In the panic resulting from President Trump’s budget proposal, donations to Meals on Wheels have reportedly taken off. We’ve seen something similar in the past with regard to donations to Planned Parenthood when there was talk of revoking their federal funding.

Senior citizens in one suburb could see Meals on Wheels deliveries cut in half if President Trump’s budget cuts become reality, a spokeswoman for the network told CNN, as it anticipated “deep cuts” to a nonprofit that serves 2.4 million Americans.

Donations surged to 50 times their daily rate Thursday, the spokeswoman said, after the White House proposed eliminating the Community Development Block Grant program.

While the block grants fund only a small portion of Meals on Wheels’ operations nationwide, spokeswoman Jenny Bertolette told CNN that some of the group’s 5,000 local branches rely on the money to bring food to people.

A Meals on Wheels branch outside Detroit, she said, would lose one-third of its budget without the grants. The branch in San Jose, Calif., would lose $100,000.

That shortfall could easily be covered by private donors. Heck, there are some people who could cough up that much individually if asked.

The American left has long used one’s political support for government run programs as the measure of one’s concern for the needy. This is, of course, asinine. It’s a cop out. Let the government do the work and I can feel good about myself because I attended that $1200 a plate fundraiser for Senator Taxandspend’s reelection campaign.

The money for all of the causes supported by the left is out there in the private sector, yet they insist on forcing it through a filter of government red tape and coercion. It shows how the activist left is more concerned with controlling what people do with their money than they are about helping the needy. They have been conditioned to be totalitarians first, whose concept of charity is based on using the force of government to make other people contribute against their will.

If the people who fear federal budget cuts for things like Meals on Wheels put as much effort into raising private funds as they do lobbying the government, the program would probably be more flush with cash than ever. Even people who favor taking such things out of the government’s hands would donate.

Imagine if instead of upending the health insurance industry for everyone in the country, a few of President Obama’s big money supporters got together and started a non-profit to provide low cost or free health insurance for the people who were really in need. Who thinks George Soros and his ilk don’t have the financial means and organizational skills to make something like that work? The only thing missing is the desire to actually provide help. Their real goal is to grow and empower government.

Why else trust a bloated, inefficient government to spend a chunk of your money just to deliver the rest of it to the person you supposedly want to help?

This spike in private donations should not be something that only occurs when handouts from taxpayers are in jeopardy. It should not be a symbol of protest. It should be the way things work all the time.