Budget Plan Highlights

DEFENSE

Trump’s budget for 2019 shows the administration’s concern about the threat from North Korea and its missile program.

The Pentagon is proposing to spend hundreds of millions more in 2019 on missile defense.

The budget calls for increasing the number of strategic missile interceptors from 44 to 64 and boosting other elements of missile defense.

The additional 20 interceptors would be based at Fort Greely, Alaska. Critics question the reliability of the interceptors, arguing that years of testing has yet to prove them to be sufficiently effective against a sophisticated threat.

The Pentagon also would invest more heavily in other missile defense systems, including the ship-based

Aegis system and the Army’s Patriot air and missile defense system, both of which are designed to defend against missiles of various ranges short of the intercontinental ballistic missile that is of greatest U.S. concern in the context of North Korea.

BORDER WALL

The second stage of Trump’s proposed border wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley would be 65 miles long, costing an average of $24.6 million a mile, according to the president’s 2019 budget.

That matches the amount requested in Trump’s 2018 budget to build or replace 74 miles in San Diego and Rio Grande Valley.

Walls currently cover about one-third of the border with Mexico, and the administration wants eventually to spend up to $18 billion to extend the wall to nearly half the border. Trump has insisted Mexico pay for it; Mexico says that’s a non-starter.

The proposal sets aside $782 million to hire 2,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, whose responsibilities include making deportation arrests, and 750 more Border Patrol agents toward Trump’s long-term goal of 5,000. The proposal comes even as the administration has been unable to fill vacancies caused by attrition.

The administration also wants to raise capacity at its immigration detention facilities to 52,000 people.

It wants to collect $208 million in fees on “legitimate trade and travel” to pay for investigations into fraud and employers who hire people in the country illegally.

The budget also calls for adding 450 Secret Service agents and support staff to reach 7,600 this year and inch toward a long-term goal of 9,500. It sets aside $6.9 billion for disaster relief.

MEDICARE

Trump’s budget proposes changes to Medicare’s popular prescription benefit, creating winners and losers among the 42 million seniors with drug coverage.

On the plus side for seniors, the budget requires the insurance plans that deliver the prescription benefit to share with beneficiaries a substantial portion of rebates they receive from drug makers.

The budget also eliminates the 5 percent share of costs that an estimated 1 million beneficiaries with very high drug bills now must keep paying when they reach Medicare’s “catastrophic” coverage. Instead seniors would pay nothing once they reach Medicare’s catastrophic coverage level, currently $8,418 in total costs.

But on the minus side, the budget calls for changing the way Medicare accounts for certain discounts that drug makers now provide to seniors with significant drug bills.

That complex change would mean fewer seniors reach catastrophic coverage, and some will end up paying more than they do now.

“It will increase costs for some, while saving money for others,” said Tricia Neuman of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “Overall it could be a wash.”

The budget also makes multiple cuts in different streams of Medicare payments going to hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

Medicare spending totals more than $700 billion a year, and hospitals represent the single biggest category of costs.

Overall, the budget calls for about $500 billion over 10 years in cuts from projected Medicare spending.

EDUCATION

School choice advocates will find something to cheer in Trump’s budget.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, he is proposing to put “more decision-making power in the hands of parents and families” in choosing schools for their children with a $1.5 billion investment for the coming year. The budget would expand both private and public school choice.

A new Opportunity Grants program would provide money for states to give scholarships to low-income students to attend private schools, as well as expand charter schools across the nation. Charters are financed by taxpayer dollars but usually run independently of school district requirements.

The budget also calls for increased spending to expand the number of magnet schools that offer specialized instruction usually focused on specific curricula.

Last year, the Trump administration also called for boosting charter and private school funding, but those initiatives didn’t win the approval of Congress.

Among other key components is spending $200 million on STEM education and $43 million to implement school-based opioid abuse prevention strategies.

Overall, the budget calls for a $7.1 billion, a 10.5 percent decrease from 2017. On the chopping block is $5.9 million in teacher preparation and aftercare programs. Last year, proposals for similar cuts were met with harsh criticism from teachers’ unions and educators across the country.

“OBAMACARE”

The budget assumes that Congress will repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law, although there’s little evidence that Republican leaders have the appetite for another battle over “Obamacare.”

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act should happen “as soon as possible,” say the budget documents.

The Obama health law would be replaced with legislation modeled after an ill-fated GOP bill whose lead authors were Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it would leave millions more uninsured.

The budget calls for a program of block grants that states could use to set up programs for covering the uninsured.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

The Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025 and to have private businesses running the place instead.

Under Trump’s 2019 proposed budget, U.S. government funding for the space station would end by 2025. The government would set aside $150 million to encourage commercial development.

Many space experts are expressing concern. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who rocketed into orbit in 1986, said “turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space” makes no sense.

Retired NASA historian and Smithsonian curator Roger Launius notes that any such move will affect all the other countries involved in the space station; Russia is a major player, as are Europe, Japan and Canada. “I suspect this will be a major aspect of any decisions about ISS’s future,” Launius wrote in an email.

NASA has spent close to $100 billion on the orbiting outpost since the 1990s. The first piece was launched in 1998, and the complex was essentially completed with the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2011.

Private businesses already have a hand in the project. The end of the shuttle program prompted NASA to turn over supply runs to the commercial sector. SpaceX and Orbital ATK have been making deliveries since 2012, and Sierra Nevada Corp. will begin making shipments with its crewless mini shuttles in a few years.