(Updated) The Trump budget unveiled today — a $4.1 trillion plan for fiscal year 2018 — will have devastating affects on all but the richest Americans, cutting programs that aid the poor while increasing spending on security and cutting taxes for the rich.
As The New York Times reports, the budget “calls for an increase in military spending of 10 percent and spending more than $2.6 billion for border security — including $1.6 billion to begin work on a wall on the border with Mexico — as well as huge tax reductions and an improbable promise of 3 percent economic growth.”
At the same time, the paper reports that the budget will be balanced on the backs of the nation’s neediest citizens — with massive cuts to Medicaid and the various nutrition and welfare programs. (The Times wrongly refers to these as entitlement programs, a term that should be reserved only for programs like Social Security whose recipients are entitled to benefits because they paid into the programs. Programs for the poor are means based and often include a variety of other qualifiers that limit participation.)
Over the next decade, it calls for slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, while slicing $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion over all from welfare programs. And domestic programs outside of military and homeland security whose budgets are determined annually by Congress would also take a hit, their funding falling by $57 billion, or 10.6 percent.
The plan would cut by more than $72 billion the disability benefits upon which millions of Americans rely. It would eliminate loan programs that subsidize college education for the poor and those who take jobs in government or nonprofit organizations.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney says the budget will return the nation’s economy to a time of more robust growth. He calls it a
“Taxpayer First Budget,” and he said they worked to jettison any spending that they felt they could not defend. In total, this meant roughly $3.6 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years.
These cuts, White House officials said, would usher in a sustained period of strong economic growth that would grow wealth, create more jobs, and reduce poverty.
“I think what Trumponomics is and what this budget is a part of is an effort to get to sustained 3 percent economic growth in this country again,” Mulvaney said in a briefing with reporters.
This is magical thinking at its finest. Most economists think we are long past the days of 3 percent or better growth, and they view these kinds of projections as overly rosy and potentially dangerous. Assuming growth targets beyond our reach will only inflate our deficits — and it will do so without any discernible economic benefits.
Budgets are priority statements — former N.J. Gov. Christie Whitman famously said they are the place where politicians “put their money where their mouth is.” Budgets tell us what policy makers think is most important, and what they view as unimportant. Trump, in this budget, is underscoring his commitment to security — something I think is overblown — while also highlighting the nastier aspects of his message. His cuts are to programs that assist people in need and, while he claims these are failed programs, he offers no evidence of this. And he makes no real effort to offset his cuts, leaving many to fend for themselves.
Mulvaney said as much, as The Washington Post reported:
Mulvaney said too many of these programs spend other people’s money. He said the government should show “compassion” for low-income Americans but it should “also…have compassion for folks who are paying [for] it.”
“Other people’s money” implies that taxes are illegitimate — a taking of other’s wealth. It also obscures the real issue here, which is that the rich have found ways to pay less and less in recent years, pushing the cost of government onto the backs of the middle class at exactly the same moment that the word taxpayer has replaced citizen as a signifiers of civic connection. Taxpayer in the popular imagination means middle class, which allows people like Mulvaney to claim to be protecting the broad swath of Americans from the poor shiftless folks at the bottom. (There is a racial component to this, but I’ll leave that for another day.)
Trump’s focus on security, especially border security and his targeting of immigrants, is actually of a piece with his proposed gutting of the social safety net. Taken as a whole, the new spending on security and cuts to programs for the poor indicate that those in need are not priorities, that those who have been victimized by capitalism both here and abroad are of no concern.
Trump’s budget, however, is not about “compassion” for the middle class. It is about redistribution upward — and the “folks who are paying” will still get shafted.
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Hank Kalet 