GOP pleased over Trump budget blueprint

Source: Newburgh Circle

Student loan programs for the poor will be eliminated.

Veteran GOP Rep. Harold Rogers, who represents a poor district in eastern Kentucky, says, “These cuts that are being proposed are draconian”. These would include USD193 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $21 billion from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., calls the budget a massive transfer of wealth from working families and the elderly to the wealthiest 1 percent.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says the budget cuts Social Security Disability Insurance and would trim the National Institutes of Health budget by almost 20 percent.

She says she turned it down but doesn’t think many others would have done the same.

Chase Thomas with the Alliance for a Better Utah, said the budget priorities are upside down.

Medicaid: The health care programme for the poor suffers a US$610-billion cut over 10 years.

The Congressional Budget Office projects the economy to grow at an annual pace of 1.9 per cent over that period.

The proposed cuts would “just exacerbate poverty for people who are already trying to work their way out of it”, Melcher said.

“The President’s budget is a suggestion”.

No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn calls the budget “dead on arrival”.

The cuts primarily target social safety net programmes while the blueprint boosts military spending.

Another senior Republican lawmaker, Fred Upton of MI, questioned inclusion of money for Trump’s border wall, remarking: “I thought Mexico was going to pay for the wall, why is this in our budget?” The president’s plan suggests cutting about 25 percent of the program’s budget over 10 years. Trump’s new budget assumes sustained growth above 3 percent, sharply higher than the expectations of most private economists.

President Donald Trump’s first budget plans to balance the US budget within a decade, but a former US Treasury Secretary said it contains egregious accounting errors.

“As nice as that title may sound, closer inspection reveals that it is not a new foundation for shared growth, but a recipe for decline, suffering and mediocrity”, said Ryan, of Howland, D-13th.

He also describes the president’s recommendations as a “message budget to the right wing of the party”.

Trump’s balanced-budget goal depends not only on the growth projections that most economists view as overly optimistic but also a variety of accounting gimmicks, including an nearly $600 billion peace dividend from winding down overseas military operations and “double counting” $2.1 trillion in revenues from economic growth – using them to both pay for tax cuts and bring down the deficit. Instead of depending on government handouts, officials want able-bodied Americans to get back to work to support themselves.

Federal aid to states would shrink by 3 per cent, though the cuts would fall most heavily on states that backed Mr Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Mr Trump wants USA lawmakers to cut $US3.6 trillion ($4.8 trillion) in government spending over the next decade.

During the campaign, Trump attacked the weak economic growth of the Barack Obama years, and pledged that his economic program would boost growth from the lackluster 2 percent rates seen since the recovery began in mid-2009.

“If we implemented this budget, you’d have to retreat from the world or put a lot of people at risk”, Graham said. But the presidency is also having an impact on Trump, prompting him, at times, to play the role of traditional president. Defense spending would increase by $52 billion over the current year, including money earmarked for Trump’s campaign promise of a wall along the Mexican border.

It remains doubtful that the legislature will approve Trump’s budget considering it would cut spending in areas that are still very popular to the electorate. Lawmakers from both parties have said major changes will be needed as the measure moves through Congress.

Read Newburgh Circle article here.

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