Budget defenders traverse Hill, meet resistance, doubt
Republicans, Democrats dismayed at hits to farm subsidies, safety nets
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s budget chief delivered a defense of the plan’s deep spending cuts, but his agriculture secretary offered only a half-hearted endorsement of proposed reductions to farm subsidies and food stamps.
A day after the budget’s release, a handful of senior administration officials fanned out on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, facing tough questions from Democrats opposed to the blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year and from Republicans skeptical about the administration’s math.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, meanwhile, gave Republicans the unwelcome news that they may have to cast a vote on increasing the government’s borrowing authority before they break for the August recess. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced a grilling from Democrats over funding private schools
with taxpayer money.
One House Budget Committee member, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., told White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that Trump’s proposed cuts to medical research are “pennywise and pound-foolish” — and then excused himself to preside over DeVos’ testimony.
Mulvaney gave an unapologetic defense of Trump proposals to slash programs related to the environment, education, health care for the poor and foreign aid.
The former tea party congressman told the Budget Committee that he went line by line through the federal budget and asked, “Can we justify this to the folks who are actually paying for it?”
Democrats said Trump’s cuts would rip apart the social safety net. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told Mulvaney that the proposed cuts to food stamps, payments to the disabled, and other programs are “astonishing and frankly immoral.”
“We are talking about half the births in the United States, 30 million children, and half of all nursing home and long-term care nationwide for senior citizens and people with disabilities,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., citing Medicaid’s extensive reach.
Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., laced into the president’s budget plan, saying it was based on fanciful economic predictions of high growth rates but low inflation and bond yields that would make managing the government’s $20 trillion debt less costly.
“This budget presumes a Goldilocks economy” that never goes into recession, Sanford said. “It assumes that the stars perfectly align.”
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was lukewarm in defending Trump’s budget to Democrats and some Republicans who rejected proposed cuts to farm programs and food stamps.
“Many in agriculture and rural America are likely to find little to celebrate within the budget request,” Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, the Republican chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees agriculture spending, told Perdue.
Trump’s budget would limit subsidies to farmers, including a cut in government help for purchasing popular crop insurance policies. Perdue said the nation has a dilemma in how to “right-size the budget” but acknowledged the concerns.
“I don’t know that your priorities are much different from my priorities for USDA,” he told Aderholt.
Democrats criticized a proposal for an almost 30 percent cut in food stamps. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut called the budget “cruel,” “heartless,” “evil” and “inhumane.” Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia said the cuts “fail the test of basic human decency.”
The Trump budget also would eliminate a program that ships U.S. commodities to hungry people abroad. Aderholt said that program “is something we should be proud of” and eliminating it “runs entirely counter to the idea of buy American, hire American” that Trump has championed.
Perdue had no defense: “I think your comments are essentially irrefutable,” he said.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly defended proposed budget cuts to state and local grant programs and a proposal to spend more than $2.7 billion to add thousands of new immigration jail beds despite steep declines of arrests along the Mexican border.
In a hearing before a House panel, Kelly insisted that it made sense to cut roughly $767 million from state and local grant programs, money intended to help local authorities prevent and respond to terrorist attacks and other disasters, because the funds are no longer needed.
Rep. Nita Lowey of New York said she worried that Kelly didn’t fully understand how important that money is to local jurisdictions, including New York City.
“Your budget proposal would make communities … less safe,” Lowey said.
Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican who chairs the subcommittee, described the proposed cuts as “worrisome” and also questioned the need to add thousands of new immigration jail beds.
Kelly told the panel that while arrests at the border have dropped to records lows in the months since Trump took office, arrests of illegal aliens have increased and for now, at least, the added jail space is necessary. He suggested that in future budgets that may not be the case.
DEVOS GRILLED
Fielding questions from the House Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos faced questions from lawmakers on whether funding private schools with taxpayer money would condone discrimination of certain demographics.
Researchers have found that many states allow religious schools that receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to deny admission to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students or children with gay or transgender parents.
Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., asked DeVos whether a private school can receive voucher money even if it denies access to gay or transgender students. Trump’s budget would cut several key K-12 programs, while boosting funding for charter and private school voucher programs.
DeVos answered that that was not the federal government’s business but was for states and locals to decide. “They set up the rules around that,” she said.
“We believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices about education for their children,” she said.
Clark then asked whether DeVos saw a role for the federal government to intervene if a private school rejected black students, and DeVos repeated her answer. “I am shocked that you could not provide one example of discrimination” that warrants federal intervention, Clark said.
DeVos did not directly answer. “We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fitsall approach,” she said.
Democrats immediately criticized DeVos’ philosophy, saying the nation’s top education official must be willing to defend children against discrimination by institutions that get federal money.
“To take the federal government’s responsibility out of that is just appalling and sad,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
DeVos pushed back against the notion that the Education Department would be abdicating its authority. “I am not in any way suggesting that students should not be protected,” she said.
Trump has proposed slashing $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, including after-school programs, teacher training, and career and technical education, and reinvesting $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting his top education priority: school choice, including $250 million for vouchers to help students attend private and religious schools.
The administration also is seeking far-reaching changes to student-aid programs, including the elimination of subsidized loans and public-service loan forgiveness and a halving of the federal work-study program that helps college students earn money to support themselves while in school.
Democrats attacked the administration’s budget proposal as an effort to undermine public schools and low-income students’ ability to attend college.
“This budget reflects the views of an administration filled with people who frankly never had to worry about how they were going to pay for their children going to college,” said Lowey, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “And yet I’m most upset that this budget would undermine our public education system and the working families who depend on them.”
Several Republicans praised DeVos, particularly for her push to expand school choice.
“I’ve always made known my preference for giving parents the choice of where to send their students, because in the end the parents are the taxpayers. The parents are the ones who probably know best,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.
But GOP members also displayed their share of skepticism about the administration’s proposed cuts.
Oklahoma’s Cole, chairman of the education subcommittee, questioned the proposal to dramatically cut college financial-aid programs such as work-study and college-access programs for low-income students.
Another key Republican, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of
New Jersey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, emphasized that it is members of Congress and not the president who hold the power of the purse and will ultimately design the federal budget.
Frelinghuysen also questioned whether the administration had proposed adequate funding for students with disabilities. DeVos seemed open to devoting more money, calling it a “matter for robust conversation.”
A 1975 federal special-education law promised that Congress would pay 40 percent of the cost of providing additional services to students with disabilities. Lawmakers have never come close and in 2017 are footing only about 15 percent of the cost. The Trump administration is proposing to hold funding at that level.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was lukewarm in defending Trump’s budget to Democrats and some Republicans who rejected proposed cuts to farm programs and food stamps.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press and by Emma Brown and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of The Washington Post.