Many in GOP cool to Trump’s budget plan

Hawks in Congress, like House Armed Services Chair Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain (R-Ariz.) both want more than Trump’s proposed $640 billion to go the military.

The new budget plan builds on Trump’s March proposals, adding details to his goal of boosting defense spending by $54 billion, a 10 percent increase, for this year, with that boost financed by an equal cut to nondefense programs.

In his briefing on the proposal, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called it a “taxpayer-first budget”, written through the eyes of a taxpayer, not a program recipient.

“What it fails to recognize is that our national security involves more than just military spending”, he said in a statement.

When asked if people who get Social Security Disability Insurance will receive less as a result of the budget, Mulvaney said, “I hope so”. “So if I’m a good Senator or Representative, I’ve got to be real careful because those things could impact lots of voters”.

The budget sought USD 1.5 trillion in nondefense discretionary cuts and USD 1.4 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the course of a decade, while adding almost half a trillion dollars to defense spending, reports the Hill. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.

Mulvaney said too many of these programs spend other people’s money. “Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it”.

He singled out the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the modern version of food stamps, which grew rapidly after the financial crisis and had 44 million beneficiaries in 2016.

“We need people to go to work”, he said Tuesday.

“Give the food stamps to the people who need food stamps“.

“Part of what’s going on here is supposedly you can put these different pieces of the puzzle together in a way that you don’t touch entitlements, but the reality is you can’t”, Sanford said. “We need everybody pulling in the same direction”.

Mulvaney says by cutting safety net programs, the president’s budget is explicitly created to encourage more people to work.

Additionally, Wittman called the elimination of the Chesapeake Bay Program “shortsighted and unacceptable” because of the economic and environmental value of the program. For example, its proposals for modest infrastructure spending could lead to something more ambitious, and there’s a provision for mandating some paid family leave.

USA military assistance to partners and allies reached $13.5 billion in 2015, or 28 percent of all U.S. foreign aid spending that year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The amount in the budget is, at least, modest compared to Trump’s initial estimate of $10 billion for the wall. Numerous voters who propelled Trump into the presidency last November would see significantly less from the federal government.

The budget, which was titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness“, claims to eliminate the federal deficit by the end of the decade through faster economic growth and deep cuts in Medicaid payments, food stamps and disability benefits.

The President’s first major budget proposal, which assumes the Medicaid savings in the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) will be passed, would make $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

The plan drew immediate fire from lobby groups, including from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which said it relied on “rosy assumptions”, gimmicks and unrealistic cuts.

It would, however, slash $3.2 billion from the “individual unemployability” benefit, which the budget says will be “modernized”. Without more than $2 trillion in such “economic feedback” over the coming decade, the budget would never reach balance and would run a deficit of nearly $500 billion. “Our argument was instead of. giving somebody $100 million, we could give them a smaller number worth of loan guarantees and they could actually buy more stuff”.