Trump plans to cut funding for most government agencies [View all]
Source: Yahoo Finance
President Donald Trump is preparing a “security budget” that will ramp up spending for the Pentagon while slashing funding for most other federal agencies.
Trump plans to increase defense spending by $54 billion per year, which would be a 10% increase. He’d cut funding for most other agencies by $54 billion to keep his overall budget from adding to the national debt. “Most federal programs will see a reduction,” an official with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told reporters on Monday.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to scale back regulatory agencies, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But such agencies tend to have modest budgets compared with the cost of military troops and hardware. The EPA’s entire budget is around $8 billion, for instance. That’s only two-thirds the cost of a single Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which comes with a price tag of about $13 billion.
Defense accounts for about 16% of federal spending, but much of the rest goes toward entitlement spending. Social Security accounts for 24% of the federal budget; Medicare, 15%. Trump has pledged not to cut either of those popular programs, even though their costs are growing. Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, accounts for 9% of spending, and Trump does favor changes in the way those funds get spent, which could lead to cutbacks there. Interest payments account for another 6% of spending, which Trump can’t cut. All told, with defense, Social Security, Medicare and interest expenses exempt, Trump would have to find $54 billion in cuts from less than 40% of the budget.
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-plans-to-cut-funding-for-most-government-agencies-160756646.html
That's OK. Let him cut entitlement programs that his supporters depend on, that they see as their birthright
= new reply since forum marked as read
