FAKE NEWS ALERT: Meals on Wheels Funding NOT Cut
The Left is hell bent on preventing Trump from succeeding. So much so that they continue to lie about what our president actually accomplishes.
Contrary to last week’s fake news feeding frenzy, President Trump’s budget does not eliminate funding for Meals on Wheels. He’s not even cutting it.
As with any false narrative, the best way to bring the Meals on Wheels truth to light is to follow the money.
In a statement issued Thursday, Meals on Wheels America verified that 35% of the revenues at its 5,000 local programs come from the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program. President Trump’s proposed budget doesn’t touch that program.
Where did the fake news hysteria originate?
Trump’s budget proposed cutting funding for the Community Development Block Grant program, run by Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This program is prone to corruption. Some, but not all, state and local governments use a tiny portion of that funding, at their own discretion, to “augment funding for Meals on Wheels.”
Hence, Trump’s budget proposal partially fulfills his campaign promise to drain the bureaucratic swamp in government.
Yet, fake news liberal rags like the New York Times neglected that detail when reporting that CDBG “funds popular programs like Meals on Wheels, housing assistance, and other community assistance efforts.”
The Left still tries to discredit Trump’s budget because they don’t like funding for important national security efforts like rebuilding our military and taking care of our veterans. The NYT fueled its own deception with follow up articles like: “GOP, Dem Lawmakers Decry Trump’s Cuts to Meals on Wheels.”
In like manner, Time magazine emphatically declared that Trump’s budget “would kill a program that feeds 2.4 million senior citizens.” And The Hill claimed Trump “eliminates funds for Meals on Wheels.”
Neither did The Washington Post mention state and local discretion when falsely reporting that Trump’s budget might eliminate half the Meals on Wheels deliveries to seniors in “one suburb.”
An ignorant, research-deficient Dallas station even alleged the program stood to lose “all of its federal funding.”
Can we get real facts from the news media, please?
CDBG and similar block grants for community and social services are not the main source of federal funding for Meals on Wheels. And no cuts to Older Americans Act funding are in Trump’s current budget proposal.
As National Review noted,
“Scott Shackford makes clear in his new piece for Reason [that] CDBG funds regularly go into pork-barrel and business-subsidy schemes, [rather than social services]. That’s why the program is prime target for budget-cutters in administration after administration going back decades.”
If the CDBG program is to remain politically durable, grant recipients must give some of their “extra money” to popular programs, like Meals on Wheels, that are primarily funded in other ways. This gives corruption a defense behind which to thrive.
For several local Meals on Wheels programs, block grant money is often a pittance of their total revenue. More often than not, these programs receive no CDBG money from their local governments.
- Examples include Rockland County, NY. This community gave $25,000 of its CDBG money to its local Meals on Wheels program in 2016. That total amounted to less than 1% of the charity’s total budget.
- In Kennewick, WA, $18,500 in CDBG funds went to the Meals on Wheels program in 2015. The charity’s total income from government grants that year was $13.3 million.
- Fairfield, CA, gave $10,539 of CDBG money to their local Meals on Wheels in 2015. But from 2011-2014, it gave them nothing.
- Trenton, NJ gave no funds to its local Meals on Wheels for the past two years.
So who’s really to blame for funding issues?
Don’t blame Trump for state and local politicians’ discretion. If those swamp creatures stopped funding marijuana clinics and business lobbyists, they’d be able to feed more of their elderly citizens.
