Setting the stage for what could be a huge battle with Congress, President Trump is set to formally deliver a budget for discal year 2018 which includes massive cuts across several departments, centering on domestic spending, as a way to pay for his planned military spending increases without increasing the budget deficit..
As had been previously reported, big cuts are coming for the State Department (28%) and the Environmental Protection Agency (30%). The biggest cut on a dollar basis is actually to the Department of Health and Human Services, however, with its $19.5 billion cut, while the Departments of Labor and Agriculture are also seeing in excess of 20% cuts.
Making such a proposal and getting such a proposal through Congress, however, are two different things, and Congressmen in both parties are calling this effort “dead on arrival,” and say they doubt a lot of the cuts have much chance of getting through the Senate.
Perhaps the shift in budget priorities most conspicuously absent from the Trump proposal, at least the details shown so far, are the tax cuts President Trump had previously talked about during his address to Congress, as the talk of letting Americans keep more of their money appears to have lost out to the administration’s desire to increase military spending.
Agriculture cuts of $19.5 billion? Not going to happen.
I correct my comment below. A 20% cut in agriculture. No chance of that happening with Republicans in control.
‘We’ hard-working USG taxpayers are about to get shafted again.
This time, by a two-faced, double-dealing, billionaire slum lord.
It’s ‘not’ funny how this clown could propose across-the-board
cuts for ‘domestic’ spending, while continuing to support with
‘our’ tax dollars the brutal apartheid regime currently occupying
Gaza, and the West Bank.
It also appears Trump’s rhetoric about ‘trimming’ the budget of
the warmongering Pentagon was bullshit and lip service for ‘us’
USG masses sick and tired of having our resources squandered
on endless wars for profit and destruction.
When you give a spoiled child a box full of toys
He’s going to play with them until they’re all broken
You’re right. Especially, when his toys are bought with someone else’s money.
They should increase all those agencies and drastically cut the Pentagon.
The State Dept. has devolved into a nest of warmongers, not diplomats. Recall that 51 so called “US diplomats” recently signed a letter that advocated bombing Syria. The EPA is a den of back scratching crony capitalists who use the agency to reward/grant immunity to friends, and crush their enemies. Trump isn’t necessarily wrong to scrutinize the budgets of all federal agencies, beginning with the Pentagon. The DoD has “misplaced” somewhere from $6.5 to over $9 TRILLION. It is unconscionable to increase DoD spending when they DoD cannot account for where trillions of US taxpayer funds have already been spent (or “misplaced”).
This is a good thing actually. If Trump had proposed to increase military spending simply by increasing debt, as has occurred so many times in the past by short-sighted politicians, there would not be enough resistance to stop it. Trump’s iota of fiscal conservatism means he will achieve virtually nothing, possibly enabling a backlash where the military could be slashed to fund domestic investment in our economy, infrastructure and oversight.
At this rate Hillary might think she has a chance in 2020.
But Donald will be a War President by then.
Trump lies. He’s “War Profiteers First, America Last.”
I will enjoy the show. Let us see how will all those arguing for even bigger military increase deal with the drastic cuts! Let us see how much of an increase will they find money for. And infrastructure and tax cuts..
One thing is good — cut State Department. Most warmongering comes from there, and the links between State Department and CIA should be severed too — to insure State Department cannot run secret operations as it was since Mad Albreight, increased ten fold under Clinton, and kept status quo under Kerry.