Document: Trump budget plan wouldn’t erase deficit over 10 years

WASHINGTON — The White House is preparing to propose a $4.8 trillion budget that would fail to eliminate the federal deficit over the next 10 years, according to an internal summary of the plan obtained by the Washington Post, missing a longtime GOP fiscal target.

Instead, White House officials plan to say their budget proposal would close the deficit by 2035. During Trump’s first year in office, his advisers said their budget plan would eliminate the deficit by about 2028. This new budget will mark the third consecutive time that they abandon that 10-year goal and instead suggest a 15-year target. This new trend shows how little progress the White House is making in dealing with ballooning government debt, something party leaders had made a top goal during the Obama administration.

Trump has shown little interest in dealing with the deficit and debt, though some GOP party leaders say it remains a priority.

The last budget of Trump’s first term, expected to be publicly released on Monday, also calls for about $2 trillion in cuts to “non-defense discretionary programs,” a category of government spending that does not include Social Security or Medicare.

It would also propose extending tax cuts for families and individuals that are set to expire at the end of 2025. Budget experts have projected that extending those tax cuts would reduce revenue by roughly $1 trillion.

The White House promised to close the federal deficit over a similar amount of time in its budget last year, after abandoning its initial pledge to close the budget deficit in 10 years. As a presidential candidate, Trump vowed to eliminate not just the annual federal deficit but all debt held by the U.S. after eight years in office.

“Trying to balance the budget in 10 years is very difficult, so having a longer time horizon makes a lot of sense,” said Marc Goldwein, a budget expert at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates reducing the deficit. “Fifteen years is still very aggressive.”

The deficit is the gap between spending and revenue, and this year it is projected to breach $1 trillion for the first time since 2012. White House officials are expected to try to emphasize on Monday that their $4.8 trillion budget proposal would make progress toward reducing the deficit by 2030 but not eliminate the gap.

During the last year President Barack Obama was in office, the deficit was less than $600 billion, but it has grown significantly since then.

The 2017 tax cuts and new domestic spending approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress have widened this gap markedly. However, the Trump administration. However, the new budget summary contains the line: “All administration policies will pay for themselves, including extending tax cut provisions expiring in 2025.”

The largest parts of the government’s budget are “mandatory” spending programs that are automatically renewed each year without congressional approval, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump tweeted Saturday that the budget “will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare.” In 2015, he promised not to seek cuts to Medicaid as well, but his budgets have routinely sought big Medicaid changes that would cut roughly $800 billion from the program over 10 years.

Those proposals have not gained traction in Congress, however, and Trump has not fought for Congress to consider the changes as much as he’s battled over some of his other priorities.

The budget is expected to request $2 billion in homeland security spending for the wall — billions less than in past years and billions less than Congress has agreed to.