"The Next Bad News from the White House"
- Helen
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Robert Kramer, Guest Blogger knows how difficult it is to have a dependent child and adult within the home and still receive funding and services a loved one needs. This was before these latest, heartless policies make it nearly impossible for a dependent adult to live with family. It will have the intended consequence to force dependent adults into institutional settings while Trump Republicans cut $1 trillion from the federal portion that helps to fund Medicaid.
This quote is how David M. Perry, a journalist and historian ended his
May 1, 2026 article on MS Now.
The Trump administration is proposing cuts to programs that help families care for a
child, sibling, or other person with a disability. Mr. Perry writes from his own experience,
caring for his adult son Nico. Here is the link:
I have a somewhat similar experience to Mr. Perry. Mine goes back to 1955, when I
officially joined my parents, Sophie and Dave, in helping my older brother George. He
was born in 1938 and by the time he was four, my mother a teacher in Brooklyn knew
there was something wrong. My future parents consulted experts and were told to place
George in an institution. That would be best for George, best for them, and best
especially for any other children. That turned out to be me arriving in 1944.
Following the experts’ advice, my parents took the ferry to Staten Island, toured
Willowbrook, and then immediarely decided George would remain at home. My mother
initially found private schools to teach George and when he was older he attended
classes for retarded children provided by the New York City public school system.
Retarded was the kindest description in 1950. The classes ended when students
reached age 16. There was nothing else. So, my parents and some others started a
“something else.”
In 1955 they rented the floor above a bar on Church Avenue in Brooklyn. Friday and
Saturday nights the parents watched and facilitated as their children began to have
normal social experiences. I was 11 and part of the program. And I have been ever
since. I am now 81 and George will celebrate his 88th birthday on May 16, 2026.
The organization those few parents started also celebrated a birthdat recently.
Operating for 70 years it now manages five residences, two sheltered workshops, and
programs that serve 400 individuals and their parents living in the community.
Which brings me back to Mr. Perry, waiting for the next bad news. (Please use the link
above to read his article.) These programs have always been hard to navigate. Mr.
Perry is able to manage better than most, because he is a skilled communicator and
has the ability to seek legal assistance as he notes in the article.
Under the best of circumstances, it often takes a fight with the government to actually
get the benfuts. As Mr. Perry says on MS NOW, “And here’s the bigger problem: You’re
not supposed to know what you or your loved ones qualify for. Otherwise, you might get
what you are actually owed.”
Recently ProPublica revealed that the Trump White House is about to make this terrible
system even worse. First, the administration is trying to shrink
supplementary security income (SSI) payments for disabled adults who live with their
families, by deducting the value of disabled people’s bedrooms from the monthly
payments under SSI. Then, to make it worse, families that receive Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) would be subjected to what the proposal calls Program
Integrity to qualify for SNAP. SNAP budgeted funds were also CUT severely at the same time, cutting cut nearly \(\$187\) billion from the program over a 10-year period and tightened eligibility, leading to a nationwide drop of approximately 4.3 million beneficiaries between January 2025 and January 2026.
Both proposed changes would add even more complexity to the system and thereby
shrink the benefits while hiding the ugly reality those benefits are being cut. That’s why
David Perry’s family and every other family are waiting for the next bad news to come
from the White House.
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