“I have lung cancer and it’s the dead of winter,” she remembers thinking. “What am I going to do?”
Help came in the form of a heating subsidy: money from the federal government, delivered by the
Highland County Community Action Organization, a small nonprofit in rural southern Ohio, where Ms. Feltner lives.
Now, that program is on the chopping block. It is one of many cuts in President Trump’s new budget proposal that would inflict the deepest pain on the most vulnerable Americans — a great number of whom voted for him.
“I understand what he’s trying to do, but I think he’s just not stopping to think that there are people caught in the middle he is really going to hurt,” said Ms. Feltner, 57, who was a nurse for 25 years and voted for Mr. Trump. “He needs to make some concessions for that. I was a productive citizen. Don’t make me feel worthless now.”
Trump Budget Cuts
The only work he found afterward paid minimum wage. With a wife and 3-year-old daughter, he struggled to pay the bills. “I tried everywhere to get a job,” he said. “I mowed lawns. I cut weeds. I hauled trash.”
Last year, his mother texted him about a job in farming through a local nonprofit called the
Coalfield Development Corporation, which is partially supported by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It pays him $11.50 an hour for 33 hours a week growing cucumbers and raising chickens and pigs. It also pays for him to attend community college six hours a week where he working toward an associate degree. His grade point average is 4.0.
“I never dreamed I’d be going back to school,” he said. “I love it. It’s amazing. College is totally different than high school. Back then I was young and I didn’t care.”
...
“I hate to see him cut us,”
But there's always the die-hards:
Another worker in the Coalfield Development jobs program is Tracy Spaulding, 19, the son of a longtime miner.
When asked what he thought about the proposed cut to the commission, he thought for a bit. “He ain’t pulled nothing on us yet,” he said.
