WASHNGTON : President Donald Trump proposed a budget Monday that hits thepoorest Americans the hardest, slashing billions of dollars in food stamps,health insurance and federal housing subsidies while pushing legislation toinstitute broad work requirements for families receiving housing vouchers,expanding on moves by some states to require Medicaid and food stamprecipients to work.

The Trump budget proposal would gut the Supplemental Nutrition AssistanceProgram, better known as food stamps, by $17.2 billion in 2019 – equivalentto 22 percent of the program’s total cost last year. It calls foradditional cuts of more than $213.5 billion over the next decade, areduction of nearly 30 percent, according to the Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities.

In addition, Trump is proposed a full-scale redesign of SNAP, whichcurrently provides an average of $125 per month to 42.2 million Americans.For the last 40 years, the program has allowed beneficiaries to use SNAPbenefits at grocery stores as if they were cash. Under the budget proposal,the Department of Agriculture would use a portion of those benefits to buyand deliver a package of U.S.-grown commodities to SNAP households eachmonth, using the government’s buying power to obtain common foods at lowercosts.

“This budget proposes taking away food assistance from millions oflow-income Americans – and on the heels of a tax cut that favored thewealthy and corporations,” said Stacy Dean, president for food assistancepolicy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It doesn’t reflectthe right values.”

The proposal repeats several cost-cutting measures from last year,including new restrictions on eligibility and stricter requirements aroundthe use of work-requirement waivers, which allow states with highunemployment rates to extend benefits to adults who are out of work forlonger than three months.

Congress has final say over spending — but Monday’s budget proposal isseen as an important sign of Trump’s priorities.

The budget proposal would also “reform” programs at the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development “to encourage the dignity of work andself-sufficiency,” the document said.

Trump’s proposed budget for the 2019 fiscal year includes an 14 percent cutto HUD, amounting to $6.8 billion below the agency’s current $48 billionspending, an even deeper cut than his previous year’s proposal which hadbeen the most dramatic cut to HUD since President Ronald Reagan slashed theagency’s funding in the early 1980s.

The administration has proposed eliminating the entire fund for publichousing capital repairs, a savings of nearly $2 billion a year. Thetargeted cut comes at a time when public housing faces a backlog of capitalneeds upwards of $40 billion, said Diane Yentel, president and chiefexecutive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In New York City,about 80 percent of public housing tenants suffered heating and hot wateroutages in recent months because the aging boiler systems are in desperateneed of repair, Yentel said.

“The administration wants state and local governments to take care of that,which is just a total abdication of its responsibility,” she said.

Trump also proposed cutting a federal housing subsidy program, known asSection 8 vouchers, by nearly $1 billion, which Yentel said would result inmore than 250,000 low-income families losing their housing assistance. Thecuts would come on top of the administration’s proposal to raise the rentfor low-income families receiving public housing help.

The proposed HUD budget, like last year, would eliminate funding forCommunity Development Block Grants, which play a key role in disasterrecovery, as well as grants to states and local governments to increasehomeownership for the lowest-income Americans, and funding for neighborhoodredevelopment. The Trump administration said it has proposed shutting downprograms that are “duplicative or have failed to demonstrate effectiveness”and that state and local governments are better equipped to shoulder theresponsibility for community and economic development.

On healthcare for low-income Americans, Trump’s budget calls for cuttingfederal Medicaid funding by $250 billion over the next 10 years, as theadministration envisions passing a law “modeled closely” on a SenateRepublican proposal that failed last fall to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The White House plan, similar to that spearheaded by Sens. Lindsey Graham,R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., would dramatically cut federal healthspending and send some of the savings to the states. Republicans say doingso would give governors the flexibility to bring down costs, but expertssay that the overall reduction in government spending would cost millionsof Americans their health insurance.

The White House plan also calls for new per-person limits on the amount ofhealth care each Medicaid enrollee can use, as well as tying federalspending on the program to the cost of inflation.

All of the deep cuts to the social safety net that Trump proposed last yearwere rejected by Congress on a bipartisan basis, and the budget bill passedby Congress last week increased spending amounts in discretionary programs.But Yentel said she fears the drastic cuts in Trump’s budget proposal lowerthe bar for what’s considered acceptable.

“The president’s budget request is always considered dead on arrival inCongress, especially in an election year,” Yentel said. “My concern is thatit leaves open a space for a compromise to be less severe but still asignificant cut to programs.” – The Washington post