California Senator Harris Statement on
President Trump's Budget

Today, U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris, a member of the Senate Committee on the Budget, released the following statement in response to President Trump’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018.

“At its core, this budget is a cruel betrayal of the middle class and threatens our ability to ensure basic public safety, public health, and public education. This budget makes clear the values of this Administration: it prioritizes those at the top, while leaving working families and the middle class high and dry.

“It reduces taxes for the wealthiest Americans while taking away Social Security for disabled Americans and tax credits for families with children. It gives corporations tax breaks while eliminating resources for students trying to pay for college. It spends billions of dollars on a wall that won't work, while cutting access to health care and initiatives to cure cancer.

"I will stand up, speak out, and fight against this budget at every turn just as I will fight against this Administration’s efforts to strip health care from millions. We are better than this.”

Budget Impact on California:

• Eliminates federal funding for 51 community action programs in California that provide thousands of low-income Californians emergency food, shelter, heating assistance, transportation and health care.

• Reduces ‘Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act’ funding by more than $1.3 billion – resulting in more than 436,000 Californians potentially losing access to job training and employment services.

• Cuts $357 million in Community Development Block Grants that provide California funding for affordable housing, transportation, and economic development.

• Makes college more expensive by eliminating grants to over 201,000 California students through the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program.

• Kicks 132,700 students in California off after-school programs by eliminating the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.

• Eliminates the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program which provides heating, cooling, or weatherization assistance to 219,000 California families.

• Denies assistance to 23,400 California families for affordable housing which would put them at immediate risk of eviction and homelessness by slashing federal rental assistance programs, including Section 8 housing vouchers.

• Ends the federal funding that the airports in Crescent City, El Centro, Merced, and Visalia receive under the Essential Air Service program to ensure that smaller, underserved communities have commercial air service.

• Cuts Head Start by $101 million in California, which would throw 11,030 children off high-quality child care and early education.

Eliminates the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Training program.