Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘America 1st’ plan puts might first
Several programs on block in budget as security boosted
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump released a spending plan Thursday that would slash programs across government to pay for sharp increases in the military, veterans’ health and the construction of a wall along the Southwest border.
On the chopping block: billions of dollars in research aimed at fighting diseases and climate change; job training programs; grants to local communities that pay for public transit and housing, heating oil for the poor; diplomatic efforts across the globe; and libraries.
Proposed for elimination: at least 19 independent agencies, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Trump argued that many of the programs he wants to slash are ineffective, outdated or duplicative. Beyond that, he says the budget is sending a message to reorder $1.1 trillion in the federal government’s discretionary spending around his “America first” agenda, putting defense and border security at the center while curtailing other government functions.
“We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
In addition to proposing cuts across the spectrum, Trump would increase funding for school choice, counterterrorism, and the hiring of more border agents and immigration judges and prosecutors. But the biggest increase would go to the military in the form of an additional $54 billion in annual spending.
The budget, which lacks many details Trump and his agency leaders will add in the coming months, is unlikely to become law in its current form.
Nearly every plank will face obstacles from both parties in Congress, which has been unable in recent years to reach agreement on even basic spending measures.
But it lays out the president’s vision more specifically than any speech Trump delivered during his 17 months on the campaign trail or the four months since he won election.
Aides said the proposal was adapted from the president’s campaign rhetoric, starting with his pledge to restore the nation’s military. The proposed boost in Pentagon funding itself is greater than the overall budgets of 11 other Cabinet departments.
But some promises, like curing diseases, will be harder to fulfill with a proposed cut of $5.8 billion to the National Institutes of Health.
Many of the costs taken out of the budget would be shifted to states and localities — which would lose grants they depend on to build bus lines, support teacher salaries or provide clean water to rural communities. And although the budget includes no guidance on taxes, it proposes fee hikes on airline tickets, federal bankruptcy filings and medical device manufacturers.
The EPA suffers most under the plan, with a 31.4 percent reduction in its budget. The departments of Agriculture and Labor each face a 20 percent funding cut, and five more Cabinetlevel departments see cuts in the teens.
A memo from Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned that Trump’s plan “would cause even more economic pain and suffering to the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable.”
The plan is only the first step in a months-long process leading up to the beginning of the fiscal year Oct. 1. A more detailed, line-byline budget document that would also address mandatory spending programs will come in May. And along the way will be debates with lawmakers and other stakeholders about what programs to cut and which to preserve or beef up.
The Oct. 1 deadline is particularly important this year because spending levels from a past budget accord are set to expire. Without a new deal, automatic cuts would take effect that many in Congress want to avoid.
Although Trump’s budget reflects ambitions of conservatives eager to shrink the size of government, it leaves unaddressed spending on so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Some steep cuts fall on programs designed to revive poorer, rural communities. He proposed eliminating the Appalachian Regional Commission, which provides grants for education, broadband and other programs in rural communities, and a program that provides millions of poor and elderly with assistance to heat their houses in the winter.
Though the president had promised to help revive inner cities, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will see major spending cuts. So, too, will the Department of Transportation, despite Trump’s pledge to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the plan would be devastating to workers in states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states that powered Trump to victory — by slashing infrastructure and worker-training programs.
Mulvaney said the spending plan will still work to address Trump’s objectives in those areas, but that they can only be accomplished in part by eliminating programs that have failed to achieve those goals.