Trump's budget overhaul: domestic programs slashed to fund military
Source: The Guardian
Donald Trump unveiled a $1.15tn budget on Thursday, a far-reaching overhaul of federal government spending that would slash many domestic programs to finance a significant increase in the military and make a downpayment on a US-Mexico border wall.
Trump’s proposal seeks to upend Washington with cuts to long-promised campaign targets like foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as strong congressional favorites such as medical research, help for homeless veterans and community development grants.
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The $54bn boost for the military is the largest since Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon buildup in the 1980s, promising immediate money for troop readiness, the fight against Islamic State militants and procurement of new ships, fighter jets and other weapons. The 10% Pentagon boost is financed by $54bn in cuts to foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been protected by Barack Obama.
The budget goes after the frequent targets of the party’s staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low-income heating assistance and the AmeriCorps national service program established by Bill Clinton.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/15/trump-budget-proposal-cuts-epa-military-mexico-wall
President Donald Trump’s first official budget document includes massive changes to the one-third of federal spending going to “discretionary” programs. Programs to mitigate climate change are cut or eliminated across the government. Programs to assist the poor are slashed. And while almost every department would face large cuts, three would see sizable increases in spending: Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.
The impact of the cuts and hikes laid out in the document would be massive. Trump wants to fund a border wall, deportation raids, a hiring spree for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and purchases of new F-35 fighter jets and a variety of Navy vessels. And it would dramatically hamper enforcement of environmental and labor regulations, end grant and loan programs for clean energy and disadvantaged regions, and significantly reduce funding for biomedical research.
The document is a “skinny” budget that ignores taxes and entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. It only specifies changes to “discretionary” spending by agencies. In total, this is about a third of the overall federal budget; non-defense discretionary is about 16 percent.
The budget will not pass in full, and provisions are already provoking political backlash on Capitol Hill. It will be up to Congress to actually implement spending policy; Trump can only offer suggestions. But the document is revealing and important nonetheless. It gives a clear signal of the administration’s priorities on agency spending, and signals that it will support any efforts by Congress to crack down on international programs, environmental protection, and anti-poverty programs.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/16/14912638/trump-budget-2018-explained-cuts-growth
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