instructions to take care of the ‘least of these’ as ‘unAmerican socialism.’ While so many nonreligious who do not recognize Jesus’s divinity nevertheless agree with his temporal imperatives and act with the compassion he demanded of his followers.
The response from people who care about others but are about to lose their funding was predictable. The paper quotes two:
“There’s a lot of confusion,” said Becky Yanni, the executive director of the Council on Aging in St. Johns County in Florida. She said she has been told that the most recent funding for its Meals on Wheels program and other services might be late. If the funding does not arrive, “in a lot of communities, you will be looking at cuts in services,” said Sandy Markwood, the chief executive officer for USAging, which represents the network of area agencies of aging.
The administration argues that the programs aren’t going away. They will instead be administered by other agencies as an efficiency measure. The report continues:
Under the reorganization introduced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the community unit’s responsibilities will be divided among other agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Administration for Children and Families. “This consolidation allows the department to better meet the current health needs of vulnerable populations across the country,” a spokeswoman for H.H.S. said in a statement. “This does not impact the important work of these critical programs as it will continue elsewhere within H.H.S.”
You know that’s a lie. The Republicans are lusting to cut Medicaid money. So how the hell adding more responsibility to an agency losing funding enables that agency to “better meet the current health needs of vulnerable populations across the country” is anyone’s guess.
The report further explains the mission and budget of the “tiny division.”
The community living division helps coordinate services and provide funding for older and disabled Americans so they can stay at home rather than live in a nursing home. With a budget of $2.6 billion, the unit represents a minuscule fraction of total H.H.S. spending. In addition to meal deliveries, the community living agency supports numerous programs, including the nonprofit Centers for Independent Living, that are staffed by people with disabilities, who help older adults and others with disabilities move out of nursing homes and back into the community, and find services, like transportation and legal assistance.
I am no expert in government funding and program management. However, it does not take a cost accountant to point out that it has to be cheaper to keep older people in their homes rather than rehouse them in a nursing home.
As for the expense, I would rather my tax dollar goes to helping my fellow Americans than to subsidize fossil fuel companies, Elon Musk, and all the other wealthy hypocrites nosing the federal trough. Fun fact: A single US Navy carrier group costs $2.4 billion a year to operate (this does not include the cost of building the ships and aircraft). The US has 11 of them.
I’ll let an expert, whose career is dedicated to understanding how the people on the top spit on the defenseless and inconvenient, explain.
Advocates say the recent cutbacks have further marginalized older Americans and those with disabilities. “The bottom line is that people in charge simply don’t care about large swaths of the American people,” said Dr. Joanne Lynne, a clinical professor of geriatrics and palliative care at George Washington University. “We have made living with disability and old age exceedingly unpleasant,” she said. “We are on course to make it virtually intolerable.”
The most disturbing revelation of Trump’s second term is not that there are sociopaths at the top. It is that so many Americans are just Jim Dandy with their cruelty.
Jesus weeps.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/27/2319165/-Trump-threatens-Meals-on-Wheels-funding-Tax-cuts-for-the-rich-need-to-be-paid-for?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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