To: Department of Education

Tell Betsy DeVos not to cut funding for the Special Olympics

As part of the 2020 budgeting process, Betsy DeVos is proposing morally bankrupt funding cuts which will hurt children with disabilities and working class folks--including nearly $18 million in cuts to the Special Olympics. Tell the Department of Education not to cut funding for vital programs and commit to using public funding to help children who are counting on all of us to look out for them.

Why is this important?

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has suggested that the federal government will cut funding to the Special Olympics by $17.6 million. This proposal laid out in a draft of Trump’s 2020 fiscal year budget would potentially impact 272,000 children across the country.

Overall DeVos is proposing a 12% agency cut to the department (impacting special education programs Americans rely on like the Special Olympics, special education grants to states, and the National Technical Institute for the Blind, & Gallaudet University) even though she wants a 15.6% increase in executive salaries.

The Special Olympics was created in order to support healthy competition amongst children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities. This program has over 5 million folks across the world competing in 170 countries.

Special education and opportunities for children like the Special Olympics are vital to the success and overall development of children with disabilities. Betsy DeVos is suggesting that "difficult decisions" needed to be made in order to draft this budget proposal, but to slash federal funding for the Special Olympics is not "difficult," it is morally bankrupt.

The Trump administration seems to have no problem spending taxpayer money on his regular trips to golf and fly to Florida for weekends. They seem to have no problem spending federal money to lock up children who have been separated from their parents. They seem to have no problem funding endless wars around the world. But when it comes to our children’s health and well-being we’re supposed to believe they can’t continue to fund some of the most popular programs in our nation?

Tell Betsy Devos we can do better than this. No cuts to these crucial programs.