Trump hopes to cut school lunch programs
President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.
Fewer protections for the poor, more money for the rich – that’s populism? What’s pop about it?
After The Washington Post reported some of the cuts Sunday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump was pulling “the rug out from so many who need help.”
“This budget continues to reveal President Trump’s true colors: His populist campaign rhetoric was just a Trojan horse to execute long-held, hard-right policies that benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the middle class,” he said.
My point exactly. Why do people keep being so confused about this?
The proposed changes to Medicaid and SNAP will be just some of several anti-poverty programs that the White House will look to change. In March, the White House signaled that it wanted to eliminate money for a range of other programs that are funded each year by Congress. This included federal funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies.
Yeah, take away lunches from those lazy shiftless children. Why aren’t they part of the labor force?!
I wonder if this was a topic of conversation between Trump and Theresa May when they met:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/theresa-may-conservatives-free-school-lunches-cuts-poverty-a7747066.html
The reason why those lunch programs exist is because studies have proved that hungry kids do worse in school. Students who do poorly end up being more susceptible to poor life outcomes like criminal behavior. School lunch programs are the very epitome of how good government is supposed to work: by creating the conditions in which people have the opportunity to succeed.
Perhaps we shouldn’t say that Trump is “cutting costs” by getting rid of these programs, but rather “promoting increased crime rates”.
Lets toss a few tens of millions of people into poverty and increase the criminal and antisocial population long term while we’re at it.
Well, Rob, those private prisons won’t make profits by themselves, they’re always going to need ‘guests’.
What, even a good faith-based NGO like Habitat for Humanity? Trump isn’t even trying to fake it, is he?
I just spotted this. Good grief, they don’t even want what Government money is spent to be well spent.
Why should they want to help homeless people? If they wanted to eat, they’d go and buy houses, which have kitchens, so they could cook, right?
Yuck, these people. But as far as populism? This is what a lot of Trump voters want. Many of his voters (at least the ones I know personally) hate the poor, and think that they are only poor because they are lazy. They hate the idea that their tax dollars might go to help someone they consider worthless.
William Jennings Bryan got a lot of things wrong, but he did understand that populism was about helping the people. His brand of populism would never have stood for this (though he would have enforced a bit more religious conformity…)
I know I hate the idea that my tax dollars go to help people I consider worthless (Trump voters).
Bingo. Joan C. Williams makes this point when writing about the White working class (WWC), first here and more recently here, and in her new book.
Basically, the WWC look down on the poor as lazy and dependent on the government, they admire the rich as self-made and independent of the government, and they resent the professional-managerial class (e.g. lawyers, doctors, journalists, academics) who tell them how to live. Regardless of how inaccurate this putative class analysis is, this mindset must be kept in mind when attempting to persuade those individuals likely to have such a mindset.
These cuts aren’t at the expense of the middle class, they’re at the expense of the working class. And it was the middle class, more than the working class, who voted for Donnie Twoscoops. These policies will have a minimal effect on his voter base.
I’m so clueless I thought feeding hungry children was good regardless of the ROI.
I once read a book which argued that people judge their status and contentment relative to the small circle around them, rather than by the state, nation, or world at large. A corporation taking huge amounts of taxpayer money doesn’t register the same visceral outraged reaction as a neighbor sneaking onto the cable service of those who pay for it, or a relative who comes to dinner but never reciprocates. Any time someone in the lower middle class or working class sees someone with lower income and government assistance getting a bologna sandwich with tomatoes they look at their bologna sandwich without tomatoes and know that’s wrong. The upper and upper middle classes aren’t on their personal radar. They — we — look one step up, and one step down.
The rich easily take advantage of that tendency.
This is entirely obscene. How people can even _stand_ to watch these already too welI-fed assholes in a nation with _already_ problematic wealth and income gaps do this to the already precarious and struggling, seriously, it’s beyond me.
Lousy shits. May history never forgive.
Karellen, most of the people I am talking about are middle class, though pretty much all of my students are working class, and almost all of them are Trump supporters. I think that class divide on Trump is much less accurate than the racial divide – white people voted for him in high numbers, especially white men, and they tend to hate the idea that people of color get anything from the government. That’s why I often see Confederate flags flying in a state that was not part of the Confederacy.
It is my sad conviction at this point that most people would rather get screwed themselves than let others go unscrewed.
@Iknklast: Sorry, I should have added a quote in my first comment for context. I was referring to the original article’s position that these are “policies that benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the middle class,”
I didn’t think one would count as middle class in the US if they’re directly affected by “subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness”. (Although my knowledge of class boundaries is fuzzy, so any clarification is welcomed).