Trump to Propose $4.8 Trillion Budget With Big Safety-Net Cuts

[question everything]

Source: WSJ

WASHINGTON—President Trump is expected to release a $4.8 trillion budget Monday that charts a path for the start of a potential second term, proposing steep cuts to social-safety-net programs and foreign aid and higher outlays for defense and veterans. The plan would increase military spending 0.3%, to $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1, according to a senior administration official.

The proposal would cut nondefense spending by 5%, to $590 billion, below the level Congress and the president agreed to in a two-year budget deal last summer. A White House budget reflects an administration’s priorities and represents the opening bid in spending negotiations for the next fiscal year. The new budget proposal is unlikely to become law, however, as Democrats control the House and spending bills in the GOP-led Senate need bipartisan support.

(snip)

Among the agencies that would receive the biggest boost is NASA, which would see a 12% increase next year as Mr. Trump seeks to fulfill his goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2024. On the other hand, the Environmental Protection Agency’s spending would be slashed by 26%. The plan would request $2 billion in new funding for construction of the wall on the southern U.S. border, the senior administration official said—Mr. Trump’s signature 2016 campaign promise that sparked fights with Democrats in Congress, leading the president to trigger a historic five-week government shutdown last winter after lawmakers refused to fund the project. The latest $2 billion request is significantly less than the $5 billion the administration sought last year.

The White House proposes to cut spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade. Of that, it targets $2 trillion in savings from mandatory spending programs, including $130 billion from changes to Medicare prescription-drug pricing, $292 billion from safety-net cuts—such as work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps—and $70 billion from tightening eligibility access to federal disability benefits.


Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-propose-4-8-trillion-budget-with-big-safety-net-cuts-11581274525 (subscription)

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I cannot see every Republican up for re-election supporting this. But, then, again.

[JudyM]

1. Predictable and detestable. Huge cut in EPA, huge pot for his pet projects.

Administration officials told Reuters that Trump would request an increase in funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to $700 million compared to $150 million the previous year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-propose-sweeping-cuts-foreign-aid-safety-net-programs-latest-n1133211

Hmm, anyone smell more self-dealing in the works?

How long can Nancy hold up his pet project funding...?

[NotHardly]

2. I wonder how many people will die from all this "Making America Great Again"?

[Cozmo]

3. We're already dead!

[modrepub]

4. Biggest Cuts Should Be Reserved

for states that receive more program specific generated income than they pay in. Fair is fair after all...

[rickyhall]

5. There is something I'd like to see cut: Drumph.

Is my pittance of a retirement check going to shrink or disappear because of that sorry piece of shit?

[ancianita]

6. NDP might not let it come to the floor. Then 45'll threaten to let the government shut down. Again.

[Stallion]

13. Presidential Budgets are Generally DOA When Opposing Party Control House

[ancianita]

14. In this case, red meat. Not policy differences. So

NDP will play and be played, either way.

[Rebl2]

18. We can hope

[Texin]

7. Why would be propose cuts to "social safety nets" ahead of the election this year?

That would seem like sure political suicide to me. Is this to goose the deep-pocket donors? I don't understand it light of voters' most important pressing political concern now - healthcare and healthcare costs.

You start talking about slashing programs like healthcare, medicare, social security and Medicaid, I'd think that would be political catastrophe for a candidate.

[MarcA]

8. It's what the oligarchs want.

Any sensible President wouldn't propose such measures, but with drumph
they are going for broke.

[pazzyanne]

12. It's also what his base supports...

… even though it affects them in a major way. It is that cult mentality at work.

[Lonestarblue]

35. Because it hurts poor people.

Trump supporters are overwhelmingly white, and they’ve been told for decades that the only people hurt by safety-net cuts are minorities too lazy to work and illegal immigrants who live off our tax dollars. They don’t seem to make the connection that Medicaid pays for nursing home care for their elderly parents or that some of them might have to choose between paying for food or their medications.

Our military does not need more money. It needs more accountability for the money it already gets. You know who benefits even more than the military from its budget expansion? The corporations like Raytheon that are part of the military industrial complex and their wealthy stockholders—in other words, Trump and his buddies. Our Democratic candidates need to focus on the end result of military expansion. The money doesn’t go to soldiers or to provide better housing and schools for their children. It goes to bigger and better toys for the military brass.

[Rebl2]

20. I hope it

is political suicide for him and other Republicans particularly senators. That will hurt many of his supporters. They get all up in arms when they plan to close a post office! Do you think they will go for cutting their social security and Medicare/Medicaid?

[paleotn]

23. He thinks he can get away with it.

That his base is won't care and are strong enough to carry him through. He's right on only one point....his base won't care. But like we saw in 2018, they're not strong enough to repeat 2016. They need the middle and this will slam that door on them and send them running to the Dems. The fire up the base and negative ads write themselves. It's our turn at scaring the shit out of old people. And not with lies, but with the truth. I swear, they just can't help themselves from going a bridge too far. I figured hubris would do him in. Just didn't know when or how. This might just be it.

