US President Donald Trump is offering a US$4.8 trillion election-year budget plan that recycles previously rejected cuts to domestic programs to promise a balanced budget in 15 years — all while boosting the military and leaving Social Security and Medicare benefits untouched.
Trump’s fiscal 2021 plan, which was to be released yesterday, promises the government’s deficit will crest above US$1 trillion only for the current budget year before steadily decreasing to more manageable levels.
The plan has virtually no chance, even before Trump’s impeachment scorched Washington.
Its reductions to food stamps, farm subsidies, Medicaid and student loans could not pass when Republicans controlled the US Congress, much less now with Democratic US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi setting the agenda.
Pelosi on Sunday night said that “once again the president is showing just how little he values the good health, financial security and well-being of hard-working American families.”
“Year after year, President Trump’s budgets have sought to inflict devastating cuts to critical lifelines that millions of Americans rely on,” she said in a statement. “Americans’ quality, affordable healthcare will never be safe with President Trump.”
Trump’s budget would also shred last year’s hard-won budget deal between the White House and Pelosi by imposing an immediate 5 percent cut to non-defense agency budgets passed by Congress.
Slashing cuts to the US Environmental Protection Agency and taking US$700 billion out of Medicaid over a decade are also non-starters on Capitol Hill, but both the White House and Democrats are hopeful of progress this spring on prescription drug prices.
The Trump budget is a blueprint written as if he could enact it without congressional approval. It relies on rosy economic projections of 2.8 percent economic growth this year and 3 percent over the long term — in addition to fanciful claims of future cuts to domestic programs — to show that it is possible to bend the deficit curve in the right direction.
That sleight of hand enables Trump to promise to whittle down a US$1.08 budget deficit for the ongoing budget year and a US$966 billion deficit gap in the 2021 fiscal year starting on Oct. 1 to US$261 billion in 2030, according to summary tables obtained by The Associated Press. Balance would come in 15 years.
The reality is that no one — Trump, the Democratic-controlled House or the Republican-held US Senate — has any interest in tackling a chronic budget gap that forces the government to borrow US$0.22 of every US$1 it spends.
The White House plan proposes US$4.4 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade.
Trump’s re-election campaign, meanwhile, is focused on the economy and the historically low unemployment rate, while ignoring the government’s budget.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats controlling the House have seen their number of deficit-conscious “Blue Dogs” shrink, while the roster of lawmakers favoring costly “Medicare for All” and “Green New Deal” proposals has swelled.
“Tea Party” Republicans have largely abandoned the cause that defined, at least in part, their successful takeover of the House a decade ago.
Trump has also signed two broader budget deals worked out by Democrats and Republicans to get rid of spending cuts left over from a failed 2011 budget accord.
The result has been eye-popping spending levels for defense — to about US$750 billion this year — and significant gains for domestic programs favored by Democrats.
The White House has not done much to draw attention to this year’s budget release, though Trump has revealed initiatives of interest to key battleground states in November’s US presidential elections, such as an increase to US$250 million to restore Florida’s Everglades and a move to finally abandon a multibillion-dollar, never-used nuclear waste dump that is political poison in Nevada.
The White House also leaked word of a US$25 billion proposal for “revitalizing rural America” with grants for broadband Internet access and other traditional infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges.
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