Detroit Free Press readers

Readers respond to President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, unveiled last week:

It’s ironic that while President Donald Trump was in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity, his budget was released. It is his first trip abroad where he met leaders of Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. All three religions encourage us to care for poor people.

His budget drastically cuts food for poor children, SNAP (food stamps), lunch meals and education, while funding for-profit education and cutting efficient public education. Funding is also slashed for Meals on Wheels for elderly and disabled people.

Further, there is an additional $469 billion for defense spending in the next decade; $2.6 billion for border security and a wall we don’t want. In addition, there are lavish tax breaks for wealthy people. It’s imperative that we contact our members of Congress to strongly voice our objections to this immoral budget. Amen.

Delphine Palkowski

South Lyon

If the disappearing American middle-class and the working poor that supported Donald Trump during the 2016 election cycle do not have buyer remorse at this time, they soon will. They bought into his empty promises and lies and now he is going to reward their support with a federal budget that will be sure to cut them out of the American Dream.

The only America Trump is going to make great is the America made up of the wealthiest individuals in the country, the rest of us are on our own. If the American people don’t “right the ship” in 2018 and continue to keep voting against their own best interest by re-electing Republicans, then where we will end up is unthinkable. We need a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Senate to put an end to this madness and get Trump out of the White House.

Nate Forrester

Rochester Hills

Scientific research solves problems, improves human welfare, and lays the foundation for economic growth. It is puzzling, then, why the Trump administration’s proposed budget drastically cuts federal support for nearly every kind of research. Trump and his allies don’t “believe in” climate change, despite overwhelming evidence, so I can understand why they would cut programs that observe climate or develop new energy sources. But the steep cuts proposed to the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies suggest that they must also not believe in cancer, mental health, earthquakes, floods, hunger, environmental quality, or the many other problems that our nation faces. If you do believe in the reality of these problems, and would like to continue to apply science to solve them, please write to your member of Congress to make sure that the federal budget that is eventually adopted gives science the support it deserves.

David Strayer

Ann Arbor

It’s interesting, and perhaps providential, that President Trump met the Pope on the second anniversary of Francis’ encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si — On The Care of Our Common Home,” where Francis writes, “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic systems. A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

This quote and many others from the encyclical flies in the face of President Donald Trump’s cruel budget and his assertion that climate change is a hoax.

Matt Hart

Trenton