PHILADELPHIA— Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney released the following statement on the budget proposal released today by the Trump administration.
“President Trump’s budget makes achieving the American dream impossible for children born into poverty or the middle class. It makes college even more expensive by cutting funding for work-study programs and eliminating student debt forgiveness. This budget makes healthcare and other basic necessities, like healthy food, inaccessible to Philadelphia’s most vulnerable children, by cutting Medicaid, SNAP, the CDC, and school-based mental healthcare services. This budget proposal is bad for Philadelphia and bad for our fellow Pennsylvanians. I urge everyone to call their representatives and ask them to oppose the Trump budget.”
Currently, Medicaid covers 600,000 Philadelphians and SNAP provides services to 182,000 children in Philadelphia. The CDC provides funding for many of Philadelphia’s public health programs, including programs ensuring vaccination of children, preventing cancer in adults, and protecting everyone from epidemics like those caused by Ebola. The Trump cuts to the EPA would strip Philadelphia of important air pollution programs at a time when hundreds of Philadelphians die every year from heart and lung disease caused by air pollution.
On education, the Trump budget cuts funding for college work-study programs in half, and public-service loan forgiveness would end starting 2018. Additionally, hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish.