Meals on Wheels Seniors Respond to Trump: 'Cut Something Else'

"There's gotta be a lot of things that could be cut, instead of making it rip-off the old people, you know?"

Harold Ray is 79. He's lived alone since his wife went into a nursing home about a year ago, and he doesn't get to see her often. "I don't get out too much, really. And when I do go I have to go in a wheelchair or a walker. That's no good, you know," Rays says.

"It's been quite a while. We've been married 57 years, so you know what kind of impact that's had on me," he says, and laughs. "She always did my cooking and the house cleaning."

The reason his wife did most of the housework is because Ray has a rare, incurable disease eating away at many of his nerves. "I could cook a meal, but I'm crippled in my hands and my feet and legs, so I have problems – I have problems opening a can of food and stuff like that," he says.

The disease is called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and it's hereditary. "My mother had [it], and I got it, and I got a younger brother, it's working on him now. And I've got a couple older brothers that's already in wheelchairs," Ray says.

About a month-and-a-half ago, Ray started getting meals delivered to his home in Ypsilanti, Michigan. "They bring me a hot one for lunch and a cold one for later on in the afternoon and all the goodies that goes with it," he says. "It's been great."

When Rolling Stone reached Ray by phone on Friday, he hadn't yet heard about President Trump's proposed elimination of Community Development Block grants, which fund Meals on Wheels programs around the country, among other things.

"I don't listen too much to what he says, be honest with you," Ray says. Trump had been in Ypsilanti the day before for a meeting with auto executives.

Ray didn't go to see him, but he says if he had the chance to talk to the president, or his budget director Mick Mulvaney, "I'd tell 'em, 'Cut something else.' I mean, there's gotta be a lot of things that could be cut, instead of making it rip-off the old people, you know?"

Ray is one of the 2.4 million seniors served by the program, which delivers meals to the sick and homebound around the country.

Sixty-five-year-old Jane Philo-Bisaccia, also from Ypsilanti, is another. Her doctor arranged for her to start receiving meals when she left the hospital following a hip surgery nine months ago. It's a good thing, too, because a few months later she slipped and dislocated that hip. Four months after that, she had another fall, shattering the bone above her knee. "I've been pretty housebound," she says.

She gets two meals a day through Meals on Wheels. "At first I was just getting the one meal a day, and then one of their delivery people said, 'Is that enough for you?' I said, 'Well, you know, I don't want to be greedy!' She says, 'Don't think of it that way! It's there for you to use. It's set up for that purpose.'"

Roughly a third of the Meals on Wheels budget, or $517.3 million, is derived from federal funding. Outlining the cuts on Thursday, Mulvaney said the program was "just not showing any results."


Meals on Wheels Seniors Respond to Trump: 'Cut Something Else'

 

Why cut it at all if it is such a little amount?

Are you in for or against helping the elderly who are in need?

 

Where is your proof the money is being used inefficiently? Do you feel that the Pentagon is using money efficiently?

Do you know of any place Jesus said, "Let them go hungry if feeding them is not efficient?"

 

Is it acceptable to you that 3% of the elderly, the poor, kids go hungry because funds were cut?

What percent of hunger among those groups is acceptable to you?