What You Need to Know About President Trump’s Budget
1. Extends the GOP tax scam: The budget provides a massive giveaway to the wealthy by extending a number of tax cuts, which will add an additional $1 trillion to the deficit, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
2. Breaks President Trump’s campaign promise to balance the budget. This budget projects trillion dollar deficits for four straight years, and it would not balance for at least 15 years, embracing the deficits and debt that President Trump and Republicans have exploded with their GOP tax scam.
3. Puts us at risk of another shutdown by demanding a costly, ineffective border wall: After inflicting a painful, costly 35-day Trump-McConnell shutdown on the American people, the Administration is demanding $8.6 billion for the border wall that Congress has already rejected.
4. Undermines the Pentagon’s ability to plan for future needs. The budget dangerously exploits the “Overseas Contingency Operations” account, created to fund active engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a workaround to fund base defense needs. By simply ignoring budget caps that conservatives originally called for, this gimmick forces the defense community to deal with the year-to-year uncertainty of an annual slush fund, rather than giving them a long term national security vision.
5. Repeals the Affordable Care Act and assumes failed TrumpCare policies. President Trump’s budget again fails to acknowledge reality by assuming the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and implementation of the deeply flawed and unpopular TrumpCare, which would again kick millions of Americans off health coverage, weaken protections for pre-existing conditions, and raise costs for millions more.
6. Slashes Medicare and Medicaid: President Trump’s budget abandons seniors by cutting Medicare by $500 billion over the next 10 years. The budget proposal also guts Medicaid by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, impacting children, seniors in nursing homes, disabled Americans, HIV patients, and those with substance use disorders. While the President promised to expand funding to reduce new HIV infections and combat opioid abuse, the cuts to Medicaid would reduce access to care for people with HIV or substance abuse disorders.
7. Fails to include a real infrastructure plan: Despite the inclusion of $200 billion placeholder for infrastructure, the President's budget fails to outline an actual plan to rebuild our nation’s bridges, roads, and seaports. The budget also reduces funding for the Department of Transportation by over 21%, and slashes the budget for the Army Corps of Engineers.
8. Neglects rural communities: The Trump budget harms America’s rural communities by proposing a nearly 15% cut in the Department of Agriculture’s discretionary spending. As America’s farmers are reeling from the worst economic crisis in decades, this budget twists the knife further: $26 billion cut to crop insurance; $9 billion cut to conservation program payments; $8 billion cut to programs that help ranchers recover grazing lands hurt by drought, and cuts $219 billion from nutrition assistance programs that feed nearly 40 million hungry families.
9. Harms Americans facing economic uncertainty: The Trump budget defunds job-creating programs that help working Americans. It calls for the elimination of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which provides job assistance to small businesses and manufacturers, and eliminates the Economic Development Administration, which fuels local economic development. President Trump’s budget also makes it harder for people who are looking for work by slashing nutrition assistance, federal housing support, and Medicaid.
10. Jeopardizes public health: The Trump budget would slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31%, limiting its ability to keep our nation’s water and air clean and safe. It also hampers our nation’s ability to innovate for the future or address climate change by cutting the Department of Energy’s funding for research into clean-energy.
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