Health, social programs, EPA slashed; military gets 13 percent boost
WASHINGTON >> The White House on Monday offered a $4.4 trillion budget plan that brought into sharp focus the fiscal strains created by the Trump administration and Congress in the past year, revealing how large tax cuts and a new spending agreement are driving up government debt.
President Donald Trump’s budget plan in-
cluded proposals to slash spending on social safety net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, but these changes would still fall far short of balancing the budget and eliminating the deficit, a long-held GOP goal.
The White House projected the deficit would swell to near $1 trillion annually in 2019 and 2020 because of the new tax law and last week’s agreement to add $500 billion in new spending.
“Does it balance? No, it doesn’t,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Monday. “I probably could have made it balance, but you all would have rightly absolutely excoriated us for using funny numbers because it would have taken funny numbers do to it.”
He placed the majority of the blame on Congress, saying lawmakers simply refused to cut spending.
The worsening fiscal picture has put enormous pressure on Congress to try to reconcile Trump’s call for even more spending on infrastructure and border security with long-held promises of wiping out the deficit over 10 years. As the growing deficit pushes debt levels beyond $20 trillion, rising interest rates are making it more expensive for the Treasury Department to borrow money.
But the White House and Congress have shown little willingness to cut back on spending, finding it easier to cut taxes and increase spending under Trump.
Trump’s budget plan included a number of other initiatives that aides hope will be considered as budget talks continue this year.
The proposal includes new measures to speed up approvals for generic drugs, something the White House believes will cut spending at Medicare and Medicaid. And it called for cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, by 20 percent in 2019 and even more in the following years. It would do this in part by requiring many beneficiaries to accept food deliveries in addition to financial assistance, a change the White House believes will improve nutrition quality and cut back on costs.
Democrats were unanimous in scorching Trump’s budget proposal and saw it as a blueprint they could use to attack Republicans going into the midterm elections.
“He slashes education, environmental protection and Medicare and Medicaid,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “While corporations reap billions in tax giveaways, older Americans now have to worry about the Trump administration cutting Medicare and Medicaid. It’s in his budget.”
He said, “The Trump administration should have no illusions about its budget becoming law. It won’t.”
The budget sent conflicting signals, calling for both increases and reductions in spending at a time when Congress appears less inclined to take direction from the White House on economic matters.
For example, the plan proposed cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by more than 20 percent just a few days after Congress agreed to add money to the EPA’s budget.
The Trump budget also proposed adding more money to the National Institutes of Health one year after the White House called for big cuts to that agency. Mulvaney said at the briefing that he had learned a lesson from some of the cuts he offered last year, adding that Congress “pounded the hell out of me.”
The budget calls for $716 billion in defense spending spread across a number of federal agencies in 2019, a 13 percent increase from 2017 levels, as part of a costly effort to retool the military to deter and, if necessary, fight major powers such as Russia and China.
The budget also seeks $13 billion over the next two years to combat opioid addiction and $18 billion for the construction of a wall along the Mexico border.
But it proposes big cuts on spending in other areas, particularly health and welfare programs.
Trump’s budget calls for cutting federal Medicaid funding by $250 billion over the next 10 years and more than $200 billion from Medicare spending.