The budget also calls for eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LHIEAP) entirely. These cuts would affect a host of important programs, including job training and education. By 2029, funding for non-defense discretionary programs would be 40 percent below 2019 levels, after taking inflation into account. Calls for cutting funding for non-defense discretionary programs by $54 billion - or 9 percent (not accounting for inflation) - in 2020, relative to the 2019 level.It would also re-propose a policy that would raise rents by an average 44 percent on 4 million low-income households now receiving assistance and take benefits away from people judged not to have met a work requirement. That includes cutting funding to operate, maintain, and repair public housing by 60 percent and eliminating Housing Choice Vouchers for 140,000 households. Proposes to cut funding in 2020 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by $9.7 billion, or 18 percent, including significant cuts in rental assistance for low-income households.The cuts would affect every category of SNAP participant, including the unemployed, the elderly, individuals with disabilities, and low-income working families with children. Other benefit and eligibility cuts would cause at least 4 million people to lose SNAP benefits altogether. The budget would dramatically restructure how SNAP benefits are delivered, taking away food choices and posing new food access hurdles for almost 90 percent of SNAP participants. Proposes to cut SNAP (formerly food stamps) by $220 billion, or about 30 percent, over the next ten years.Many more would lose Medicaid coverage if the Administration were to successfully implement a nationwide policy of taking Medicaid coverage away from those who don’t meet a work requirement. Reaffirms the Administration’s support for repealing the ACA, which would cause millions of people to lose health coverage, increase health care costs for millions more, and end nationwide protections for people with pre-existing conditions.(This analysis uses figures prepared by the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget.) And layered on top of these cuts are proposals for additional reductions in funding for non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs that would affect a broad set of programs, many of which assist low- and moderate-income people in making ends meet and having a chance at upward mobility. The budget’s major themes are perhaps nowhere clearer than in its proposal to extend beyond 2025 the costly 2017 tax cuts that have given large windfalls to high-income individuals and highly profitable corporations - even as the budget calls for cutting $1 trillion over the next decade from entitlement (mandatory) programs that help low- and moderate-income households. Indeed, while the budget’s call to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and cut Medicaid deeply likely won’t be on the congressional agenda this year, the Administration has moved forward with administrative actions that advance some of the same goals on a more limited scale. If enacted, these proposals and others in the budget would sharply increase the number of people who lack health coverage, while increasing poverty, widening income and racial disparities, and driving up the number of households that struggle to afford the basics.The President’s budget reflects the direction in which the Administration wants to take the country through both legislative and executive actions. Although Congress has previously rejected many of these proposals, the budget merits attention, given the Administration’s continued push for these priorities and the scope of the damage the budget would do. The Trump Administration’s budget plan for fiscal year 2020 mirrors last year’s in the massive cuts it proposes for core public services that help struggling individuals and families afford the basics and access health care.
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