Policy organizations are calling the Trump Administration's proposed budget an assault on the poor.
According to officials with the Michigan League for Public Policy, federal budget cuts would impact food assistance, disability, and medicaid.
Gilda Jacobs is the CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy which promotes economic opportunity for all. She said the budget is an assault on the poor.
“There are so many people that, and children in particular, who depend on food assistance to get by every day. We know that food assistance is going to be slashed by 193 billion dollars over ten years. It targets the elderly, working families, and just workers who are out as job seekers.”
Jacobs said over 600-thousand people in the state were helped by Healthy Michigan, which is one of the programs that would see cuts.
“People that are in the one percent of americans who make over one million dollars a year they are going to be getting tax cuts averaging about fifty thousand dollars annually. And then we are going to see that this budget is really balanced on the backs of poor men, women, and children.”
Jacobs said federal budget cuts come at a time when our understanding of poverty in the state is expanding. She said roughly 47 percent of children in the state receive free and reduced lunch - which is a good measure of the state’s poor.
“So when you take that and talk about making additional cuts to food assistance and you’ve got the non-profit world who can not pick up the slack the community groups do not have the resources to pick up the slack.”
Jacobs said the League is calling on legislators to fight the budget.