Trump’s budget director defends plans to cut social programs

There’s little appetite among Capitol Hill Republicans for a genuine effort to balance the budget; GOP lawmakers this year are instead pressing to rewrite the tax code and forge a spending deal with Democrats that would permit higher military spending and restore Trump proposals to cut domestic agencies and foreign aid.

-Science: The American Association for the Advancement of Science estimates the budget proposal would cut overall federal spending on scientific research by 16.8 percent.

A better course would be to undertake more intelligent tax reform that simplifies the tax code and ends numerous loopholes that let many corporations and rich individuals like Mr. Trump himself pay far less than the high rates they unconvincingly lament.

“To most people, plain language, slashing Medicaid would mean we spend less next year than we did this year”. And you have a 13 percent cut in the Department of Education.

When it suits the administration’s case, Mulvaney relies on this same metric for measuring the budget as a proportion of the economy. “It assumes that the stars perfectly align with regard to economic drivers”.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers put it another way, writing in his blog, “It appears to be the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the almost 40 years I have been tracking them”.

At a House hearing Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro told Perdue that the budget turns the nation’s back on the hungry.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers thinks President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint is “ludicrously optimistic” due to the “economic assumptions it embodies”.

“I don’t know that your priorities are much different from my priorities for USDA”, he told Aderholt. That’s about a 25 percent cut. Cuts to Medicaid go beyond the $800 billion-plus contained in a House-passed health care rewrite. “In fact, that’s Trumponomics”, he said in his opening statement, arguing that the nation will never pay off its “crushing debt” unless the USA achieves a growth rate that economists across the ideological spectrum say is nearly impossible to achieve.

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s budget won polite praise from some Republicans, but Democrats were dismissive.

“We take care of the truly needy”, he said. “And as a outcome I think it is just disastrously consequential to build a budget on 3% – the bible says you can’t build a house on a sandy foundation”, Sanford said.

And how does White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney characterize the cuts to food stamps and Medicaid?

States now administer SNAP with federal money but would have to come up with an average of 10 percent of the cost by 2020 and 25 percent by 2023. It is a despicable way to try to excuse a heartless, cruel budget clearly created to somehow keep campaign promises no matter what.

“Mr. Mulvaney, at least 20 percent of people eligible for SNAP don’t even receive SNAP because of stigma and other reasons”, she said.

The 2016 Republican presidential candidate said Congress falls short on helping people get off of government assistance and acquire skills needed to become gainfully employed.

“It’s so frustrating, but I’m glad to have a chance to sit here and talk about how we do one thing, which is very important, which is we are defending the taxpayer”, he said.

The loss of federal conservation programs would also impact farmers’ ability to improve and conserve the land, air, water and habitat in our state to feed the future.

Lowey said she anxious that Kelly didn’t fully understand how important that money is to local jurisdictions, including New York City.

If Republicans want to make a stand with this budget ahead of election season, the Republican Party will have to speak in unison – boldly and clearly.