President Trump’s first budget request is expected to call for deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance for the poor, among other programs, but Congress signaled just a few weeks ago that it has little appetite for such drastic reductions in federal spending.
Trump’s budget plan, to be released Tuesday, will call for $800 million in Medicaid cuts over 10 years, according to The Washington Post. The budget also will outline cuts and changes to a wide array of anti-poverty programs, including a $193 billion cut over the next decade to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, according to the Associated Press.
Mr. Trump telegraphed his budget plans in March when he presented Congress with a “skinny budget” that sketched, in broad strokes, deep cuts in domestic spending coupled with a $54 billion increase in military outlays.
Tuesday’s full budget proposal will provide line-by-line details of the White House’s priorities. Assuming it remains true to Mr. Trump’s skinny budget, nonprofits throughout the country would see a loss of federal assistance if it became law.
Nonprofit groups need to send a message in “all caps, bold, and in neon lights” that the proposed cuts are unacceptable, said Tim Delaney, president of the National Council of Nonprofits.
“Once it gets released, everyone is going to look at their own line item and worry about themselves,” he said. “Nonprofits need to lock arms and resist that urge.”
Although many charities have decried the potential cuts, some conservatives say the nonprofit world needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the federal government. “To the extent that nonprofit social-service providers have become reliant [on government], that represents a misguided path that’s been taken over decades,” says Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute.
Long Process
The president’s budget proposal is the opening salvo in a monthslong debate during which it will be subject to significant revisions. The House and Senate will draft their own budget blueprints and attempt to shepherd spending bills through their respective appropriations committees.
Mr. Delaney said he was heartened when some GOP leaders in Congress pushed back against the president’s preliminary plan in March.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, for instance, called it “dead on arrival.”
And Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and former secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, spoke out against cuts in school funding.
“The White House’s budget does not have any binding impact on Congress,” said Steven Taylor, counsel for public policy at United Way Worldwide. The White House proposal will be regarded as a “statement of priorities,” rather than a realistic proposal, he said.
Parts of the Trump budget that have been leaked to the press hew to the same course as the March skinny budget and include reductions to programs that charities rely on for funding. For instance, a draft proposal for the Department of Housing and Urban Development obtained by Politico proposes cuts to the agency’s funding by roughly $6 billion and maintains the elimination of the Community Development Block Grant program contained in the skinny budget. The $3 billion program provides funding for, among other things, economic development, affordable housing, and safety-net services, including Meals on Wheels.
Bad Timing
Human-service organizations may be the most at risk as the budget process unfolds, because they rely heavily on government funding, said Benjamin Soskis, a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
Smaller nonprofits, which often do not have large fundraising teams, would see funding dry up just when their services are needed most, Mr. Soskis said, explaining that cuts in other federally funded anti-poverty programs would likely increase the demand for their services.
According to a report issued in 2010 by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics, the federal government is the source of about one-third of nonprofits’ revenue, in the form of both grants and fees for services provided. Nonprofit revenue totaled $1.7 trillion in 2013, according to the institute.
To prevent losing a key source of income, Mr. Soskis said nonprofit leaders need to communicate that federal funds are essential.
“It’s really human lives that are at stake,” said Mr. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy and a Chronicle columnist.
Harry Stein, director of fiscal policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, says the full budget might pose a greater threat to safety-net programs than Mr. Trump’s preliminary proposal. That’s because the skinny budget focused only on discretionary programs.
Mr. Stein and other observers expect the plan will also include reductions in mandatory programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. Many of those cuts, he predicted, would come by turning those programs into block grants to states, leaving it up to them to decide how to parcel out the money
In addition, Mr. Stein said, Tuesday’s plan will offer a budget ledger for a decade into the future rather than the one-year proposal Mr. Trump offered in March.
“We may well see even deeper cuts in later years,” he predicted. “More people will fall through the cracks.”
