Meals on Wheels America sees surge in donations after United States budget

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has defended cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program by arguing that it was “just not showing any results”.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal released last week would cut funding for the agency that administers Meals on Wheels’ federal money and has local and national officials with the organization taking note.

Meals on Wheels, the popular nationwide program that provides hot meals to needy seniors, has become a rallying point for critics of President Trump’s proposed budget, which slashes spending on social initiatives to beef up military spending. It made it possible for folks of modest means to get involved in their community, a little grease on the wheels of compassion and goodwill.

A Meals on Wheels branch outside Detroit, Bertolette said, would lose one-third of its budget without the grants. Marietta said 205 meals are provided daily through the CAAC, with the rest of the food purchased from hospitals, nursing homes and restaurants through the city.

Some media outlets have incorrectly reported this number to be 3%, confusing it with the federal funding received by Meals on Wheels America, the national membership organization that does not provide direct services (e.g., meals).

“It could just take the meals away from these folks, and I don’t know what they’d do”, Jones said. When asked how she felt when she first heard about President Trump’s federal funding priorities, she said: “My heart sank”.

There’s no certainty that Meals on Wheels will lose funding. In total, there are more than 5,000 independent affiliates of Meals on Wheels across the United States and determining where their individual funds come from reveals an incredibly complicated web of funding via the government, grants, individual donations, and corporations.

Korean Community Services is already operating at a deficit for its meal program.

Bertolette says there would be a “more sweeping negative impact” on Meals on Wheels if that funding shrinks.

There’s also peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness of Meals on Wheels.

Meals on Wheels claimed on their website that it would be hard to imagine a scenario where the next federal budget would not have an impact on the services they provide. The grant cuts that would imperil Meals on Wheels, a program that benefits countless seniors across the United States, are stark examples of the Republicans’ continued war on the “war on poverty”. A rep for the department then referred to a statement from Secretary Tom Price released earlier in the week, where he claimed… “As a client, we want to be able to sustain that for as long as they can live independently in their home”. “It is one I would never vote to cut even one dollar”. “But to take the federal money and give it to the states and say, “Look, we want to give you money for programs that don’t work” – I can’t defend that anymore”.