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Donald Trump's Proposed Budget Cuts Are Tragic, Cruel and Sadly Predictable

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | January 19, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | January 19, 2017 |


The incoming Trump administration is planning a whole host of budget cuts intended to cut the budget by $10 trillion over 10 years. Among the cuts are defunding PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts, two programs that have been on the chopping block for years, and have already seen their funding shaved.

This is where it really hurts impoverished America:

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.

Donald Trump — who has a history of sexual assault — is eliminating the program dedicated to violence against women.

My wife worked as a legal services attorney for eight years, until a few months ago. These cuts would have probably put her job in deep jeopardy. More importantly, a lot of people don’t understand just how vital legal services are for the poor. These attorneys, who typically turn down much higher paying jobs in order to make a difference in the lives of impoverished people, are the only legal protection low-income people have. Without them, slumlords will more easily be able to toss out their tenants for no cause; women will find it much more difficult to get a simple restraining order against men who abuse them; divorces and custody agreements will be considerably more difficult, leaving abused women trapped in marriages; poor people will have no one to advocate for their benefits; consumer protections for the poor will be lost.

Basically, for those who cannot afford an attorney, there will be no more legal justice system on the civil side. This is tragic. It is cruel. It’s going to put a lot of the good attorneys who actually care about people out of work, and it’s going to stack the deck even more against poor people.

But by eliminating legal services jobs and cutting important legal aid for low-income folks, Trump may be able to afford his goddamn wall.

Source: The Hill