The White House’s budget proposal has been published, and it’s as problematic for our sector as feared.

First, let’s level-set: We’re busy tracking the mandatory spending bill that’s being marked up in Congress as we speak. Medicaid, SNAP, school meals, and more are in jeopardy in the U.S. House—you’ll hear more from us on that later this week. This legislation can be passed with a simple majority in the House and Senate via a process called reconciliation.

The White House’s budget proposal is for discretionary spending, which requires 60 votes to pass in the Senate.

No matter the administration, a White House’s budget proposal is not where a final budget passed by Congress will end up, and this will be no exception. But from a political perspective, it’s important to know what this White House is pushing for and pushing against because it will have outsized influence as the legislative bodies put pen to paper in the months ahead.

And there are no real surprises, unfortunately: The White House is coming after the nonprofit sector aggressively. And frustratingly, it’s not hiding its disdain for nonprofits either.

From a summary of the White House budget via the National Council of Nonprofits:

OMB Director Russ Vought explained that the White House reviewed federal spending and determined that it was “laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.” Throughout the budget, specific nonprofit organizations are identified and denigrated as “wasteful,” “liberal,” “radical leftists,” and pushing a “leftist agenda.”

Ensuring that people are fed, housed, healthy, and employed is not a partisan issue. But this administration is treating this work as such. And they’re doing that despite decades of Republicans and Democrats funding nonprofits to ensure their Republican and Democratic constituents across the country have what they need to thrive.

To wit, these are just some of the programs relevant to nonprofits that the White House wants to cut or eliminate:

• Rental assistance (cut by $26 billion) and resources to build affordable housing (cut by $1.2 billion) and revitalize communities (cut by $3.3 billion).
• Substance use disorder programs administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (cut by $1.06 billion).
• Assistance for refugees (cut by $650 million).
• Fair housing enforcement (cut by $60 million).
• Heating assistance for low-income households (cut by $4 billion).
• Community services block grants (cut by $770 million).
• Health-equity focused activities would be eliminated.
• Maternal and child health programs ($274 million) and workforce programs ($1 billion reduction) would be cut.
• The National Institute of Minority and Health Disparities would be zeroed out, as well.
• There is a lack of specificity in other areas of the budget proposal, but advocates in developmental disabilities are very worried based upon a leaked budget draft from April. That budget draft proposed eliminating funding for protection and advocacy agencies, state councils on developmental disabilities, the lifespan respite program, and university centers on developmental disabilities.

It is difficult to quantify the deleterious effect should these funding cuts come to pass. But here’s one succinct prediction:

“We would see, I think, homelessness escalate in a way that has been really unprecedented, and unheard of,” said Kim Johnson, policy manager with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

But there’s good news.

This budget request “went over like a lead balloon on the Hill with lawmakers in both parties” as reported by Jake Sherman, whose finger is more on the pulse than any other journalist in DC, in my opinion.

We have work to do. But we can do this.

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Tracking Executive Actions

Since January, we have been mirroring the National Council of Nonprofits’ tracker of all executive orders and actions relevant to the nonprofit sector. As the Administration has deployed executive action at a historic pace, while Congress has been historically unproductive thus far, we hope this spreadsheet is a useful community resource in following what the Administration is seeking to do unilaterally through executive power. I want to thank our Policy Associate, Lauren Sands, for her scrupulous work in keeping this spreadsheet up to date.

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