‘TAXPAYERS FIRST’ IN $4.1T BUDGET

Spending blueprint boosts military, slashes safety net

The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled a $4.1 trillion budget for 2018 that would boost military spending while cutting welfare, Medicaid and other social safety nets in a bid to wipe out the federal deficit.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called President Trump’s first spending plan — which aims to slash $3.6 trillion in spending over the next 10 years — a “taxpayer-first budget.”

“We look at this budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the bills,” Mulvaney said.

Trump’s proposal — released while he was on his first presidential trip overseas — immediately came under fire from Democrats and even some Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it “just a recommendation,” recognizing that Congress has the power to remake large portions.

Specific plans include eliminating the deficit-reduction “defense sequester” and increasing military spending by $469 billion through 2027, with $1.6 billion earmarked to begin building the southern border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign for president last year.

The 62-page document — titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” — also calls for deep cuts in antipoverty programs, with funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program falling by $616 billion over the next decade.

Welfare funding would be sliced by $272 billion, while spending on food stamps would drop by $191 billion in the 10-year period.

There were no cuts to Medicare or Social Security, but disability benefits faced a $72 billion reduction by 2027.

The biggest hit was directed at the Environmental Protection Agency — $2.6 billion, or 31 percent, in 2018.

But Trump included $709 million to establish a paid-parental-leave program favored by daughter Ivanka, with a total $18.5 billion to be spent on it through 2027.

While the budget projects a $440 billion deficit in fiscal 2018, which begins in October, it forecasts an eventual shift into the black in future years that will leave the nation with a $16 billion surplus in 2027.

That assumes sustained economic growth of 3 percent beginning in 2020, which many experts say is unrealistic.

“For this budget to work, you need a time machine to take us back to to the 1990s,” said Marc Goldwein of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Mulvaney said administration officials “reject that pessimism,” adding: “If you assume 1.9 percent growth, my guess is you’ll never see a balanced budget again.”

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) ripped Trump for proposing cuts to programs such as Medicaid, which the president on the campaign trail last year had promised not to touch.

“The Trump budget takes a sledgehammer to the middle class and working Americans and imagines all of the deficit problems away with fantasy math,” Schumer said.

“This budget exists somewhere over the rainbow where the dreams of Mick Mulvaney, [House Speaker] Paul Ryan and the Koch brothers really do come true.”

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist praised Trump’s proposal as “a dramatic U-turn from the policies of the last administration.”

“Trump starts by respecting taxpayers. Trump’s budget shows that he realizes every dollar being spent by Washington is first earned by American workers and then taken from them,” said Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Relax: President Trump’s new budget won’t leave people starving or bleeding in the streets. Yes, it brought media hysteria: The plan would “drive millions” off food stamps, screamed an Associated Press story. It “cuts deeply into Medicaid and anti-poverty efforts,” cried The New York Times.

In fact, the budget’s $4.1 trillion in outlays amount to 21.3 percent of the economy — more than in any of the last four Obama years and in line with much of the past few decades.

And the cuts would just bring some antipoverty programs closer to pre-2009 levels.

Take food stamps: In 2007, 26 million people got them. Add in all the other government programs, soup kitchens and various charities, and no one really had to go hungry back then.

Yet by last year, the program covered 44 million — with outlays up from $33 billion to $71 billion. Trump wants to trim that by about $19 billion a year, to $52 billion — still higher than when Obama took office. He’d also have states pay an added amount, in hopes that, with skin in the game, they’ll help root out fraud.

Let’s face it: The program has veered out of control. In 1969, just 2.9 million people, 1.5 percent of Americans, got food stamps. By 2008, it was 9 percent; last year, 14 percent. (Even Amazon accepts them now.)

Trump wants able-bodied adults with no dependent kids to work in order to qualify for the stamps. Smart: That’ll help encourage independence. And with the economy improving, fewer still should need them.

Similar logic justifies his other cuts, such as his $800 billion over 10 years for Medicaid — a program originally meant for the poor that, post-Obama, now covers nearly one out of every four Americans.

Trump’s ultimate goal, to slice $3.6 trillion from $53.5 trillion in planned spending over 10 years and balance the budget, is laudable. Americans should applaud it, not smear it as a heartless hit on the “hungry.”