Donald Trump is in Milwaukee this afternoon to promote “Workforce Development Week” as his administration prepares to gut funding for workforce development.

 

“Trump’s budget guts funding for job training and levels off funding for registered apprenticeships – programs that would benefit out-of-work Wisconsinites – as his administration pushes more massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires like himself and Republican politicians like Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson. On top of that, Trump is pursuing policies that would take away health coverage from thousands of Wisconsinites, slash funds for public education in Wisconsin, and dismantle critical agricultural programs, all to pay for more and more tax cuts for the rich. Wisconsinites deserve better.” – Mandy McClure, DNC Spokesperson

 

Trump’s budget eliminates multiple job training and education programs, and cuts workforce innovation and opportunity act grants for adult, youth, and dislocated worker training programs by almost 40 percent. All at the expense of the manufacturers and small businesses he promised to save. These cuts would have a real impact on working Wisconsin families.

 

Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump’s budget proposed to keep funding for apprentice programs steady but reduce funding for Labor Department job-training programs by nearly 40%.”

 

Bloomberg BNA: “President Donald Trump May 23 requested a $1.3 billion cut in Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act grants for adult, youth, and dislocated worker training programs that have previously garnered bipartisan support. That would represent a 39 percent reduction. The White House justified this decision by citing evaluations of workforce programs showing a ‘mixed record of effectiveness.’”

 

Trump’s budget offers no additional funding for registered apprentice programs, which provided Wisconsin employers with over 10,000 active registered apprentices across 975 active programs in fiscal year 2016, even as he claims to make apprenticeships a focus of his labor policy.

 

Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump’s budget proposed to keep funding for apprentice programs steady but reduce funding for Labor Department job-training programs by nearly 40%.”

 

Associated Press: “President Donald Trump says apprenticeships could match workers with millions of open jobs, but he's reluctant to devote more taxpayer money to the effort.”

 

Wall Street Journal: “President Donald Trump next week will make expansion of apprenticeship programs the center of his labor policy, aimed at filling a record level of open jobs and drawing back Americans who have left the workforce.”

 

Trump and the Republicans’ health care repeal threatens to erase the progress made under the Affordable Care Act, which helped 211,000 previously uninsured Wisconsinites gain health coverage. Before the ACA went into effect, as many as 2.4 million people in Wisconsin with pre-existing conditions could have been denied coverage.

 

Wisconsin State Journal: “Plans by President-elect Donald Trump and Congress to overturn the Affordable Care Act and alter Medicaid could have a significant impact in Wisconsin, where much of a recent 38 percent drop in the uninsured rate came from the health law’s exchange, health care experts said Wednesday.”

 

Because of the ACA, Wisconsin’s uninsured rate dropped by over a third. Thanks to the declining uninsured rate, spending on Charity Care in Wisconsin was cut nearly in half from 2013-2015.

 

Wisconsin State Journal: “Charity Care dips at Wisconsin hospitals, with more people insured; trend could end with Obamacare repeal.”

 

Wisconsin State Journal: “Statewide, charity care — free or discounted care for patients with low incomes — decreased 46 percent from 2013 to 2015, falling from $328 million to $176 million, according to the hospital association. Bad debt, which occurs when patients not approved for charity care don’t pay their bills, went down 34 percent, from $285 million in 2013 to $188 million in 2015. The main reason for the declines, Potter said, is a similar reduction in the number of residents without insurance. That figure went from 518,000 people in 2013 to 323,000 people in 2015, a 38 percent drop, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”

 

But Trump’s cruel policies don’t stop with jobs and health care. The White House budget would eliminate almost $35 million for Wisconsin schools to pay for teacher development and class size reduction.

 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The math institute and other training opportunities for teachers and principals throughout the state are made possible through funding from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction via the U.S. Department of Education. The federal grant program, known as Title II, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is one of the programs set to be eliminated under President Donald Trump's budget proposal. In Wisconsin, that could mean eliminating almost $35 million designated for public, private and charter schools across the state used for professional development, class size reduction and recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers and principals, with the goal of increasing student achievement.”

 

Trump seeks to eliminate grant funding for before and after school programs which would put 221 programs in Wisconsin at risk.

 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “But La Causa's after-school program is one of 221 statewide that are at risk under President Donald Trump's proposed budget. In Milwaukee Public Schools that could mean wiping out programs that serve about 5,000 students every day.”

 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “This year, [the Department of Public Instruction] received just over $15.4 million in CLC grants, which served about 42,400 Wisconsin children, according to the most recent state enrollment records. Three out of four regular attendees were economically disadvantaged, according to the state.”

 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The Waukesha School District received more than $320,000 from Title II, Part A in 2016, part of which it shared with local private schools … Through Title II, Part A funds, Waukesha also has done intensive literacy training for teachers that work with struggling elementary-age students.”

 

Trump’s budget could cut $250 million for food stamps and eliminate a job training program that helped put 1,000 low-income, older Wisconsinites back to work last year.

 

Wisconsin State Journal: “The federal government also would spend nearly $250 million less on food stamps for Wisconsin residents each year under Trump’s proposed spending plan, which calls for a 25 percent decrease in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending, according to David Lee, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin, an organization that advocates on behalf of food shelters and oversees a network of pantries in the state.”

 

CBS News: “Singletary got his job through the half-century-old Senior Community Service Employment Program, a training and placement program underwritten by taxpayers aimed at putting older Americans back into the workforce. President Donald Trump says there are too few participants who find work that's not paid for by the federal government. This week, he proposed deleting the $434 million program from the federal budget – a strike at a piece of President Lyndon Johnson's ‘war on poverty.’”

 

Unfortunately, Trump’s attack on rural America also takes aim at key agriculture programs that have benefitted Wisconsinites for decades. Trump’s budget would limit federal crop insurance subsidies for Wisconsin farmers and eliminate millions in funding for waste water projects in rural communities.

 

WKOW ABC News: “Wisconsin farmers would see their subsidy for crop insurance limited to $40,000 per year beginning in 2019 under President Trump's budget proposal. Trump's budget would also limit the eligibility for crop insurance to farms with an adjusted gross income of less than $500,000 per year. The proposed changes would result in a 36 percent cut to the crop insurance subsidy program over the next ten years … According to the Rain and Hail Insurance Society, the subsidy program paid over $140 million in Wisconsin crop insurance premiums in 2016.”

 

La Crosse Tribune: “Since 2006, the water program has authorized nearly $131 million worth of subsidies for sewer and water projects in rural Wisconsin communities and an additional $297 million in low-interest loans. That includes more than $38 million for more than two dozen Coulee Region municipalities, including Arcadia, Cashton, Ettrick, Hixton, Independence and Whitehall.”

 

Bloomberg BNA: “Also eliminated is the Agriculture Department’s $498 million loan and grant program for rural waste water projects and the direct home loan program for single-family housing, which provides financing assistance to low-income rural residents.”