Many Trump voters may feel cuts in budget
Proposed spending reductions would impact supporters
WASHINGTON — The closure of a regional airport could force residents of a small town in upper Michigan to drive eight hours to catch a flight. The elimination of funding to keep the Great Lakes clean could hurt business at a waterside Ohio boating club. Cuts to the nation’s flood insurance program could mean greater losses after a storm for homeowners on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In his first budget blueprint since taking office, President Donald Trump held to his promise to build up the U.S. military while slashing domestic spending — even for programs that benefit the rural and lowerincome Americans who voted for him last November.
“Some people might think it’s a betrayal,” said Eric Waara, the Republican city manager of the 7,000person town of Houghton on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who said he hoped the proposal was just a negotiating tactic. “I think that we all hope it’s the first small step until something better.”
The proposed $1.15 trillion budget distills much of Trump’s sweeping campaign rhetoric into a set of hard choices and cold priorities. Trump is calling on Congress to boost defense spending by $54 billion, a move popular with many Republicans. A wall along the border with Mexico, a core campaign promise, would receive $4 billion to start construction.
Trump’s campaign promises to gut ineffective programs and shrink a bloated bureaucracy translated into a plan that cuts environmental protections programs, community development funding, housing vouchers, scientific research, a commission to create economic opportunities in Appalachia and other programs.
Funding for popular social services like Meals on Wheels, which provides food to the elderly, and after-school programs for children, also are on the chopping block. The outline — the start of negotiations with Congress — leaves untouched Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending.
The budget proposal offered the promise of increased spending and services in some parts of Trump country. The plan calls for a $500 million increase in spending to counter opioid epidemic, an acute problem in many rural communities. It proposes an additional $4.4 billion for veterans health care, including money to extend a program that allows eligible veterans to seek care from a private doctor outside the VA network.
Others see economic worries in the proposal. The blueprint would cut almost all the $300 million in funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, raising concern among some in the Ohio counties along Lake Erie.
The initiative was started to help limit invasive species such as the Asian carp, among other threats. It was meant to reduce dangers such as the outbreak of bacteria in 2014 that contaminated drinking water for nearly 500,000 people living around Toledo. Trump’s budget plan says that these programs should be the responsibility of state and local governments.
At Catawba Island Club, a lakeside club with hundreds of boat slips, a golf course and 100 year-round employees in Ohio’s Ottawa County, President Jim Stouffer said a rise in pollution could hurt his business.
Trump won the county by 57 percent of the vote on his way to carrying Ohio.
The budget plan would also cut $190 million for mapping flood hazards for the National Flood Insurance Program, as well as grants to fund projects that would reduce damage from natural disasters. The three states with the most flood insurance policies, according to the government, are Florida, Texas and Louisiana, all of which supported Trump.