Trumps biggest disappointment over his tenure (from our point of view) was spending. But he appears to be trying to rectify that. I’d question the timing. We’d have had a good deal more success cutting the budget with Republican majorities in both chambers, which is to say, at least a snowball’s chance in hell. With a Democrat majority House, we have none. But maybe that’s the point?
Democrats like to talk about the debt and our children but they then spend trillions more to secure their place in that future, or more rightly governments place controlling every bit of it. So, Trump, being Trump, has done what he said after he signed the last bloated budget. No more.
The Hill reported that the biggest takeaway from Trump’s proposed 2020 budget is an average 5 percent reduction in spending across the board, which would cut spending by roughly $2.7 trillion over a decade and, in concert with continued economic policies and optimistic growth predictions, theoretically balance the budget within 15 years.
In a pre-Democrat presidential primary season loaded with spending ideas, this is an amusing poke in the eye.
One manner in which the proposed budget met the non-defense discretionary spending limit was through massive cuts to various departments and agencies, some of which were rather steep, such as a 31 percent cut in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Other departments facing deep proposed cuts included the State Department (23 percent), Transportation (22 percent), Housing and Urban Development (16.4 percent), Agriculture (14.8 percent), Education (12 percent) and even the National Science Foundation (9 percent)
Trump adds funding to National Defense, Homeland (border security) and the VA. All things his supporters would agree to, more so given the suggested cuts.
Will it fly? I don’t think that’s entirely the point. This is Trump. Art of the deal. He’s willing to negotiate from this position. Where we end up is a mystery, but he’ll shut down the government to make a point. Democrats need to figure out how to play this and not just the spending or the cuts but the optics.
