Trump budget rips safety net

$4.1 trillion plan favors defense, cuts programs for poor

WASHINGTON — Even President Donald Trump distanced himself from his inaugural budget, literally, as it was released Tuesday while he was overseas. Republicans in Congress said they will write their own, and Democrats condemned the $4.1 trillion plan for its proposed mix of tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit cuts for the poor and working class.

With his budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, Trump proposes a reordering of the nation’s priorities, ending the decades-old parity between annually appropriated military and domestic spending to favor defense and slash the safety net programs keeping millions of Americans out of poverty.

Congress will likely reject the most dramatic spending cuts, as it did his partial “skinny budget” for the current fiscal year, along with particulars like his infrastructure initiative.

Still, the broad outlines of the Trump budget could well inform the contours of what a GOP-controlled Congress eventually passes: reduced taxes, increased Pentagon spending and deep cuts in the full range of domestic spending, from Medicaid, nutrition and housing services to medical research, education, air traffic control and more.

“Clearly, Congress will take that budget and then work on our own budget, which is the case every White House budget director Mick Mulvaney arrives at a news conference Tuesday to defend the $4.1 trillion budget. single year,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, playing down Republicans’ armslength reception. “But at least we now have common objectives.”

Democrats were united in opposing a plan that would cut $616 billion over 10 years from the Medicaid program for low-income and disabled Americans and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Trump had promised as a candidate to leave Medicaid untouched, along with Medicare and Social Security, though those entitlement programs are a main contributor to projections of future federal debt.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., lambasted the budget — titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” — as conservative “fantasy.”

“What is going on in the White House with this kind of budget?” Schumer asked. “How many people in America want to cut cancer research? President Trump evidently does.”

But White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who orchestrated the budget’s rollout in Trump’s absence, on Tuesday lashed out at critics who said the budget showed a lack of compassion.

“Compassion needs to be on both sides of that equation,” he said. “Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but you also have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it.”

That Trump was far from Washington for his inaugural budget’s unveiling was yet another way in which his presidency is breaking with traditions and norms. Typically, first-year presidents have been prominent in introducing what is their most important statement of national priorities, whatever its fate in Congress.

Even some Republicans did not take seriously the administration’s balance claim in 10 years, with a $16 billion surplus by 2027. Critics assailed the budget’s sunny projections for economic growth to be spurred by tax cuts, especially considering that Trump has not spelled out his tax plan and — as his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, acknowledged Tuesday — it would not get out of Congress this year in any case.

Also, the budget was faulted for gimmickry. The administration counts $2.1 trillion in additional revenue over 10 years from a booming economy growing at 3 percent annually after 2019 — more than a percentage point higher than other forecasters. But missing from the budget baselines are the direct costs in foregone revenues from cutting corporate and individuals’ taxes.

Critics called that double-counting.

“You can’t use the same money twice,” said Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that advocates for fiscal restraint.

Administration officials have said Trump’s tax overhaul will be “revenue neutral” — that is, it will neither add to federal debt nor reduce it. Yet Trump has not identified what tax deductions, credits and other breaks he would repeal to offset the losses from slashing corporate and individual rates.

Trump’s budget would increase defense spending 10 percent in next year’s budget, $54 billion, while funding for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be cut by roughly 30 percent.

Among the few spending increases proposed are one for Trump’s infrastructure initiative and down payments for his immigration crackdown and wall on the southern border.

The budget calls for $200 billion to be leveraged to entice private investors to underwrite a total $1 trillion in public works projects. While there is bipartisan support for improving the nation’s roads, airports, waterways, ports and other infrastructure, Trump provided few details of how his plan would work, and the 5-to-1 return on the government’s investment is widely seen as overly optimistic.

Democrats were disdainful, though Trump must get votes from some of them to offset opposition from antispending Republicans for the initiative.