Sharon Juve: President Trump’s budget slashes abandon human beings

To The Daily Sun,

When Washington walks away, the bill doesn’t vanish; it lands on the Granite State.

President Donald Trump’s latest budget slashes tens of billions from programs that keep communities afloat. It guts clean drinking water and wastewater systems, environmental protection, scientific and medical research, public schools, broadband and rural development, housing aid, refugee support, and humanitarian relief. Programs disappear: help paying home heating bills for low‑income families, job training, senior jobs programs, local anti‑poverty work, support for minority‑owned businesses, and community development and affordable housing grants.

Home‑heating aid has brought tens of millions of dollars to New Hampshire in recent winters and helped tens of thousands of households keep the heat on. Cuts to food assistance, health programs, and rural broadband mean more hunger, more medical debt, and fewer chances for local businesses and students. Even financially comfortable households will feel it through higher local taxes, higher insurance premiums, and strained hospitals and schools.

We could choose differently. Housing everyone currently experiencing homelessness, with basic services, is estimated to cost only a few tens of billions a year nationwide ― less than 5% of what we spend on the Pentagon. Moving to universal health care would likely save hundreds of billions a year compared to what we already pay, while covering everyone. We are not broke; we are choosing cruelty.

The story many Christians remember is of a man who healed the sick, fed the hungry, confronted corrupt power, and sacrificed his life to drive those lessons home. A budget that punishes “the least of these” while rewarding the money‑changers is its inversion. If we keep writing budgets that protect weapons and profits while abandoning human beings, we may still have elections, but we will not have a democracy worthy of the name.

Sharon Juve

Meredith