Trump’s fantastical budget
Where’s the real Paul Ryan when we need him? You know, that wonky digging-in-the weeds guy who knew every budget forward and backward and upside down and inside out?
We ask because Ryan today is supporting a dream world fantasy of a Trump budget that purports to balance the budget in 10 years on a house of cards. (“What I see is a president keeping his promises,” Ryan told Fox News). Others aren’t as blind in their loyalty. Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain weren’t the only congressional leaders to call the budget “dead on arrival.”
In fact, “dead on arrival” is the best news we’ve heard about the Trump budget, which may be the least conservative in decades. If this were to somehow survive the sharp knives in Congress, the country would be in real trouble with millions left without services they need, a weaker defense and a massively growing deficit.
First, the numbers are literally unbelievable.
Among the problems: Critics say the budget double counts its tax cuts and includes revenue from an estate tax that it would eliminate, reports Business Insider. It also projects a 3% growth in the economy that virtually no one believes can happen. And it includes basic errors that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said in the Washington Post “would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.”
While giving the president points for setting a good fiscal goal, The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in a release that the budget is “based on overly optimistic economic projections” and that the president is “relying on phony growth and unachievable cuts.”
As to allocating spending, the budget increases defense spending but in the wrong way: The National Interest reports that the budget “begins to repair — but does not rebuild — the U.S. military,” and “does not live up to congressional expectations to better align resources with strategy after years of a growing mismatch.”
At the same time, social programs are being gutted, which should worry states. Medicaid would take a $600 billion hit on top of the cuts proposed in the American Health Care Act, leaving states “looking at a more than $1 trillion reduction in Medicaid spending” Governing magazine reports.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement that the federal cuts in health spending “would be catastrophic, especially for our most vulnerable, including children, seniors and lowincome Americans.”
Environmental protection is being tossed out the window with severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. Among the casualties close to home is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, designed to restore that vital national resource, and cleanup efforts in the Fox River. Eliminating the intiative breaks a promise, no surprise here, that Trump made on the campaign trail to work with Congress to protect the lakes. Instead, he’s tossing the job to the states, which can’t afford it.
Ryan has in the past offered scathing criticism of Democratic budgets, including those of Barack Obama, and he was right to do so. But the Trump budget blows them all out of the water. Ryan needs to take off his political blinders and join those who are taking a realistic look at Trump’s nonsensical budget and saying “dead in the water.”