Trump Budget Director Suggests Meals On Wheels Doesn’t Show Results

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney speaks about the Trump Administration's budget proposal during daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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Defending the draconian spending cuts in the first Trump budget, the White House’s top budget official suggested Thursday that “Meals on Wheels” isn’t “showing any results.”

Appearing in front of reporters in the White House briefing room, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, broadly defended the cuts to most of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grants which provides funding to states for Meals on Wheels, among other programs.

Pressed by a reporter specifically on the effect of the cuts on programs like “Meals on Wheels,” Mulvaney stressed that the program wasn’t a direct federal program but one that states can decide to fund with their federal community development block grants.

“The CDBGs have been identified as programs since the second Bush administration as ones that were just not showing any results. We can’t do that anymore,” Mulvaney said. “We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. Great, ‘Meals on Wheels’ sounds great. That’s a state decision to fund that particular portion.”

Justifying the cuts more broadly, Mulvaney said, “To take the federal money and give it to the states and say, ‘Look, we’re going to give you money for programs that don’t work.’ I can’t defend that anymore. We can’t defend that.”

“We’re $20 trillion in debt. We can’t spend it on programs that did not show results,” Mulvaney added.

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