Trump Budget Guts Programs for Poor and Elderly to Help Pay for Border Wall and Massive Defense Spending Increases

Trump’s Budget is titled, “America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” It does anything but.

President Donald Trump’s budget office director Mick Mulvaney says he “wrote it using the president’s own words,” reading his speeches and then “turned those policies into numbers.” 

The 2018 budget kills vital programs, like Meals on Wheels, that help the poor and elderly, while adding $54 billion to defense, and another $2.6 billion to help start construction of his infamous wall on the border of Mexico. And it looks to privatize parts of the government, like the Transportation Department’s vital air traffic control function.

$200 million is slashed from the Agriculture Dept.’s Women, Infants and Children nutrition assistance program, and another $200 million from the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program. 

The cuts are massive in number, scope, and impact. Generally, they are aimed at reducing or eliminating programs that perform research, assistance, or that fund the arts or science. Overall, the the Agriculture Dept. will have to eliminate 21% of its budget.

But even the president’s words are unable to save some programs. Despite promising voters he would cure diseases, his budget guts $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which will lose $15.1 billion in total, an 18% drop in funding. 

There are other contradictions that reveal Trump’s personal priorities. Betsy DeVos’ Dept. of Education loses $9.2 billion, a 14% drop, yet gets $1.4 billion for charter and private schools.

Gone entirely are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

On a percentage basis the Environmental Protection Agency is the hardest hit, with a devastating 31% slashing. The EPA’s Office of Research and Development gets gutted in half, and international climate change programs are just eliminated altogether.

NASA, while among the least hardest hit, also loses $102 million from climate change programs, another $115 million is cut from its Office of Education.

The State Dept. originally was to receive the greatest cut, a 37% decrease, but that will now be a 29% decrease – a $10.9 billion gutting. Gone entirely are its climate change prevention programs. Slashed is it U.N. peacekeeping funding. 

Over at the Dept. of Labor, like the Agriculture Dept., more than one-fifth of its budget will be eliminated. Programs to help low-income seniors, disadvantaged youth, and nonprofit groups will be cut or eliminated.

Politico observes Trump’s 2018 budget is “ripped from” Whit House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s “nationalistic playbook.”

For more, head over to the White House’s website, where you can read the budget, unsurpriingly titled, “America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.”

The Washington Post’s “What Trump cut in his budget,” is an excellent resource, as is the New York Times’ “Who Wins and Loses in Trump’s Proposed Budget.”

To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.

Image by Peg Hunter via Flickr and a CC license