File this one under “we are not surprised.”
The President who made his name by scaring the daylights out of Americans has a budget proposal that is totally based on fear.
Two Congressional Budget Office officials have leaked information to the press about Trump’s first budget proposal. Both asked to remain anonymous because the draft budget had not yet been made public, although it has since been released.
This is, of course, incredibly ironic given the President’s recent rant about the press relying on “anonymous sources.”
The two sources reported that the President’s proposed budget would increase defense-related spending by $54 billion, or ten percent. Yikes.
Pair that with the proposed tax cuts, and this idea will naturally increase the deficit that Mr. Trump keeps promising to reduce.
And this doesn’t even touch on the $1 billion that he plans to spend on infrastructure.
To make the proposal even more damaging, the President plans to offset all this spending with massive cuts to domestic programs. Although he has promised more than once not to touch entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, Trump will need to make very deep cuts to the domestic side of the ledger to find that kind of money.
Obviously, the usual conservative targets will be on the chopping block, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts. The Environmental Protection Agency will also be drastically cut, a proposition that is sure to enrage environmentalists and scientists around the world.
In fact, the sources also said that most government agencies would face very steep cuts in this budget.
President Trump has been whipping up the public’s fears by constantly claiming that we are under attack. He wants to use that fear to redirect money away from desperately needed agencies like the EPA and toward increased border security. He also promises to buy newer and bigger warships and aircraft, both of which will cost billions of dollars.
In a nod to his over-used personal motto “Make American Great Again,” Trump intends to drastically cut our foreign aid budget,too. It’s all about “us” now, folks.
While slashing foreign aid might sound good to the uninformed conservative base, this assistance make up less than one percent of our total national budget. Cutting that aid won’t do anything at all to free up money for defense.
So here we go. We are not surprised.
We’re not surprised that President chicken-heart wants to pour billions into defense, defense and more defense. That fits right in with building a wall and keeping out all those scary brown people.
We’re not surprised that he plans to slash spending on programs that benefit the poor or programs that protect the environment at the expense of the fossil fuel industry.
We’re disgusted and we’re alarmed.
We’re just really not surprised.
Featured image by Leonel Yanez via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
