As a human rights organization dedicated to equity and opportunity for all, Heartland Alliance is dismayed to see the White House release a 2021 budget that, for a fourth year in a row, continues to slash vital programs and services, and proposes policy ideas that will do irrevocable damage to members of our community who are low income, immigrants, and people of color.
The proposed federal budget would slash billions of dollars in spending on education, health, nutrition, housing, and other basic needs that support families throughout the nation. The proposal would inflict deep harms to our immigrant communities, and is downright tone-deaf regarding the needs and rights of people returning from incarceration and people experiencing homelessness.
For example, the budget proposal:
- Encourages increasing the involuntary institutionalization of people experiencing homelessness to get them off the street;
- Guts the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid through one trillion dollars of funding cuts that would rip health coverage away from millions, devastate local hospitals, and exacerbate the health disparities rampant in our communities;
- Continues proposing that people be forced to work in exchange for basic nutrition assistance, despite evidence that shows conclusively that this approach is ineffective, inequitable, and that it plunges people further into poverty by cutting off access to nutrition;
- Provides for a funding increase for Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to continue carrying out the Trump Administration’s damaging tactics of criminalizing immigrants;
- Further exacerbates the racial inequities found in opioid overdoses and fails to center evidence-based interventions in addressing the nationwide opioid crisis;
- Continues to propose to streamline, consolidate, and eliminate workforce programs that provide skills and opportunities to help people exit poverty; and
- Promotes reentry programs but misses the mark on investing in programs and strategies that allow individuals and communities to heal from trauma and exit poverty.
The Trump Administration’s budget proposal will continue to hurt people who are struggling to make ends meet when they need support most and push our country toward further inequity. Alongside our program participants and partners locally, nationally, and abroad, we will continue to push back on these and other proposals that stand in the way of creating equity and opportunity for ALL.
