A White House summary of President Donald Trump’s latest budget proposal shows that Trump is looking to make huge cuts to “entitlements”, while increasing spending for defense.
The summary, which was obtained by Bloomberg News, includes “cutting spending on Medicare, the health program for the elderly and disabled, by $237 billion”. According to the summary, the cuts wouldn’t impact Medicare’s benefits or coverage. The proposed budget also calls “for annual 2 percent cuts to non-defense domestic spending beginning after 2019.”
The White House budget also requests $200 billion for infrastructure spending, presumably for a spending plan the White House will release later this week. Trump is also requesting “$782 million to hire 2,750 new border and immigration officers, and $2.7 billion to detain people in the country illegally”, as well as $18 billion over the next two years towards the construction of the infamous border wall.
In keeping with Trump’s belief that the opioid crisis is one of his top domestic priorities, the budget includes $13 billion in new spending to combat the crisis, with the funds going to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget told Fox News that Trump’s budget proposal takes “money that the Democrats want to put to these social programs and move it to things like infrastructure, move it to things like opioid relief, move it to things that are in line with the president’s priorities so that if it does get spent, at least it get spent to the right places.”
Luckily, Congress will most likely ignore the White House budget proposal. Capitol Hill lawmakers routinely ignore budget proposals from the Executive Branch. With any luck, lawmakers will be able to tell Trump exactly where he can stick his proposed budget. Aren’t you glad you voted BLUE?