Trump's War on Children

[_Res Ipsa]

HFC. I should really jump in here.

Yeah, been hoping you would.

[_Res Ipsa]

please don't distract Hawkeye from pouring lighter fluid on his curly locks, it's difficult for him to bother with facts....he's firing on one cylinder, ya know.

The actual facts are hideous enough. You want to address the child gulag?

[_Jersey Girl]

please don't distract Hawkeye from pouring lighter fluid on his curly locks, it's difficult for him to bother with facts....he's firing on one cylinder, ya know.

I can count on the finger of, well, one finger how many times I've ever agreed with you on this board. This is now the second time.

I thought I should make a note of that. For the record.

[Guest]

The case of the eight children is just the only one we know about. At the time experts were on shows saying it would take a special kind of naïvété to think this wasn't more prevalent. But when the government is losing this many kids and has no idea of their whereabouts, it isn't really an illicit assumption that more than 8 have been taken by human traffickers. And no, I don't believe the children should be handed over to sponsors, I believe they need to stay with their parents. Especially when they're breast-feeding. Can we name a single instance when a nursing baby was taken from its mother or a father killed himself because his kids were taken from him, prior to Trump?

[_Jersey Girl]

HFC. I should really jump in here.

Yeah, been hoping you would.

Nah. I'm waiting for Hawkeye to come up with the Texas Walmart with blackened windows.

[_Hawkeye]

please don't distract Hawkeye from pouring lighter fluid on his curly locks, it's difficult for him to bother with facts....he's firing on one cylinder, ya know.

I can count on the finger of, well, one finger how many times I've ever agreed with you on this board. This is now the second time.

I thought I should make a note of that. For the record.

Glad this is such a humorous subject for you. To me it is depressing as all get out.

[_Jersey Girl]

Glad this is such a humorous subject for you. To me it is depressing as all get out.

I didn't comment on the subject.

[_Hawkeye]

Trump's War on Children is hardly confined to his immigration policies and his refusal to make schools safer.

The president’s 2018 budget:

Slashes $610 billion over 10 years from Medicaid, which nearly 37 million children rely on for a healthy start in life and which pays for nearly half of all births and ensures coverage for 40 percent of our children with special health care needs. The budget also assumes passage of the more than $800 billion additional cuts in Medicaid included in the American Health Care Act for a total Medicaid massacre of more than $1.4 trillion over 10 years.

Rips $5.7 billion from CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), which covers nearly 9 million children in working families ineligible for Medicaid. The proposed cap on CHIP funding for families at 250 percent of the poverty level threatens coverage for millions of children in the 24 states and the District of Columbia that have chosen to extend coverage to children in families with slightly higher incomes.

Snatches food out of the mouths and stomachs of hungry children by slicing $193 billion over 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which some still call food stamps. SNAP feeds nearly 46 million people including nearly 20 million children. This cut is an unprecedented 25 percent reduction in a core safety net program that in 2014 lifted 4.7 million people, including 2.1 million children, out of poverty. For the 4.9 million households, 1.3 million with children, with no cash income who rely only on SNAP to keep the wolves of hunger from their doors, these cuts would be a catastrophic assault.

Chops $22 billion over 10 years from TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program) including $6 billion that eliminates the TANF Contingency Fund which helps support some of our neediest families.

Slashes programs to assist families with housing and end homelessness by $7.4 billion, a 15 percent cut for 2018 including $2.3 billion from Housing Choice Vouchers, which would leave more than 250,000 low income households without them; $1.8 billion — nearly 29 percent — from public housing already in desperate need of repair and expansion; and $133 million — 5.6 percent — from homeless assistance grants.

Whacks $72 billion over 10 years from the Supplemental Security Income Program (SSI), which more than 8 million children and adults with the most severe disabilities depend on to keep going. Despite the President’s promise not to cut Social Security, his budget cuts $48 billion from Social Security Disability Insurance which assists, among others, grandparents and other relatives raising children because their parents cannot care for them.

Cuts $40 billion over 10 years from the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by barring tax-paying undocumented immigrant workers, many with American citizen children, from benefiting from the Child Tax Credit unless they have a Social Security number, and making it harder for them to benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit created to reward hard work and help parents support their children.

