Trump’s Costly “Money Saving” Ideas

Despite being one of the most powerful nations in the world, the United States, to this day, has been relatively ineffective in its efforts to provide aid to its citizens. The U.S. has one of the weakest safety nets among Western industrialized nations. It provides the least amount of money in social insurance and assistance to its citizens in poverty as a percentage of gross domestic product compared to other countries.

What makes it worse is that President Donald Trump and House Republicans have proposed a bill that will reduce the number of people covered by programs such as Medicaid and food stamps and cut back their budget. Simply put, the government will be giving even less to people in poverty than it does now.

The country’s lack of social assistance is currently one of the main reasons for the prevalence of child poverty in the U.S. According to studies done by Oxford University's Study Work Research, child poverty costs the U.S. about $1.03 trillion a year in tax money. This is a result of all of the problems that are linked to poverty, including a higher risk of impoverished individuals being involved in criminal activity or psychological health problems that end up costing a lot of tax money for insurances to cover.

This money is lost as a result of children in poverty growing up without the basic education and skills that would help them contribute to the country’s economy. If the U.S. spent the same amount of money in social assistance for the poor every year but changed its programs to make them more effective—using the money to build and fund new schools in impoverished areas, providing free school lunch for everyone in all states, and providing more after-school programs for schools so that parents can work longer—less of the country would be in poverty. As a result, the U.S. would be spending a fraction of the money it does now on the cost of various interrelated problems that come with childhood poverty.

One of the new bill’s proposals is to cut the budget for food stamps by $213.5 billion. This would be achieved by capping benefits for large families, restricting availability to the unemployed, and raising the age limit for recipients that are not required to work. According to government records, 28 percent of the federal budget was being spent on feeding poor families and children, yet 14 percent of the country is still living in poverty.

These budget cuts for food stamps will, according to predictions made by economists, further impoverish many civilians and increase the risk of children not being provided for and subsequently falling under the poverty line. More hungry children now means that more of the population will be under the poverty line in the future, and the country will end up spending more to help these people in the long term.

A $6.8 billion cut is also being proposed to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This will severely reduce the budget for the reconstruction and repairs of old public housing buildings. At the moment, it is estimated that 80 percent of public housing tenants suffered heating and hot water outages in recent months because of failing and outdated boiler systems in desperate need of repair. With even less funding, these repairs will not happen and those living in the buildings will continue to be subjected to uncomfortable living conditions.

Though billions poured into public assistance that is given out every year is going to waste because of a lack of change, cutting the budget will not help fix the problem of poverty. It would be more effective to change the way that the money is being spent instead of cutting it completely. If welfare programs are refined and implemented in ways that will not result in billions being spent yearly to no substantial effect, the poverty rate in America would get better instead of getting worse.

With these cuts as of now, the government is allowing more and more children to live in poverty and grow up without the education, skills, or resources needed to provide for themselves or contribute to the economy, creating an even bigger population under the poverty line. Instead of cutting the budget, the government should put money toward making sure that those in poverty are given a real chance at education: fund schools in poor areas in order to give them the same opportunities as others and better prepare students to take an active role in the economy or provide free lunch and breakfast to all students in public schools in order to promote attendance in school and feed hungry children. These programs would cost around the same, but produce real results. These are just a couple of the many reforms that could take place in the country’s social welfare system.

For every dollar spent on childhood poverty, the government would save another $7.00 with respect to the economic costs of poverty. These are statistics that should be taken seriously, and if social assistance programs are revised to make them more effective and directly attack the growing problem of poverty in the country, there will be no need to make budget cuts. 24 percent of Americans receive some type of government assistance each month. If this help is taken away, this 24 percent will suffer and more of the American population will fall under the poverty line, all in an attempt to save the government some money.