President’s $4.1T budget calls for broad safety-net cuts,
It calls for cuts for the poor, boost for the military.
President Donald Trump fulfilled a major campaign promise Tuesday, proposing a $4.1 trillion budget plan that would upend Washington in a big way. But he drew rebukes, even from some Republican allies, for the plan’s cuts to the social safety net for the poor and a broad swath of other domestic programs.
The budget, Trump’s first as president, combines his spending plan for the upcoming 2018 fiscal year with a promise to balance government books after a decade, relying on aggressive cuts, a surge in economic growth — and a $2 trillion-plus accounting gimmick.
“Through streamlined government, we will drive an economic boom that raises incomes and expands job opportunities for all Amer- icans,” Trump declared in his budget message.
“Basically dead on arrival,” opined the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas.
The proposal reflects a conservative vision of smaller government, a drastic roll- back of programs for the poor and disabled intended to prod them into the work- force and a robust hike for the military and border security. It foresees scuttling former President Barack Obama’s health care law and an overhaul of the tax code, a boon to the wealthiest Amer- icans.
The plan is laced with $3.6 trillion in cuts to domestic agencies, food stamps, Medicaid, highway funding, crop insurance and medical research, among others. Many of the voters who propelled Trump into the presidency last November would get significantly less aid from the federal government.
“We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off those programs,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a former tea party congressman.
At the same time, the blue- print would boost spending for the military by tens of billions of dollars and calls for $1.6 billion for a border wall that Trump repeatedly prom- ised voters Mexico would finance. Mexico emphatically rejects that notion.
The proposal got a chilly reception from congressional Republicans and Democrats.
Food stamp cuts would drive millions of recipients from the program, while a wave of Medicaid cuts — on top of a more than $800 billion reduction in the House- passed health care bill — could deny nursing home care to millions of elderly poor people. It would also force some people on Social Security’s disability program back into the workforce.
“These cuts that are being proposed are draconian,” said veteran GOP Rep. Har- old Rogers, who represents a poor district in eastern Kentucky. “They’re not mere shavings, they’re deep, deep cuts.”
“I don’t think the president’s budget is going anywhere,” said Sen. Bill Cas- sidy, R-La.
The budget would reduce pension benefits for federal workers by $63 billion by eliminating cost-of-living adjustments for most and by requiring employees to make larger contributions. In agriculture, it would limit subsi- dies to farmers, including for purchasing crop insurance, an idea already attacked by farm state lawmakers.
The Trump plan would roll back Obama-era increases to a children’s health insur- ance program for lower-income families who don’t qualify for Medicaid, take an ax to the Environmental Protection Agency and climate change programs, cut $95 billion from highway trust fund transfers to state highway departments, and curb payments to disabled veterans of retirement age who are eligible for Social Security.
Trump’s budget holds true to his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security pension benefits alone and calls for increasing spending on the military and veterans, but it treats most of the rest of the government as fair game. Student loan subsidies, home heating assistance and Great Lakes cleanup would be on the chopping block.
“In the America of President Trump’s budget, childre n, working families, seniors and people with disabilities will be ‘fined,’ while the wealthiest Americans will get a ‘bonus.’ What’s so ‘great’ about that, America?” asked Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
The budget does feature a handful of domestic initiatives, including a six-week paid parental leave program championed by Trump’s daughter Ivanka that would be designed and financed by the states through cuts to unemployment insurance. Some $200 billion in fed- eral infrastructure investments are promised to leverage another $800 billion in private investment, though the idea has yet to get much traction.
During the campaign, Trump attacked the weak economic growth of the Obama years and pledged that his economic program would boost growth from the lackluster 2 percent rates seen since recovery began in mid-2009.
Trump’s new budget assumes sustained growth above 3 percent, sharply higher than the expectations of most private economists. Without more than $2 trillion in such “economic feedback” over the coming decade, the nation’s budget would run a deficit of almost $500 billion.