Category: Trump’s Budget Wish List
President’s Proposed Budget Cut: Eliminate Help to Keep Power On for Poor Families

Erica Dunning is proud of her tidy house, built by Habitat for Humanity in a quiet Chalkville neighborhood, and her job working for Jefferson County. But she’s not too proud to admit that, once upon a time, she needed help to make ends meet.
That help particularly made it possible for Dunning to pay her electric bills, which could become out of reach at certain times a year. And that’s where the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program – known by the acronym LIHEAP – came in.
August, which is typically expected in Alabama to be the hottest month of any year, was LIHEAP Awareness month, the month set aside to demonstrate the value of the program. But you don’t have to convince Dunning, who used the program when she was down on her luck and not working, she said.
“It just helps you get over that slump,” she said. “Now I am employed by Jefferson County… but I have used the program to get over that slump. And it’s just good to know you’ve got help.”
Dunning, who has two children, also has a house that uses electricity for both heating and cooling, as opposed to using natural gas in the winter, as many do.
“Without power, how do you get your kids ready for school?” she said.
While shortfalls can happen any time of the year, Dunning said it was particularly hard around Christmas. “You don’t want to disappoint your kids at the time, so you just try and be balanced and make sure they have at least something for Christmas.”
LIHEAP helped make that possible, she said.
This year’s awareness month arrived with the program under threat from the Trump administration, which has proposed eliminating what many low-income residents have come to depend on to keep their air conditioning going in the summer and heat on during the winter.
Thousands of people in Jefferson County depend on LIHEAP, which is administered by the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity. Some 5,000 families are served each summer and another 5,000 each winter, said Dorothy Crosby, who works in the Energy Assistance arm of JCCEO.
But where those residents see a lifeline, the Trump administration sees a drain on federal resources subject to fraud.
“The Budget proposes to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) in order to reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government, and better target resources within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families,” the Trump administration wrote in its budget proposal for 2019. “LIHEAP is a Federal program that has been known to have sizeable fraud and abuse, leading to program integrity concerns.” Read more.
Legal Services Alabama Serves Thousands in State. Program, a Partisan Battleground, on President Trump’s Budget-Cut List.

Army veteran Ronald Whitson gives credit to Legal Services Alabama for keeping his family home in Birmingham. “I’ve been to the top, and I’ve been to the basement, and I know how important Legal Services is,” Whitson said.
For Mike Letson, Whitson’s LSA attorney, what he did for Whitson is more than a job, it’s a passion. “You feel you are on the right side of justice,” he said.
However, the program that Whitson and Letson praise has been controversial, the frequent target of partisan political battles since its start in the mid-1970s, with roots in the nation’s War on Poverty. Now the Alabama program’s federal parent, Legal Services Corporation, once again faces defunding, this time in President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal.
Justifications for defunding the LSC include concern about the program’s lack of accountability measures and the value of transferring responsibility to the states to “encourage nonprofit organizations, businesses, law firms and religious institutions to develop new models for providing legal aid.”
LSC helps provide legal assistance to low-income people in civil matters, including housing, family law and veterans’ rights. The agency distributes its $385 million budget through grants to 133 offices nationwide, including Legal Services Alabama’s seven offices and one call center.
This is the third of BirminghamWatch’s Trump’s Budget Wish List series, detailing programs that President Donald Trump proposes cutting and the effect these choices could have in Alabama. Read More
Read the earlier stories:
Trump’s Budget Wish List: What It Could Mean for Alabama
Peace Program is on President’s Budget-Cut List. Here’s Why Alabama Teacher Values Its Help.
Peace Program is on President’s Budget-Cut List. Here’s Why Alabama Teacher Values Its Help.

A Birmingham-area teacher is among four selected from across the country to participate in a national program aimed at “empowering their students to see peace as something practical and possible.”
Social studies teacher Ryan Adams of Chelsea High School, who focuses on Advanced Placement American History, is one of the next cohort of instructors to become Peace Teachers, a program of the United States Institute of Peace.
USIP is one of several federally funded organizations proposed for substantial cuts in President Donald Trump’s wish list for 2019, “An American Budget.” In the case of the USIP, the president wants to cut its budget almost in half. BirminghamWatch is examining possible impacts on Alabama if the president’s proposals – which Congress has the power to accept or reject – are enacted.
Under the Peace Teacher program, Adams joins teachers from Franklin, Tennessee; Hartford, South Dakota, and Silverdale, Washington, who “will spend the next school year bringing pressing international issues of conflict … to life,” according to a USIP press release, citing the Trump-Putin summit, annual summer protests in Iraq, and potential talks between the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban as examples that could be addressed.
Adams is excited about the prospect. “Every teacher at some point in time … got into this profession to make a difference,” he said. “If I can be allotted an opportunity to be able to … make an impact beyond just the walls of my classroom, honestly, for those who got into this profession for the right reasons, who wouldn’t want to take a shot at that?”
This is the second in the Trump’s Budget Wish List series, detailing programs on President Trump’s chopping block and the effect cutting them could have on Alabama.
Trump’s Budget Wish List: What It Could Mean for Alabama
If President Trump were to get the federal budget he proposed in February, people in Alabama would stand to lose programs designed to improve distressed neighborhoods, provide affordable housing in rural communities, assist small manufacturers, support the training of nurses, provide legal assistance to low-income residents and veterans, pay for economic and workforce development in Appalachia and support farm workers.
Trump’s Budget Wish List: What It Could Mean for Alabama

If President Trump were to get the federal budget he proposed in February, people in Alabama would stand to lose programs designed to improve distressed neighborhoods, provide affordable housing in rural communities, assist small manufacturers, support the training of nurses, provide legal assistance to low-income residents and veterans, pay for economic and workforce development in Appalachia and support farm workers.
Trump’s 66 proposed cuts – a wish list he put out to signal policy priorities – would touch a wide array of programs affecting people, whether they live in urban or rural areas. Those employed in health care, space exploration and farming, and educational opportunities for students would be affected, among others.
Noting that Trump’s proposed cuts would bring steep cuts to domestic programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Community Development Block Grants, housing programs, worker training programs, and more,” Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama’s 7th Congressional District, portrayed the president’s efforts as bad for needy Americans, including those in her state.
Read more.
But Wait, There’s More
Trump’s wish list of budget eliminations connects with his overall efforts to get rid of programs he opposes. And that connects as well to his more recent move to rescind some of the money Congress already authorized for specific programs. Read more.
The List of Proposed Cuts With the Most Impact on Alabama
Of the programs on the original list of 66 that the president proposed to eliminate, there were 40 that would impact Alabama, based on a BirminghamWatch examination. Read more.