Trump’s proposed budget features steep cuts to fund military, homeland security and aid veterans

Rebecca Whelchel, director of Metropolitan Ministries, speaks to a Times Free Press employee in this file photo Rebecca Whelchel, director of Metropolitan Ministries, speaks to a Times Free Press employee in this file photo

By Steve Johnson March 17, 2017 8 min read

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Officials: Trump budget cuts threaten sewer, housing upgrades, aid to poor, homeless, elderly, public radio, TV

Pikeville, Tenn., officials want to find more funding for the town's downtown beautification project. Here, in this file photo, Pikeville Mayor Greg Johnson, left, gives Paula Lovett, Appalachian Regional Commission grant program manager, a tour of the town's significant structures and work.

Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise has sold seven new houses in the 600 block of North Holly Street in the Bushtown community, and has five more for sale.

Destiny Garner Goines, left, holds the rope as Shiloh Loher, center, and Aiyana Loher jump rope at a Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise hosted block party for Highland Park residents on Saturday, June 14, 2014, in the St. Andrew's Center parking lot in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Following a $1.5 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), Marion County is in the beginning stages of expanding their educational center by adding a new building to be leased out to Chattanooga State for various industrial specialized training programs at their Kimball site. The rendering shows the design of the new building which will be 30,000 sq.ft. The building will feature classrooms and working spaces for welding, mechatronics, 3D printing, and other manufacturing skills needs. Groundbreaking for the new building is tentatively scheduled for March of 2017, with an expectation of being operational for the Spring 2018 semester. It will be located at 2100 Main Street, Kimball, TN.

Local officials and nonprofit agency staffers are reacting with concern to President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cutbacks, saying they may hurt efforts to improve dilapidated housing, upgrade sewer systems, help the homeless, and force local public radio and television stations to cut back on programming or even close their doors.

“I’m concerned about the blatant back-turning on the reality folks living in poverty experience every day,” said Rebecca Whelchel, executive director of Metropolitan Ministries in Chattanooga, which focuses on preventing low-income families from slipping into homelessness.

It is unlikely Trump’s budget will be adopted in its present form. Congress produces the budget and can choose to include or ignore a president’s recommendations. Tennessee U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander made that point in a news release Thursday, saying “the president has suggested a budget, but, under the Constitution, Congress passes appropriations bills.” Fellow U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, in his own release, emphasized the need to reform entitlement spending, such as for Medicare and Social Security, two agencies not cut by Trump’s proposed budget.

But the Trump administration budget gives a more specific road map of the president’s priorities than he had provided during the 2016 campaign.

Overall, the budget boosts spending for defense, homeland security (including building a border wall with Mexico), and aid to veterans. To avoid raising taxes to pay for those increases, it calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, as part of the health care reform legislation, and to most other federal agencies, including a 30 percent reduction in the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, the elimination of Housing and Urban Development community development block grants, and getting rid of numerous federal agencies including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides substantial funding to local PBS and NPR stations.