Trumps first budget would end program to help low-income Americans get lawyers

[babylonsister]

Alan Pyke
Deputy Economic Policy Editor, ThinkProgress.
Feb 20
Trump’s first budget would end program to help low-income Americans get lawyers
Cut would reinforce America’s “rigged system.”



A small, efficient, 40-year-old program to provide legal aid to middle- and low-income clients in civil proceedings is facing the budget ax, according to a New York Times report on the early stages of the Trump administration’s internal budget planning.

The cut would hardly lighten taxpayers’ burden — even at $375 million last year, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) was roughly one one-hundredth of one percent of total federal spending — but would make life significantly harder for people who can’t afford to hire a fancy lawyer with their own money.

The LSC is a civil-court legal aid program. The lawyer hours its funds deliver to people of modest means are fundamentally different from the work of criminal legal aid programs, which must uphold every American’s right to representation when they are accused of law-breaking.

Low- and middle-income Americans may have to wait a while to get a lawyer when they are charged with a crime, and when a lawyer does show up she will almost always be underpaid and overworked. But when the state says it wants to fine or jail you, you get to have a lawyer whether or not you can afford one.

Civil court is a different bag. Working-class Americans get dragged into civil court by powerful entities frequently in very serious situations where the government has no obligation to provide them with a lawyer. If the bank claims it has the right to take your house away, for example, the complex thicket of foreclosure proceedings that follows are not covered by right-to-counsel laws for civil court.

A handful of civil actions do create an obligation for the government to appoint an attorney for parties who can’t afford their own lawyer, but they are mostly limited to family-court proceedings. In almost every other type of case — from wrongful termination to denials of service from federal programs like Medicaid or public housing — people are on their own unless a legal aid lawyer is available to help.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-end-legal-aid-bdfeb94c1559#.6fwabwb5x

[Doreen]

1. And who thinks that he is not completely aware of this?

He knows.

[logosoco]

2. My mom started working for Legal Services when Ford was president.

She just retired about 5 years ago. Our family knew first hand how much families, the elderly, immigrants, etc. were helped tremendously through this service. It made it so that I never understood all the lawyer jokes. In my world, lawyers were people who really helped folks!

Another one on the chopping block is Americorps. My son, after coming back from service with the Peace Corps is now working for Americorps. They have spent almost 6 weeks helping the folks in Tennessee after the forest fire there. An amazing group of young folks who work very hard for very low pay. They are boots on the ground in what really make America great. People helping people.

The republicans want the country to be for the rich. While it is really the not rich people doing the work and making this county great. But they take the credit and then hoard all the money, so there is nothing left.