Trump brags on his economy and the low unemployment. He argues—without evidence—that his tax cut is trickling down to workers. What he doesn’t realize is that this economy continues to generate jobs that won’t support a family. That’s why so-called poverty programs—from CHIP to food stamps to public housing to low income heating assistance to Medicaid—are so necessary. They give vital support to low-wage workers who do some of the hardest, most taxing jobs in our country.
Despite low unemployment, millions of Americans—the Brookings Institution estimates an astounding 44% of all workers in the prime working ages of 18-64—struggle to get by on median wages of little over $10 an hour or $18,000 a year. The working poor face soaring costs of housing, health care, transportation, utilities and, of course, debt—all rising faster than their wages.
The official “poverty rate” is far lower than any accounting of the true needs of a family. The National Center for Children in Poverty estimates that the average family needs about twice as much income as the poverty level to meet basic needs.
The Trump response to this is to make it worse. The administration and Republicans in Congress oppose raising the minimum wage and won’t even allow a vote on it in the Senate. Now the administration proposes lowering the poverty line over time by pegging the inflation adjustments lower than the actual increase in costs. All programs that help low-wage workers would be affected. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that 250,000 seniors would get less help in purchasing prescription drugs, 300,000 children would lose health care under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This rule combined with others that the administration has imposed will cost literally millions of low-wage workers to face cutbacks in food assistance.
Student loan debt is now $1.5 trillion, primarily loans taken out by the children of middle- or low-income families trying to better themselves through education.
Trump’s most recent plan is to take $2 billion out of the Pell Grant program—which supports college grants to children from families with less than $50,000 in income—to pay for sending NASA back to the moon. The maximum Pell Grant once covered nearly 80% of the cost of tuition, fees, room and board at public four-year college; now it covers less than 30%. This is a program that needs more funding, not less.
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