Trump says budget can balance
Major cuts to safety-net programs needed; critics say vulnerable Americans will be hurt
WASHINGTON
President Trump is proposing major cuts to health care, food assistance and other safety-net programs for the poor to balance the budget in 10 years while increasing spending for the military and other priorities.
But even if Congress goes along with the budget the president will send to Capitol Hill on Tuesday — which is unlikely — it requires certain economic assumptions to work.
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Trump’s first full budget proposal was written from the perspective of the taxpayer, specifically whether the administration could justify each line item to a family in Grand Rapids, Mich., or to a schoolteacher in Kenosha, Wis.
That means, he said, measuring success not by how many people are being helped by a federal program, but by how many people “we help get off of those programs and help them get back in charge of their own lives again.”
“If you’re on food stamps and you’re able bodied, we need you to go to work,” Mulvaney said. “If you’re on disability insurance … and you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work.”
Mulvaney said that will help grow the economy faster than experts predict it will under current policies.
But critics, such as Robert Greenstein, president of the leftleaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, argues not only will that not happen, but vulnerable Americans will be hurt.
Trump’s proposed cuts to safety-net programs, Greenstein said, should “lay to rest the notion that the president intends to look out for struggling families left behind by the economy.”
The budget proposal assumes passage of the House Obamacare-repeal bill, which cuts spending on Medicaid and insurance subsidies for low- and moderate-income families while repealing taxes imposed to pay for the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of insurance coverage to millions more Americans.
In addition to those health care cuts, Trump’s budget would reduce projected Medicaid spending further and change other assistance programs.
Food aid, in particular, would be scaled back. For food stamps, the administration proposes requiring able-bodied recipients without dependent children to work, and would phase in a requirement for states to pay a portion of the benefits. States, Mulvaney said, need “skin in the game,” to help make the program work better.
Seven of the 10 states receiving the most food stamp assistance are states Trump carried in November.
Other major sources of savings — in a budget the White House boasts includes the most cuts ever proposed by a president — include student loan programs, federal retiree benefits, crop subsidies, disability payments and tax credits for the working poor and families with children. The administration says those credits should be given only to families who are in the country legally, even if the children — but not the parents — are American citizens.
The budget proposes double digit percentage cuts next year for many Cabinet departments and major agencies including 31% at the Environmental Protection Agency, 29% at State; and around 20% at the Agriculture and Labor departments.
By contrast, the Defense and Homeland Security departments, along with the Veterans Affairs Administration, would enjoy increases of 5% or more next year.
Trump also wants to increase spending for school voucher programs and infrastructure projects and to offer, for the first time, six weeks of paid family leave to new mothers and fathers.
Those priorities follow the promises the president made during the campaign, Mulvaney said, while upholding Trump’s pledge not to cut Medicare and Social Security.
Those programs — along with Medicaid — are the largest drivers of federal spending growth.
Trump also said he would not cut Medicaid. But Mulvaney acknowledged the House health care bill, which the president supports, would do that.
“He has clearly walked away from that promise,” said Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The budget also proposes cuts to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which pays monthly benefits to those too injured to work who aren’t old enough to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits. But Mulvaney said the vast majority of people would not consider disability payments to be part of Social Security.
“It’s old age retirement that they think of when they think of Social Security,” he said.
Trump’s proposal, an expanded version of the “skinny” budget he outlined in March, is likely to face a tough reception on Capitol Hill.
“The president told the American people he would help create jobs and provide greater economic security for families. This budget does exactly the opposite,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s a budget that takes a meat cleaver to the middle class by gutting the programs that help them the most.”