We haven’t heard much from Ben Carson since he became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and that’s probably a good thing considering the fact that Dr. Carson has a habit of spouting off WTF?! statements at the drop of a hat.
Carson is back, and he’s been touring housing facilities across the state of Ohio. The New York Times tagged along and reports that Carson was delighted to see that at one homeless shelter television was not provided to the residents. Carson said that fits in with his view of being compassionate because it’s a bad idea to provide:
“A comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.'”
Yeah, because those who are homeless dream of being homeless for the rest of their lives, don’t they, Ben?
At an apartment complex for veterans, Carson was reportedly upset that the facility was so fancy that all it lacked, according to him, were “pool tables.”
If Carson’s boss and the GOP Congress have their way, lots of those veterans will probably be looking for a place to live. The Trump administration’s budget calls for cutting the HUD budget by some $6 billion. Trump is also seeking to eliminate a program that helps poor people heat their homes in the winter, for a savings of $3.3 billion, which is 0.2 percent of discretionary spending. Apparently that money is needed to finance tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, who rarely have any trouble heating or cooling their mansions.
Carson said he didn’t think the HUD budget would be completely eliminated, commenting:
“I know they have been called out for elimination. My impression is that what [President Trump] is really saying is that there are problems with those programs. And I think it may have been someone on his staff who kind of said, ‘Well, maybe we just need to get rid of the whole program.’ No, we don’t need to get rid of the whole program because there are some extremely good things there.”
How about we make Trump and his filthy rich cabinet members pay for the homeless in this country? That sounds a lot fairer than kicking people out into the street so the Trump family can get a YUGE tax cut.
Featured Image Via Gage Skidmore for Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License
