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Budget Cuts Series: Unfortunate Details Begin to Emerge
The Budget Cuts Series has a lot to share because the details of the White House proposed budget cuts are coming into light and they are ugly. We will update continually based on Congressional budget proposals and actions.
The budget details will be released fully today after the original guidelines came out in early March. They include deep cuts to numerous important agencies and programs while proposing to pour the savings into military spending which already equals the next seven countires combined (China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, UK, India, France, Japan). A brief summary of what we've learned so far over the past day.
Trump’s proposed $4.1 trillion budget slashes safety net programs for the poor, targeting food stamps and Medicaid, while relying on rosy projections about the nation’s economic growth to balance the budget within 10 years.... with protection for retirement programs for the elderly, billions of dollars more for the military and the rest of the government bearing the bulk of the reductions.... massive cuts in spending on health programs, including medical research, disease prevention programs and health insurance for children living in poverty.
Trump has so far displayed little interest in budget issues and the plan is being released while the president is on his first overseas trip.
Some specifics pieces together from various sources:
- 10-year, $191 billion reduction in food stamps — almost 30 percent — goes far, far beyond prior proposals by congressional Republicans. The program serves about 42 million people.
- Medicaid would be reduced by more than $600 billion over 10 years by capping payments.
- Cut NIH from $31.8 billion in budget authority to $26 billion. National Cancer Institute - $1 billion cut from 2017. National Heart, Lungand Blood Institute - $575 billion cut.
- Environmental Protection Agency funding reduced by more than 31 percent, to $5.65 billion. The plan would eliminate numerous major and smaller programs. Candidate Trump vowed to get rid of the EPA “in almost every form,” leaving only “little tidbits” intact.
- The Food and Drug Administration would see a cut from $2.74 billion to $1.89 billion.
- Cut $1 billion from the budget of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. This would include, among other cuts, a decrease of $222 million... for “chronic disease prevention and health promotion activities.”
- The CDC's global health program, which fights epidemics abroad, would be reduced from $426 million to $350 million, according to the document.
- HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis prevention would drop from $1.12 billion to $934 million.
Will any of this matter? If the people make their voices heard via Smart Dissent, hopefully it won't be as awful.
The politically perilous cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health care for the poor and disabled; college loans, food stamps and federal employee pension benefits guarantee Trump’s budget won’t go far in Congress, even though Republicans control both the House and Senate. “I just think it’s the prerogative of Congress to make those decisions in consultation with the president,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said as he predicted the Medicaid cuts wouldn’t survive the Senate. “But almost every president’s budget proposal that I know of is basically dead on arrival.”
Lawmakers appeared to ignore that [March skinny] budget request entirely when putting together a spending plan for the rest of fiscal 2017, which runs through September. Much of that spending plan had been in the works even before the November election. It is unclear how Congress, which has the power of the purse, will treat this new and more detailed budget request.
S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said ... he was amazed the administration had not shifted course from its first proposal in March. With significant bipartisan push back in Congress...“You would think they would have learned something from these trial balloons,” Becker said. “Instead, they’re doubling down. They just don’t care about the reaction.”
https://apnews.com/3fef61a41cd0445ca7dd71aa5bfac1e9/Trump's-$4.1T-budget-relies-on-deep-domestic-cuts