Poster Children

Poster children may be on the poster, but they aren’t always children.

“Meals on Wheels” has received a boost in donations because Trump has severely cut their funding and the media has made them the poster child for the Trump administration’s cruelty. The problem with that picture is that “Meals on Wheels” is not a federally funded program and is therefor not having its funding slashed by Trump’s new budget.

The program is actually a whole lot of local programs which share a name and process, and are funded in many different ways and from many different sources. Some of the funding for some of the programs comes from federal “block grants” which the Trump budget does reduce, but even those block grants are not being eliminated, and the distribution of block grant funds is determined by local governments.

So, if funding to any “Meals on Wheels” program is cut due to the Trump budget the actual cut will be made by a state government, and in most cases the local programs will lose no funding at all.

A well informed voting public is essential to proper governance, and today’s media assures that we do not have that essential ingredient.