Tag: Trump budget

Trump’s budget steps on GOP’s new climate message

As Republican lawmakers take tentative steps forward on climate change, Trump’s budget would drag them back.

Most GOP voters support climate action, recent polls show, and Republican lawmakers want to shed the party’s reputation for rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming.

But the White House budget proposal released this week would eliminate or cut funding for climate, clean energy and efficiency research, even as Republican lawmakers on Wednesday offered the first pieces of what they say will be an effective legislative response to global warming.

While Congress will almost certainly disregard the cuts pushed by the White House, the proposal nevertheless reflects President Donald Trump’s priorities as leader of the Republican Party. That’s likely to mute and confuse the message House Republicans are trying to send, said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who now leads an organization, RepublicEN, advocating for free-market climate solutions. Continue reading.

The Federal Budget Under Trump, Per Person

New York Times logoOn Monday, President Trump released his proposal for the 2021 federal budget. Although a president’s budget is a clear statement of policy priorities, many of the provisions never actually get through Congress.

To better understand how federal spending has changed since Mr. Trump has taken office, we looked at the actual budget amounts for the 2020 fiscal year. We divided them by the U.S. population and sized the numbers proportionally to make their scale easier to visualize. Then we compared the numbers to the actual budget for the 2016 fiscal year, adjusting for inflation and population changes.

Total federal spending has increased by $1,441 per person since 2016. Most of that has contributed to the nation’s deficits, because revenues went up by just $125 per person during that same period. Continue reading.

Trump’s Latest Budget Proposal Would Deepen the Student Debt Crisis

Center for American Progress logoBehind the scenes, the Trump administration has reportedly been fighting for months about how to devise a student debt plan that could compete with proposals from progressive leaders. It’s not clear yet whether it will achieve this. What is clear, however, is that the draconian cuts to higher education programs in the new White House budget proposal would heap debt on millions of students in this country.

The FY 2021 budget proposal, released Monday, would cut more than $2 billion in spending just next year in financial aid, the Federal Work-Study Program, and other forms of support, much of which is geared toward low-income students and students of color. It would saddle borrowers with an extra $70 billion in costs over a 10-year period by ending subsidized loans and eliminating Public Service Loan Forgiveness. And it would put college further out of reach for American families by allowing the value of the Pell Grant to decline. Like previous budgets, it also proposes some measures that could mitigate some student debt, such as a proposal that would seek to hold colleges accountable by sharing some of the risk in student loans. However, risk sharing has mixed support among members of Congress. There are other small, positive proposals such as restoring Pell Grant access for incarcerated students and automatically enrolling severely delinquent borrowers into income-driven repayment plans, but these are outweighed by the harm done with other moves.

This is no way to reject “the downsizing of America’s destiny,” as Trump claimed to be doing in his State of the Union address last week. This budget does quite the opposite. It is an overt bid for the higher education system to abandon any aspiration to offer access and equity to all students. Continue reading.

Trump unveils $4.8 trillion budget that backtracks on deal with Congress

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday unveiled a $4.8 trillion budget proposal that includes spending cuts that would nullify a two-year deal negotiated with Congress last summer.

The new budget for the 2021 fiscal year beginning in October includes $590 billion in non-defense spending and $740.5 billion in defense spending. The total $4.8 trillion figure also anticipates about $3.5 trillion in spending on Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements.

The August deal hammered out by Trump in talks with the House and Senate raised spending for both defense and domestic spending. Continue reading.

‘It’s depressing, isn’t it?’: With little protest, GOP succumbs to Trump on spending

Washington Post logoBefore adjourning for the year on Thursday, the GOP-controlled Senate approved a $1.4 trillion funding package embraced by President Trump that will push deficits to record levels — with hardly a peep from many Republicans who have shut down the government over spending in the past.

“It’s depressing, isn’t it?” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said ahead of his vote opposing part of the package focused on domestic spending. “There are a lot of Republican colleagues who like to spend money.”

When a reporter suggested that Trump is one of those Republicans, Johnson flashed a pained smile and said, “Precisely.” Continue reading

Trump’s 2020 budget seeks 7 percent rise in Secret Service funding for 2020 campaign

The budget summary says it seeks to hire 177 additional special agents, officers and professional staff for the agency

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal seeks $2.3 billion to fund the U.S. Secret Service, an increase of 7 percent over the estimated spending for 2019 and some 15 percent above actual spending for 2018, according to budget documents released this week.

Much of the extra money in discretionary budget authority would go to protecting presidential candidates during the 2020 campaign and for the two national political conventions, plus hiring more agents, and more money for research and development and “protective equipment and technology.” Continue reading “Trump’s 2020 budget seeks 7 percent rise in Secret Service funding for 2020 campaign”

Emily Singer Trump Budget Would Cut Food And Health Care For Millions

Trump’s budget for the next fiscal year was released on Monday, and it’s just as bad as you can imagine.

In it, Trump proposes gutting social safety-net programs, like food stamps, while at the same time working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with the same health care bill Republicans failed to pass in 2017, which would kick 21 million Americans off the insurance rolls.

Trump’s budget also proposes further health care cuts, including nixing zero-premium plans on the ACA exchanges and demanding that all Americans “contribute something.” That could raise costs for millions of poorer Americans who currently pay $0 in health care subsidies in the ACA exchange.

View the complete March 11 article by Emily Singer with The American Independent on the National Memo website here.

Five takeaways from Trump’s budget

President Trump released a new budget on Monday that proposes huge cuts to domestic spending even as it boosts the Pentagon’s account and calls for $8.6 billion in new funding for a wall on the Mexican border.

The budget is essentially dead on arrival in the Democratic House, but it will shape a series of policy fights this year that could lead to 2019 ending where it began: with a shutdown.

Here are five takeaways:

Trump sees wall fight as political winner

The partial government shutdown triggered by Trump’s demands for a wall ended in his retreat.

View the complete March 11 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

2020 Trump budget reflects 2020 Trump re-election themes

White House hopeful Bernie Sanders blasts plan for ‘cruelty’ and ‘broken promises’

The budget plan President Donald Trump sent to Congress on Monday reflects the messaging themes that are the early pillars of his re-election campaign.

The $4.7 trillion spending proposal includes increases for things the president uses to fire up his supporters, including a sizable military budget boost and $8.6 billion for his U.S.-Mexico border barrier that could trigger a new government shutdown fight in late September. It also calls for $2.8 trillion in cuts to non-Pentagon programs.

Line by line and department by department, the budget blueprint’s most high-profile sections offer red meat for Trump’s base and conjure red faces from congressional Democrats. Both sides are sure to turn its contents into early 2020 campaign-trail themes.

View the complete March 11 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Trump releases budget calling for 5 percent cuts in domestic spending

President Trump on Monday unveiled his 2020 budget proposal, calling for domestic spending cuts of 5 percent across the federal government.

The White House, in Trump’s latest budget, would turbo-charge defense spending while providing $8.6 billion to fund his proposed southern border wall.

The proposal would raise overall defense spending to $750 billion, up from $716 billion in 2019, while slashing nondefense programs to $567 billion, down from the $597 billion allocated in 2019.

View the complete March 11 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.