Power Up: It's not just Special Olympics. Trump's budget cuts other disabilities programs

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Power Up: It’s not just Special Olympics. Trump’s budget cuts other disabilities programs

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PowerPost • Analysis
Power Up: It’s not just Special Olympics. Trump’s budget cuts other disabilities programs

By Jacqueline Alemany
March 29 at 6:13 AM

Happy Friday! Trump's making a last minute trip to visit Lake Okeechobe today. Reminder: No one has read the Mueller report! Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

On The Hill

A SUDDEN REVERSAL: “The Special Olympics will be funded,” President Trump declared to reporters on the White House South Lawn yesterday as his proposed cut to the charity sparked condemnation on both sides of the aisle. “I just told my people, I want to fund the Special Olympics . . . I’ve been to the Special Olympics — I think it’s incredible, and I just authorized a funding.”

• Trump's announcement was an abrupt about-face from his 2020 budget proposal that eliminated federal funding for the sports organization for children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.

• Awkward: The decision came after his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, “spent three days defending the proposal, most recently at a contentious Senate hearing Thursday morning,” my colleague Laura Meckler reports.

• DeVos, who initially accused the media and Democrats of “spinning up falsehoods” about the administration's support for people with disabilities — even as she insisted “current budget realities” mean the government cannot support “every worthy program” — quickly changed course, too.

This Administration is focused every day on raising expectations and improving outcomes for students with disabilities. https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-devos-corrects-record-trump-administration-support-students-disabilities …

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• “I am pleased and grateful the president and I see eye-to-eye on this issue, and that he has decided to fund our Special Olympics grant,” DeVos said. “This is funding I have fought for behind-the-scenes over the last several years.”

• “Someone better pull Betsy out from under the bus right now because he clearly just rode over her,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) whose questioning to DeVos about the Special Olympics cuts went viral, told Power Up.

Part of a pattern: Trump “suggested he had first heard about the budget controversy Thursday morning and that others in his administration were responsible for it, although the cut has been part of all three budgets he has proposed to Congress,” per Meckler.

• “The president's decision to respond to the appropriate public outcry over his administration's proposal to eliminate federal funding for the Special Olympics doesn't begin to change the fact that they eliminated it in past budgets too,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) told Power Up yesterday after Trump's reversal.
• Lawmakers previously “ignored the Trump proposal and instead increased the charity’s funding, which stands at $17.6 million this year,” per Meckler.
• “This is a cut that he clearly made,” Pocan said. “There's still a lot of other cuts to kids in special [education] and hopefully he'll revisit those as well.”

Democratic lawmakers and disabilities advocates say it's not just the Special Olympics: They worry about other cuts the Trump administration has proposed to a wide range of programs that provide support to those with intellectual and physical disabilities.

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Jacqueline Alemany is the author of Power Up, an early morning newsletter featuring news critical to the nation’s many power centers, including the White House, Capitol Hill, government agencies, the Pentagon and more. She joined The Washington Post in 2018 after six years at CBS News. Follow https://twitter.com/jaxalemany