Trump touts budget’s military spending
Blueprint envisions cuts in arts, social programs
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump unveiled a $4.4 trillion budget plan Monday that envisions steep cuts to America’s social safety net and mounting spending on the military, formally retreating from last year’s promises to balance the federal budget.
If enacted as proposed, though no presidential budget ever is, the plan would establish an era of $1 trillion-plus yearly deficits.
“We’re going to have the strongest military we’ve ever had, by far,” Trump said in an Oval Office appearance Monday. “In this budget, we took care of the military like it’s never been taken care of before.”
Trump’s budget revived his calls for big cuts to domestic programs such as food stamps, housing subsidies and student loans.
Retirement benefits would remain mostly untouched by Trump’s plan, as he has pledged, though Medicare providers would absorb about $500 billion in cuts — a nearly 6 percent reduction. Some beneficiaries in Social Security’s disability program would have to re-enter the workforce under proposed changes to eligibility rules.
There was immediate opposition from Democrats.
“The Trump budget proposal makes clear his desire to enact massive cuts to health care, anti-poverty programs and investments in economic growth to blunt the deficit-exploding impact of his tax cuts for millionaires and corporations,” said Rep. John Yarmuth, D-KY., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Some Republicans, on the other hand, said spending was much too high.
“This budget continues too much of Washington’s wasteful spending. It does not balance in 10 years, and it creates a deficit of over a trillion dollars next year,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-fla. “We cannot steal from America’s future to pay for spending today.”
Trump’s plan would eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025 and private businesses running the place instead.
But the domestic cuts would be far from enough to make up for the plummeting tax revenue projected in the budget.
All told, the new budget sees accumulating deficits of $7.2 trillion over the coming decade. Trump’s plan last year projected a 10-year shortfall of $3.2 trillion.
The budget also includes $1.6 billion for the second stage of Trump’s proposed border wall, a 65-mile segment in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Trump’s request last year for 74 miles of wall in San Diego and the Rio Grande Valley is pending before lawmakers right now.
The plan reprises proposals to curb crop insurance costs, cut student loan subsidies and reduce pension benefits for federal workers. Those proposals went nowhere last year.