Budget proposal:
White House releases spending plan that projects deficit spending for at least 10 years.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration proposed a spending plan Monday that projects deficits as far as the eye can see, giving up the longtime Republican goal of a balanced budget to champion a spending plan replete with cash for a host of military programs and some domestic ones the president’s supporters might admire.
The budget calls for about $716 billion in annual defense spending, more than $100 billion above the level Trump requested last year. Add in the tax cut Republicans pushed through in December and the extra spending Congress approved just last week, and the result is a flood of red ink projected to send the national debt ever higher.
Trump’s budget anticipates deficits throughout the next 10 years even if Congress were to approve some $3 trillion in cuts over that same period that he’s proposing for a wide range of federal programs. Both parties already rejected most of those cuts last year.
The deficits persist even though the White House is forecasting extremely optimistic levels of economic growth. If growth falls short of those projections — most economists think it will — deficits would be higher still.
As a result, the budget marks something of a milestone — the Trump administration’s abandonment of the quest for budget balance that the Republican Party has claimed as a guiding light for years, at least rhetorically.
In reality, deficits have often soared under Republican presidents as the party has put cutting taxes ahead of balancing budgets on its list of priorities. In the past, however, Republican administrations have taken pains to at least come up with a budget that would balance on paper.
Progress, as laid out in the budget, means building and spending on projects important to Trump’s core supporters. The president proposes $1.6 billion to build 65 miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, just one installment of the massive larger project that helped propel him to the Oval Office. He also proposes pouring more money into immigration enforcement.
But Trump’s plan also defines progress as cutting programs his base voters don’t like, including climate change research programs at the Environmental Protection Agency and the health care law known as Obamacare. His budget would slash almost $700 billion in federal health care spending that helps low- and moderate-income Americans who rely on insurance marketplaces created by the 2010 health care law.
As Washington pored over the budget proposal, the president’s fellow Republicans emphasized the rough-draft nature of the proposal, particularly in terms of its costs.
“It is just that, a first step,” said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
But Democrats bemoaned a world in which the administration would even take the time to write down such drastic cuts to social programs for the poor and aged — especially so soon on the heels of generous tax cuts to rich people and corporations.
“While corporations reap billions in tax giveaways, older Americans who at least knew if they got sick when they got older they’d be taken care of, now have to worry,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.