Trump Budget Lays Groundwork For 2020 Race
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump sent Congress on Monday a record $4.75 trillion budget request that calls for increased military spending and sharp cuts to domestic programs like education and environmental protection for the 2020 fiscal year.
Trump's budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending - which is more than the Pentagon asked for - and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico.
And it contains what White House officials called a total of $1.9 trillion in cost savings from mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid and Medicare.
The Chesapeake Bay Program, which coordinates science, research, and modeling efforts and distributes grants to states, local governments and others for cleanup projects in the nation's biggest estuary, would receive a 90 percent cut. It would get $7.3 million, down from $73 million this year.
The budget is unlikely to have much impact on actual spending levels, which are controlled by Congress. Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate pronounced the budget dead on arrival on Sunday. Trump's budgets also largely failed to gain traction in previous years, when fellow Republicans controlled both chambers.
But the blueprint is a declaration of Trump's re-election campaign priorities and the starting skirmish in the race for 2020, as both Republicans and Democrats try to carve out their messages to appeal to voters.
The president's fiscal plan quickly antagonized Democrats while making clear the contours of how he plans to run for re-election. It is replete with aggressively optimistic economic assumptions and appeals to his core constituents, and it envisions deep cuts to programs that Democrats hold dear.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the proposal "a gut-punch to the American middle class." He said Trump's requested cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security "as well as numerous other middle-class programs are devastating, but not surprising."
The budget includes proposals that would reduce Medicare spending on prescriptions and payments to some hospitals through a number of policy changes. The changes to the drug program may have the effect of increasing premiums for Americans who rely on Medicare, but they would also, for the first time, limit the amount that seniors with very expensive drugs could be asked to pay each year.
Some of the plans resemble proposals unsuccessfully offered by President Barack Obama in his time in the White House.
The Medicare changes would save $846 billion over a decade, in part through curbing "waste, fraud and abuse." The administration also proposes spending $26 billion less on Social Security programs, including a $10 billion cut to the disability program.
Trump also proposes new work requirements for working-age adult recipients of food stamps, federal housing support and Medicaid, a move the administration said would reduce spending on those programs by $327 billion over a decade.
The administration also proposed about $100 billion in savings from unspecified reforms to the U.S. Postal Service and a similar amount from cuts to spending on federal employee pension plans. It would cut $200 billion from student loan programs.
The largest proposed reduction would come from discretionary domestic programs, outside of the armed forces, which would fall by $1.1 trillion over the course of a decade.
Those cuts would not be across the board but would come from programs at federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, where Trump has previously suggested cutting funds. The budget would also reduce spending on foreign aid, international cultural exchange programs and federal employee retirement plans.
For the third year in a row, Trump's budget would cut funding for the Education Department, this time by 10 percent. Congress has repeatedly rejected efforts to reduce the department's spending - lawmakers instead increased funding for the department last year - but an Education Department official said this year's request reflected the "desire to have some fiscal discipline and address some higher-priority needs."
The budget seeks to cut more than two dozen programs, including a popular after-school program for low-income students, but maintains level funding for students with disabilities and those who attend the nation's most impoverished schools.
It would eliminate higher education programs, like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and subsidized federal Stafford loans, and reduce work-study funding as Education Department officials tweak the program to offer more career-oriented jobs for low-income students.
The budget would not balance for 15 years, breaking Trump's 2016 campaign promise to pay off the entire national debt within eight years.
Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the president's budget "once again lays out an irresponsible and cynical vision for our country, without any regard for its human cost."
Disapproval from Democratic presidential candidates was just as blunt. "This is a budget for the military industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street and for the billionaire class," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement. "It is dead on arrival."
Some prominent Republicans greeted the president's request somewhat coolly because they thought it did not go far enough to reduce the growing national debt.
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ariz., noted that only by cutting mandatory spending could the federal government seriously reduce deficits and debt.
"President Trump's budget takes steps in the right direction, but there is still much work to do," he said.
The Associated Press contributed information to this report.
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