Slashes job training programs by $1.1 billion, or 40 percent, over 10 years for youths, adults and dislocated workers. It denigrates the concept of public service jobs by eliminating the Corporation for National and Community Service, and with it AmeriCorps, Vista and Senior Corps.

Cuts federal education funding $9.2 billion in 2018 alone at a time when a majority of children in all racial and economic groups cannot read or compute at grade level. It slashes $143 billion over 10 years from student loans by eliminating the loan program that encourages graduates to take public service jobs and restricts other programs that subsidize college education for first generation college students and others from low income families. And it proposes to add $1 billion in new funding for the Title I program for disadvantaged students, which has historically supplemented resources for students in schools in areas of concentrated poverty, but for the wrong reason. It proposes to fund a new school choice initiative to let children draw Title I funds away from schools in the neediest areas and take them to schools in higher income areas.

Shears $54 billion in 2018 ($1.6 trillion over 10 years) in non-defense discretionary programs which include a broad range of health, early childhood, education, child welfare and juvenile justice programs as well as environmental protection, foreign assistance, medical and scientific research and other federal government programs. The Trump budget would reduce spending for these important programs 2 percent a year for the next 10 years.

Zeroes out funding for the Legal Services Corporation to deny the poor their only option to defend themselves against injustice.

Eliminates core programs that offer extra assistance to low income children, families and communities including the Social Service Block Grant ($1.4 billion in 2018 alone, $16.3 billion over 10 years); the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to ward off heat in the summer and cold in winter months ($3.4 billion); the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOME, Community Development Block Grant, Indian Community Development Block Grant, and Choice Neighborhood programs ($4.1 billion), and the National Housing Trust Fund which provides funds to states and local communities to develop affordable rental housing; the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) programs that include CSBG ($723.6 million), Community Economic Development program ($29. 8 million) and Rural Community Facilities ($6.5 million).

Axes the 21st Century Community Learning Program that offers programs to curb summer learning loss and keep children safe and engaged through after school programs for 1.6 million children; the Preschool Development Grants which went to 18 states to improve and expand access to high-quality preschool for children in high-needs communities; and the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program for parents enrolled in college to assist in child care costs.

[_Res Ipsa]

The case of the eight children is just the only one we know about. At the time experts were on shows saying it would take a special kind of naïveté to think this wasn't more prevalent. But when the government is losing this many kids and has no idea of their whereabouts, it isn't really an illicit assumption that more than 8 have been taken by human traffickers. And no, I don't believe the children should be handed over to sponsors, I believe they need to stay with their parents. Especially when they're breast-feeding. Can we name a single instance when a nursing baby was taken from its mother or a father killed himself because his kids were taken from him, prior to Trump?

I can only take a look at evidence you provide. Tell me this: did the egg farm kids show up at the border with their parents, forcibly separated from their parents, and then given to traffickers? Is that what happened?

When someone shows up at the border with a child, how do you determine whether the individual is actually a parent? And what should you do with them while you try to figure it out? How do you guarantee with 100% surety that the person claiming to be a parent or other relative isn't part of a trafficking scheme?

Yep, the forced separation of children from asylum-seeking parents is horrible. So why bury it behind a pile of nonsense?

[_Res Ipsa]

More background on the egg farm. This was an organized smuggling ring, where parents paid the smugglers thousands of dollars and gave them deeds to their family farms to send their children to America. Most of them showed up in a wave of unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Some weren't caught, and went straight to the egg farm. Some were caught. Now, to reunite them with their parents, the government could have sent them back to the hellhole where they came from. When you say you would keep kids with their parents rather than give them to sponsors, is that what you meant? What happened in four cases is that the smugglers hired someone to pose as a family friend offering to sponsor the kids. How do you prove someone is not a family friend of an unaccompanied minor's family, especially if the minor is a willing part of the scheme? So, what's your call Hawkeye? Send 'em back to their parents? Let 'em in?

Keep in mind that this literally has nothing to do with forcibly separating children from their asylum-seeking parents.