At a press conference last year, President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, infamously declared, “Meals on Wheels sounds great, [but] we’re not going to spend [money] on programs that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises that we’ve made to people.”  Not surprisingly, the first two budget proposals Mulvaney crafted for the president would have eliminated the block grants that help to pay for Meals on Wheels.

Apparently, Mulvaney has had no personal experience with delivering meals to seniors who are unable to shop or cook safely. Shortly after Mulvaney made his ill-informed statement, my boss, National Committee president Max Richtman, suggested that President Trump “ride with a Meals on Wheels van and witness the profound benefits to our nation’s most vulnerable seniors.”

I can proudly say that I have done something the President and his budget director clearly have not. This month, I rode along with my father, Cliff Adcock, on his route as a Meals on Wheels volunteer in Escondido, California.  As a public policy wonk, I have always appreciated the Meals on Wheels program – first as a Congressional staffer on a committee that oversaw the Older Americans Act (which includes Meals on Wheels), then, as an advocate for seniors during the past 24 years.  In 1992, I helped write the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, which at the time enjoyed broad, bipartisan support.  My recent ride-along taught me that understanding policy is one thing – but on-the-ground experience with the program is altogether different.

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