Democrats and their media cronies are in all out assault mode, claiming Trump is killing Meals on Wheels, but the facts show otherwise.
In the continued attempt to discredit President Trump, Democrats and the mainstream media are now resorting to outright lies. They are claiming that the president’s proposed budget will entirely cut funding to Meals on Wheels, a program that is barely even funded by the federal government to begin with!
The fake news is scrambling to find faults with President Trump’s well-reasoned budget. The budget, which is aimed at eliminating government waste, is difficult to criticize based on its contents, so the Democrats made up some lies.
The spin is so bad that Time Magazine ran with the headline, “Trump’s Budget Would Kill A Program That Feeds 2.4 Million Senior Citizens,” insinuating that Trump is taking food out of the mouths of seniors. They couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.
In reality, the proposed budget plans to kill the Community Development Block Grant. The grant costs tax payers $3 billion per year. It is a wasteful slush fund that has been used for fraud.
The grant, which has cost us over $150 billion since its inception, was designed to help poor communities. However, the program was poorly designed, and it has not been used to aid the poorest districts. Instead, wealthier counties receive the largest chunks of funding, particularly the areas surrounding Washington D.C.
For instance, Riverside County, in California, was audited in 2016 for poor documentation of their expenses. The audit revealed that the county was given $761,744 under the grant, and that most of the money went to renovating the playground and sidewalk of just ONE elementary school. None of the money went to local Meals on Wheels programs.
Not only is the Community Development Block Grant not used to fund Meals on Wheels, the program obtains only 3 percent of its funding from the federal government — most of which is provided through the Older Americans Act, which has no proposed cuts.
Yet reality has never gotten in the way of the Democrats’ narrative. Nancy Pelosi has decried the alleged cuts, claiming, “The Republicans in Congress and this White House, as we’re seeing now just in a few weeks, never miss an opportunity to suck up money from the middle class.” Even though the grant being cut is frequently used to fund upper-class neighborhoods.
This most recent narrative is a falsehood based on a falsehood. The Meals on Wheels program is NOT, in the least bit, under attack. Even if President Trump decided to cut all federal funding to the Program, it would still not be in jeopardy, since it does not rely on federal money.