Rural voters flocked to President Donald Trump and his promises to roll back environmental regulations and overhaul Obamacare will be among the Americans most affected by cuts in the White House budget proposal. | Getty Rural voters lose in Trump’s budget plan

The rural voters who turned out in droves to elect President Donald Trump would be some of the biggest losers under the new White House budget.

The spending blueprint calls for a deeper cut to the Agriculture Department — 21 percent — than to just about any other agency. Trump would slash programs that invest in rural infrastructure, target rural public radio and demolish food-aid programs that farmers rely on to buy their products.


Rural voters flocked to Trump and his promises to roll back environmental regulations and overhaul Obamacare, block illegal immigrants and put blue-collar Americans back to work. They applauded his nods to farmers on the campaign trail. While many of those promises are in the budget, some are reading the cuts affecting farmers and rural communities as a sign from the White House that middle America isn’t a priority.

“Rural America elected Trump. His message to rural America is, ‘I don’t care,’” said Dee Davis, founder of the Center for Rural Strategies, a Whitesburg, Kentucky-based nonpartisan group that advocates on behalf of rural communities.

“It’s building a firewall between a promise made and a promise kept,” Davis said.

USDA would take a $4.7 billion hit to its discretionary budget, trimming it to just $17.9 billion. It’s unclear exactly where those cuts would fall, though the White House has named some specific targets.

The plan calls for the elimination of the Rural Business and Cooperative Service — a loan program criticized by the conservative Heritage Foundation — that costs $95 million a year, but is credited with spurring millions more in economic activity, and a water and wastewater loan and grant program, which costs nearly $500 million and largely helps rural communities. It would ax the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program, a popular, bipartisan program that feeds more than 2.2 million people in need abroad, costing taxpayers about $195.5 million. The White House said there’s a lack of evidence the program is “being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity.”

Programs aimed at helping rural communities in other parts of the government would also be slashed under the plan. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps seniors and other low-income Americans with their heating bills, would be eliminated at the Department of Health and Human Services, as would the Federal Aviation Administration’s funding for commercial service to rural airports, and programs at USAID that buy farmers’ crops and send them abroad as food aid.

The Interior Department’s budget would be cut by 12 percent, a move that could threaten programs that drive spending in rural communities, conservation groups said.

While the budget blueprint doesn’t touch food stamps, the country’s largest nutrition program, because that falls under mandatory funding, it would decrease the funding available for other USDA feeding programs. Feeding programs are considered important for rural communities for two reasons: They give assistance to millions of Americans who struggle to buy groceries for their families, much as low-income Americans in cities, and they also help ensure steady demand for the food that farmers sell.

For example, the administration calls for $6.2 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, a federal nutrition program aimed at pregnant women and young children that now covers half of all infants born in the United States. That program received $6.6 billion in fiscal 2016, the last budget year available. The White House noted that the funding level is expected to cover all eligible beneficiaries, but anti-hunger advocates worry the reduction would limit access to those in need down the road.

The proposal comes as rural America is struggling with higher unemployment rates and a devastating opioid epidemic. One in four children in rural America are living in poverty. One in five live in a household that sometimes struggles to put food on the table.

The proposed cuts are so dramatic they’ve also caught the ire of key farm-state Republicans, some of whom have strongly supported the president.

“The president’s proposed budget reduction for agriculture does not work,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) a member of the Agriculture Committee and chairman of the Appropriations agriculture subcommittee, said in a statement. “Given the challenging times in the farm patch — from low commodity prices to natural disasters — we need to prioritize and maintain our agriculture budget. While we support more funding for our military and defense, we must maintain support for our farmers and ranchers.”

House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas) also raised concerns about the cuts because of the current downturn in the agricultural economy. U.S. farmers and ranchers are struggling, he said, and Congress has to be careful not to exacerbate the problem.

As a result of those concerns, farm state Republicans are quick to point out that the budget is merely a wish list from the president and that Congress will have final say in what 2018 funding looks like.

“This is the White House’s vision document, and what we are going to do is propose ours, too,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) told reporters Thursday. “Budgets are documents that are not appropriations, they are not authorizations. ... I’m no more scared than I was when President Obama offered spending priorities that were not conducive to farmers.”

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The budget makes it clear that the Trump administration doesn’t understand how the government works in rural America, said House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), pointing to the cuts to the USDA’s water and wastewater loans as an example. While the administration called them duplicative, Peterson argued the financing is the only way small towns can update their water systems.

In Kentucky, for example, some communities are told at times that their water is not clean enough even to even wash cars. In other parts of the country, local water systems are overloaded with nitrates and other contaminants with little money or infrastructure to deal with the problem.

“County offices are already understaffed, and further cuts would mean private organizations would be tasked with helping navigate farm programs,” Peterson added. “Again, it’s a general lack of understanding what really takes place in rural America.”

Funds for agricultural data collection at the National Agricultural Statistics Service and Economic Research Service also are on the chopping block, along with the number of staff in offices across the country who deploy loans and grants to farmers and local projects.

"The president's first budget request misses the mark entirely when it comes to the needs of rural America," said Greg Fogel, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a group that represents small- and mid-size farm groups. "He is targeting these detrimental cuts right at the people who helped bring him to the White House — America's farmers, ranchers and rural communities.”

In a statement, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said: "Budgets are a reflection of your priorities, and now we know exactly what this administration’s priorities are. They would cut after school programs, airport security, transit system improvements, affordable housing, education and community services across the board — including for pregnant women and new moms who need assistance. They would make deep cuts to economic development funds that benefit every city and town in the country. They would cut community services from meals on wheels to public health to workforce training. Instead of spending $4 billion on a wall that we don't need, the administration should be building bridges and roads across America."