ORLANDO, Fla. — Ellie Hollander, president and chief executive officer of Meals on Wheels America on Saturday said that President Trump’s proposed budget cuts could have serious impacts for seniors, but added that the public backlash over the news resulted in increased giving.
“We did not expect to be thrown into the spotlight as we were,” Hollander said, speaking at the annual conference for the Association of Health Care Journalists.
“We saw a huge uptick in volunteerism of 7,000 people … Meals and Wheels got more donations than we ever have during that two-week period,” she said. “It obviously sends a clear signal that people are paying attention and people are listening.”
Trump’s budget blueprint introduced in March called for ending the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which some states use to fund Meals on Wheels. The blueprint also called for a 17.9 percent, or $15.1 billion, cut to the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that funds 35 percent of the organization’s budget.
Shortly after the blueprint was introduced, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget chief, defended the proposed cuts by saying that the program is one of many that is “just not showing any results.”
Other funding for Meals on Wheels comes from state and local resources, private donations and additional federal funding services like the Social Services Block Grant. Trump’s initial proposal will be followed by a more detailed version in May, Mulvaney said. Congress must sign off on the proposal and negotiate changes among members.
Hollander stressed that the need for more meals was growing as more people are aging and living longer, often with more chronic illnesses. Meals on Wheels has more than 5,000 locally run programs, which serve 2.4 million low-income seniors by delivering meals to them at home or to community settings where they gather, but the need, Hollander says, is closer to 10 million people. She said that because of inadequate funding the organization has been unable to keep up with the same delivery as in the past, resulting in 23 million fewer meals delivered in 2014 than in 2005.
Hollander said that the organization’s resources already were strained and that local groups report that they are making decisions every year about who gets a meal and who doesn’t. She said that funding these programs result in billions of dollars in savings to the federal government, resulting in more seniors living at home rather than receiving expensive care in nursing homes or hospitals.
