Another Lie, Another Fraudulent Story. Meals On Wheels Will Be Just Fine

FAKE NEWS: Did Trump Just Kill Meals On Wheels? Not Even Close.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

BY:

 BEN SHAPIRO

MARCH 17, 2017

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It’s time for the media to portray President Trump as cruel and evil. It’s harder

 for the media to do this with Trump than it has been with other Republicans,

 simply because Trump constantly uses the rhetoric of big government, 

guaranteeing Americans that their entitlements won’t be affected in any serious 

way. But with the presentation of his proposed budget, Democrats and the media

 finally pounced: Trump wants to kill old people by cutting funding to Meals on 

Wheels!

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) babbled, “The Republicans in Congress and this

 White House, as we’re seeing now just in a few weeks, never miss an

 opportunity to suck up money from the middle class.” Senate Minority Leader

 Chuck Schumer (D-NY) followed the same tack: “Once again the Trump 

administration is showing its true colors: talk like a populist but govern like

 a special interests zealot.”

And Time headlined, “Trump’s Budget Would Kill A Program That

 Feeds 2.4 Million Senior Citizens.”

So, is Trump actually killing Meals on Wheels?

Not even close.

The Trump administration proposed budget would kill the Community

 Development Block Grant, a federal boondoggle that’s largely been used 

for waste and fraud. It costs $3 billion per year. As the budget proposal

 stated, “The Federal Government has spent over $150 billion on this block

 grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the 

poorest populations and has not demonstrated results.” Nick Gillespie 

of Reason explains:

The money often is not going to Meals on Wheels or even to

the neediest communities. As a Reason Foundation analysis also

from 2013 shows, wealthier communities get the larger chunks of

the money, particularly counties that—what a coincidence!—are

in proximity to Washington, D.C….Check out this audit from

Riverside County, California, for their CDBG expenditures for

2016, and there's neither a meal nor a wheel to be found. Of the

$761,744 the county received, nearly all of it went to improve a playground and the sidewalks of a single local elementary school.

And note that the reason they were audited by Housing and Urban Development was because they hadn't provided proper

documentation of their expenses.

Meals on Wheels does get some money from the CDGB. But the vast majority

 of its funding comes from elsewhere, and as even the leftists over at Snopes 

state, “the effect of CDBG cuts on local Meals on Wheels groups is uncertain.”

 Only 3 percent of the Meals on Wheels budget nationally comes from the 

federal government at all, and only a portion of that comes from the CDBG.

 Walter Olson of the Cato Institute explains that 35 percent of federal 

funding for Meals on Wheels comes from the Older Americans Act, not the 

CDBG; no cuts have been contemplated to that program yet.

So, Trump isn’t killing Meals on Wheels. But the damaging media coverage

 has many Republicans cowering in fear. As usual.