Trump’s Budget Details Released

The White House continues to release details of its federal budget proposal. This budget includes deep cuts to Medicaid and many other anti-poverty programs. It is packaged with tax cuts which assume that the economy will grow faster and that the budget will be balanced by 2027.

**Spending Cuts: $4.3 Trillion over 10 Years
**Cuts to non-defense discretionary spending will be cut by $1.4 trillion. This includes deep cuts to most government agencies that are not involved in defense. The Environmental Protection Agency loses 31% of funding for 2018. The State Department and programs related to it loses 29%. An additional 2% cuts will occur to these agencies year-over-year.

_Highlights of the Cuts
_Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will be cut by $616 million, saving money, but significantly decreasing the number of people with health insurance and access to care. Some costs would also be shifted to the states with an annual limits on federal payments to each state beginning in 2020.

Another $339 billion comes out of limits on medical malpractice suits, selling off about $36 billion worth of American energy resources and infrastructure, opening up new areas of public land for drilling, redirecting state revenues that flow from oil and gas royalties back to Washington, and cutting $46 billion out of the U.S. Postal Service.

$272 billion cuts will come out of the budgets of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the agency that provides food stamps ($190 billion) — and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grants by $15.6 billion. $40 billion dollars in savings will come from barring undocumented immigrants from collecting the child care tax credit and the earned-income tax credit.

Repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is still on the table — the White House says this will save $250 billion over 10 years and come in addition to cuts to Medicaid.

$143 billion will come out of federal student loan programs for low-income college students. No more federally subsidized loans — so no more payment of loan interest while students are in school — predicted to save $39 billion. The public service loan forgiveness program for nurses, police officers, and teachers — gone. A single student loan repayment plan based on income will be established saving about $76 billion.

Disability programs will lose $72 billion by significantly decreasing access to the Social Security’s disability program.

**Spending increases: $717 Billion over 10 Years
**Spending increases go primarily to Defense with an increase in discretionary defense spending of $469 billion dollars. $200 billion is proposed for private/public infrastructure investment. $29 billion will go to programs that allow veterans to use vouchers to seek care in private facilities outside of the Veteran’s Affairs system. And let’s not forget the $4.1 billion earmarked for the border wall.

There is much more to learn about this — this article hasn’t touched on the massive cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, disease prevention, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — not to mention cuts to education, transportation, and the arts.

See the following for more details on the new budget:

• Trump's Budget Cuts Deeply Into Medicaid and Anti-Poverty Efforts
• Trump budget seeks huge cuts to disease prevention and medical research departments

**What This Mean to Us
**Although it has thin support in Congress, this budget definitely tells us a lot about the Administration’s priorities: build a wall, spend a ton of money on defense. Investment in almost all areas, particularly those that are more forward-looking — education, healthcare, the environment, and on and on — will decline. Here’s a set of charts from The Atlantic that puts the proposed agency cuts into historical context:

Trump's Budget in 17 Charts

**Tell Congress what you think!
**Thanks for reading! Text RESIST to 50409 to tell your representatives what you think about this, or see what else is happening this week:

Could the Administration Shut Down Robert Mueller’s Investigation Before it Begins?