Budget plan slices into Medicaid and anti-poverty efforts
Proposal calls for increase in military spending of 10 percent, spending $2.6 billion on border security, huge tax reductions
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to unveil on Tuesday a $4.1 trillion budget for 2018 that would cut deeply into programs for the poor, from health care and food stamps to student loans and disability payments, laying out an austere vision for reordering the nation’s priorities.
The document, grandly titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” encapsulates much of the “America First” message that powered Trump’s campaign. It calls for an increase in military spending of 10 percent, spending more than $2.6 billion for border security — including $1.6 billion to begin work on a wall on the border with Mexico — as well as huge tax reductions and an improbable promise of 3 percent economic growth.
The wildly optimistic projections balance Trump’s budget, at least on paper, even though the proposal makes no changes to Social Security’s retirement program or Medicare, the two largest drivers of the nation’s debt.
To compensate, the package contains deep cuts in entitlement programs that would hit hardest many of the economically strained voters whose backing propelled the president into office. Over the next decade, it calls for slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, while slicing $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion overall from welfare programs. And domestic programs outside of military and homeland security whose budgets are determined annually by Congress would also take a hit, their funding falling by $57 billion, or 10.6 percent.
It would also cut by more than $72 billion the disability benefits upon which millions of Americans rely. Student loan programs that subsidize college educations for the poor and those who take jobs in government or nonprofit organizations would be eliminated.
Trump’s advisers portrayed the steep reductions as necessary to balance the nation’s budget while sparing taxpayers from shouldering the burden of programs that do not work well.
“This is, I think, the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes,” said Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director.
“We’re not going to measure our success by how much money we spend, but by how many people we actually help,” Mulvaney said as he outlined the proposal at the White House on Monday before its formal presentation on Tuesday to Congress.
Among its innovations: Trump proposes saving $40 billion over a decade by barring undocumented immigrants from collecting the child care tax credit or the earned-income tax credit, a subsidy for low- and middle-income families, particularly those with children. He has also requested $19 billion over 10 years for a new program, spearheaded by his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump, to provide six weeks of paid leave to new parents. The budget also includes a broad prohibition against money for entities that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood, blocking them from receiving any federal health funding.
The release of the document, an annual ritual in Washington that usually constitutes a marquee event for a newly inaugurated president working to promote his vision, unfolded under unusual circumstances. Trump is out of the country for his first foreign trip and his administration is enduring a neardaily drumbeat of revelations about the investigation into his campaign’s possible links with Russia.
The president’s absence, which his aides dismissed as a mere coincidence of the calendar, seemed to highlight the haphazard way in which his White House has approached its dealings with Congress. It is just as much a sign of Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for the policy detail and message discipline that is required to marshal support to enact politically challenging changes.
“If the president is distancing himself from the budget, why on earth would Republicans rally around tough choices that would have to be made?” said Robert L. Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that promotes deficit reduction. “If you want to make the political case for the budget — and the budget is ultimately a political document — you really need the president to do it. So, it does seem bizarre that the president is out of the country.”
The president’s annual budget — more a message document than a practical set of marching orders even in the best of times — routinely faces challenges on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers jealously guard their prerogative to control federal spending and shape government programs. But Trump’s wish list, in particular, faces long odds, with Democrats uniformly opposed and Republicans already showing themselves to be squeamish about some of the president’s plans.
“It probably is the most conservative budget that we’ve had under Republican or Democrat administrations in decades,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
But in a signal that some of the proposed cuts to domestic programs are likely to face resistance even from conservatives, Meadows said he could not stomach the idea of doing away with food assistance for older Americans.
“Meals on Wheels, even for some of us who are considered to be fiscal hawks, may be a bridge too far,” Meadows said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said Monday that the Medicaid reductions would “carry a staggering human cost” and would violate Trump’s campaign promise to address the opioid epidemic.
“Based on what we know about this budget, the good news — the only good news — is that it was likely to be roundly rejected by members of both parties here in the Senate, just as the last budget was,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.