[Skittles]

27. because once again, he knows the fix is in?

[NewJeffCT]

34. Because he thinks he can get away with anything

now that the Senate GOP turned a blind on his blatant and open abuses of power in Ukraine.

[DeminPennswoods]

9. Mulvaney is still running OMB on the side and

this is his wet dream. But it's DOA in the House.

[Jim__]

10. I doubt the Democratic House will pass it. - n/t

[iluvtennis]

15. + agree. nt

[cstanleytech]

11. Hell I don't see the Democrats in the House agreeing to those cuts

and changes for any reason as they would be cutting their own throats.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

16. Dead on arrival

But he's shown his ass and it ain't very pretty.

[kimbutgar]

17. This should be in TV ads running non stop in red states

On billboards with a link and ads on the radio. Rural America needs to now MF45 is going to lower their monthly payments just as rents continue to raise.

[maxrandb]

19. Speaker Pelosi responds

https://m.

[dalton99a]

21. $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and an immediate 5% cut to non-defense budgets.

[mpcamb]

22. The House has a lot of power in this- IF they use it.

Talk debt. Trillions you're passing on to your kids (and the Dem in 2002).

Talk taxes- for $$$ individuals
and for corporations BEFORE chasing down food stamps and Medicare.

Medicare is scaring the hell out of ALL the governors, not just the Dems. In the long run, in an election year they won't fiddle with it much. Don't fall for it. They don't want their dirty fingers on it.

And, don't be afraid to have him shut down the government with no budget. He lost on that before and will again.

Be smart about the fight you pick.

[paleotn]

25. Indeed. You'd think they'd have learned

about shutting down the government when Gingrich had the House gavel. It's like they keep sticking their hand in the fire expecting a different result each time. Do they have to burn the damn thing off to finally get it?!

He's making a monumental mistake by showing his cards like this. The kind of cards that scare the shit out of retirees to college students. Things Republicans usually don't do until AFTER a presidential cycle. I should be amazed at the stupidity, but I'm not. Not with this jackass.

[paleotn]

24. DOA in the House...

And this shit wont fly in the Senate either. BUT....it writes some hellaciously good attack ads. The kind that scare the shit out of the electorate. In that regard, it's like manna from heaven for the Dems.

[mpcamb]

26. You're right. If Dems could be wily for once, make the R's tone it down first.

It stinks for everybody running in 2020.
Let the stink land on them before you say ANYTHING.

[MFM008]

28. lets say it together

budget is DOA

[C_U_L8R]

29. Let's start with cutting the golf outings

and the criminal self-dealing at Trump properties

[YOHABLO]

30. No more trips to Mar-a-Lago when Camp David will do just fine.

[JDC]

31. It will be DOA, but a baseline for R's to try to blame D's

For not wanting to reduce deficits. They will get back to their BS messaging of we are the party of "fiscal responsibility" and the D's are tax and spend in the face of giant deficits. They will leave out the part about how they created the gap/hole.

[C Moon]

32. I can't help but believe the GOP wants another Great Depression with no safety nets.

That is the GOP wet dream.
What is wrong with them? It's so fucking weird to love money and power so much that you are a traitor to your own country, and are so callous to your neighbors who have less than you.
I cannot imagine living like that.
They'll regret it when they see the power of the people coming after them. Because they never think forward, only how to get rich quick.

[cstanleytech]

33. Would not surprise me if they are trying to cause one so they and their $$$ supporters can cash in

by buying up the vast number of properties and assets the middle class and lower would lose at dirt cheap prices.
That is after all the type of pond scum that the Republicans are.

[Texin]

36. They want a permanently beggard serving-working class with no middle class.

Get rid of the social safety nets, and that's the first thing that would be accomplished. The formerly middle class will be saddled with the responsibility to care for their aged parents, siblings, grandparents, those family members who are physically or mentally infirm, those who have lost their jobs and housing for whatever reason. They want the poor to die faster. Thinning the herd, so to speak. They can buy up their properties (or foreclose as the case may be), glom onto things for their wealthy brethren and take whatever else they can pillage and plunder throughout the land.

I don't understand this mindset, but it's clearly what they believe. It's what they live for. The ones that are calling out about *population explosion* and the need to *protect* the planet from it, only refer to those who are poor and brown, those who are *diseased* and *filthy* who are a clear and present danger to the safety of the planet and welfare of the entitled classes. They clearly want us all dead. The sooner the better, and what better way than to strip out every program enacted to benefit those who have worked their entire lives and depend on the social safety nets that each and every one of us who work in this country and pay into the social security/medicare system through FICA taxes and pay federal (and state if applicable) and local property taxes throughout our working lives (and those *awful* undocumented people who work hard and pay into those programs too but will never recoup one dime of any of the taxes collected and paid into the system by their toil).