President Trump’s budget proposal includes dramatic cuts to health and food programs to fund expanded military spending, including a nearly 50 percent year-on-year increase in the Pentagon’s budget. At an Easter lunch, Trump was caught on a hot mic saying that with the country at war, the federal government should offload Medicaid, Medicare, and child care expenditures onto the states. “We’re fighting wars. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things,” he said, acknowledging that doing so would pressure states to raise their taxes.
Proposed Cuts to Health Services
The budget includes a 12.5 percent (or $5 billion) cut to Health and Human Services, huge cuts to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a gutting of health care services aimed at the LGBTQ community, large reductions in spending on behavioral health services, and a dismantling of infrastructure aimed at reducing socioeconomic health care disparities. The largest National Institutes of Health cuts fall on organizations such as the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which work on making health systems less inequitable.
Food and Nutrition Program Reductions
The budget proposal would eviscerate nutritional education programs, cut rural food assistance, and entirely eliminate the Food for Peace program. Fruit and vegetable benefits to pregnant women and young children would be cut from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)—from $54 per month for pregnant women to $13. The budget also requests elimination of the $4 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides financial assistance to millions of families struggling to heat or cool their homes.
Expert Responses
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, told Truthout that the administration is using claims of “waste, fraud and abuse as a smokescreen” for ideologically driven cuts representing “a dismantling of the infrastructure that addresses health equity, disease prevention, and disparities.” Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, characterized the budget as “a stark betrayal,” noting that Trump’s priorities show he is “turning away from meeting the needs of Americans.”
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://truthout.org/articles/trump-budget-proposal-shreds-health-and-food-programs-to-feed-the-war-machine/