In This Issue
President Trump's inaugural budget is rippling through Washington and the country. A president neither authorizes nor appropriates federal spending. So why is the President's 2018 budget so important?
The president is the leader of the Republican party. His budget sends a clear message about his priorities and his party's priorities.
Today, the Republican party basically controls all three branches of government. Which means, they can basically do whatever they want—elections have consequences. Donald Trump is the head of the executive branch. Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate and, therefore, the legislative branch. And with the appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court and therefore the judicial branch, is also controlled by the Republican party.
The president's budget lays out four priorities: 1) expanding the war machine; 2) giving tax cuts to the wealthy, including the president's friends, his family, and himself; 3) dismantling the safety net for poor people, older people and sicker people; and 4) continuing attacks on people of color and immigrants. So, let's look at how the president's budget speaks to these things.
The U.S. spends more on its military than any other country in the world. In fact, we spend more than the next 10 countries combined. The president's budget dramatically increases military spending. The president's budget also provides huge tax breaks for the rich and expands welfare for the wealthy. His budget makes dramatic cuts in healthcare, including Medicaid, food programs for the poor, and educational programs for poor and middle-class students. And inside this budget are billions of dollars to build a wall across our southern borders, a wall that the president promised Mexico would build. His budget also dismantles civil-rights units across all of the federal departments, and undermines the Justice Department's ability to pursue police brutality in local communities. According to leading economists, this budget will also balloon the federal deficit and have a terrible impact on our economy.
Our job in the HIV/AIDS movement is to focus on health in general and HIV and AIDS, specifically. So why should we care about an expanding military-industrial complex, welfare for the wealthy or civil rights? They are all of one cloth, inextricably connected. All of these issues impact our nation's ability to provide healthcare to her citizens or to fight HIV and AIDS. In the health sphere, President Trump's budget comes on the heels of the passage in the House of Representatives of the American Health Care Act, also known as Trumpcare, which will take health care away from an estimated 23 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also aligns with the president's 2018 budget by cutting Medicaid by somewhere between $610 million and $1.4 trillion.
The 2018 budget takes direct aim at HIV and AIDS, including slashing Medicaid and cutting the budgets of the CDC by $1 billion—so much that the CDC's former director, Tom Friedan, tweeted: "unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs." The CDC cuts include a loss of $186 million from the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB at the CDC. President Trump's budget proposal cuts almost $288 million from the Health Resources & Services Administration (including $59 million from Ryan White), $21 million from HOPWA and empowers states to limit benefits.
The next step for the budget is the House of Representatives. Call your representative and tell him or her how you feel about Medicaid. Tell them if you want ending the AIDS epidemic to be a priority. Tell them if addressing homelessness and hunger are important to you. Tell your representative what your priorities are. Make your voices heard in your local communities and the statehouse. (To find out who your federal and state elected officials are and how to contact them, go here.)
As you know, this month the Black AIDS Institute, in partnership with organizations all over the country, is sponsoring #30DaysOfHIV to mobilize and energize Black communities around HIV and AIDS, and help groups and individuals to make their voices heard. There are events during #30DaysOfHIV that you can create, support and attend. There are actions that you can take, "like" on social media and share with your friends. We've also created an Instagram campaign, titled "In The Life," where Black gay/bisexual/same-gender-loving and trans men can combat stereotypes and their erasure by the media by telling the stories of their personal lives, themselves.
We open this week's issue with a beautiful image and post from "In The Life" and invite you to submit your image and story by following the instructions at the end of the piece.
Earlier this month I reported about the consultation that the CDC held on HIV in the South. This week, Richard Wolitski shares his perspectives on the effort to end HIV disparities in the southern United States. Our friends at AIDS.gov report on a recent demonstration project that addressed the unique barriers faced by adolescents and young adults living with HIV.
As the Trump administration takes a tough stance on immigration, our friends at Kaiser Health News report on the concerns of health departments around the country that the administration's approach will undermine a wide variety of efforts to improve public health—from HIV services, to efforts to address the opioid epidemic, to support to victims of domestic violence. Finally, on the heels of the tragic stabbing of Black University of Maryland senior and Army 2nd Lt. Richard Collins III, which is being investigated as a possible hate crime, we run a story from our friends at ProPublica about the rise of such crimes across the nation. And once again, we remind you that Black Lives Matter.
Yours in the struggle,
Phill