Slash and burn: Trump’s budget reveals drastic cuts to social programs, increases border security

President Trump rolled out a long-shot budget plan Monday that would slash safety net programs benefiting the most vulnerable, including the poor, the young and the elderly, while boosting taxpayer funding for a Mexican border wall, setting the tone for his election year priorities.

The $4.8 trillion blueprint, which is all but certain to fail in Congress as it recycles many previously rejected cuts, would drastically downsize Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It also seeks to shuffle away billions of dollars from Medicare over a longer period of time despite Trump’s repeated promise that he will not chip away at the national health insurance program for the elderly.

Additionally, the Trump plan would slash the Environmental Protection Agency budget by a whopping 26.5% over the next fiscal year, part of the president’s bid to undo regulations aimed at curbing climate change.

The Health and Human Services budget would face a 9% cut, even though an agency within that department oversees the response to the rapidly spreading coronavirus, which has caused hundreds of deaths worldwide and put American cities, including New York, on high-alert.

Trump also seeks to slice funding for food stamps, student loans and foreign aid. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting budget, which keeps NPR afloat, would be completely eliminated.

Russ Vought, Trump’s acting White House budget chief, painted the wide-ranging cuts as part of Trump’s commitment to “spending restraint” and “common sense.”

In a statement accompanying the 138-page budget, Trump -- who’s riding high on his recent Senate impeachment acquittal -- echoed Vought’s sentiment and took a partisan victory lap for the strong state of the U.S. economy.

“For decades, Washington elites told us that Americans had no choice but to accept stagnation, decay, and decline. We proved them wrong. Our economy is strong once more,” Trump said.

Democrats ripped Trump’s proposal as cruel and inconsistent with promises he made in last week’s State of the Union address to safeguard Medicare and health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

“As typical, President Trump’s budget shows his State of the Union address was lie upon lie to the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “Trump’s latest budget is simply a continuation of his war to rip away health care from millions of Americans.”

Trump’s doesn’t propose to slash federal spending across the board.

Most glaringly, Trump is requesting $2 billion in taxpayer cash for the U.S. southern border wall that he spent the entire 2016 campaign promising Mexico would pay for.

That’s more than Congress is almost certainly prepared to put up, especially considering Democrats control the House and remain stringently opposed to using taxpayer dollars for a border project they consider more rooted in racism than national security.

As the 2020 election looms, Trump’s budget proposal signals he will continue to campaign on cutting most federal spending, especially for programs benefiting low-income people.

Democratic presidential candidates are in large part suggesting the diametrical opposite, with Bernie Sanders and other top-polling White House hopefuls pitching big government proposals such as “Medicare for All.”

In addition to wall cash, Trump’s budget plan floats a 3% pay increase for the military and a $3 billion boost to NASA in apparent hopes of bringing astronauts back to the moon and, potentially, on to Mars.

Under President Barack Obama, Republicans were outraged that the government was not seeking to more aggressively address the ballooning federal deficit.

But Republicans on Capitol Hill remained mum on that front Monday, even as Trump’s budget plan concedes that the deficit would surpass the $1 trillion mark for the current fiscal year.

Trump still maintains that his plan would balance the budget within 15 years.

But that promise is based on rosy economic projects that economists say are unrealistic.

For starters, the economy would have to grow at a never-before-seen 3% per year through 2025. The economy grew 2.3% last year, the lowest since Trump took office.

Trump is also unwilling to give up on his deficit-increasing 2017 tax cuts, even as critics say they mostly benefit the wealthy.

“The bottom line: The cuts to health care, student loans, nutrition and many other areas represent the bill coming due for Trump’s tax giveaway,” Seth Hanlon, a tax policy expert at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, told the Daily News. “He is paying for the tax cuts by cutting programs that ordinary American families rely on.”

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