State Democrats rip budget

WASHINGTON — After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up President Donald Trump’s speech, Congress spent this week shredding his proposed $4.8 trillion budget.

Trump administration officials fanned out across Capitol Hill to defend a proposed spending blueprint containing cuts to social and domestic programs, along with policy reversals like the president’s new position on disposing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain due to political concerns in Nevada.

The state’s delegation slammed budget proposals that they said would be harmful to Nevada.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-nev., grilled Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on cuts of nearly $200 million for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which benefits low-income children, and reductions of $90 million in Social Security programs for the elderly.

Mnuchin said the budget reductions were not cuts but a decrease in rates of increased expenditures.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the House Ways and Means Committee that the reductions were also a decrease in projected spending.

Rep. Steven Horsford, D-nev., a member of the committee, accused the Trump administration of using the social program cuts to offset

$1.9 trillion added to the nation’s deficit by the Republican tax cuts passed by the last Congress.

“Sweeping money from the children of Nevada to balance your budget on the backs of working Americans after giving a tax cut to the very wealthy and big corporations is not going to happen,” Horsford said.

Sen. Jacky Rosen and Reps. Dina Titus and Susie Lee, all Democrats, quickly pointed out that cuts in the budget would affect Nevada, with a loss of funding for education and environmental programs.

A perennial target of Trump’s budget ax, the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, which provides money through sales of federal land parcels to the state’s education fund and water authority, would lose $230 million.

Attempts to take funds from the lands management fund have not been approved by Congress in the past three years.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@ reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7390. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.