Wednesday, May 24, 2017
By DAVID SKOLNICK
and GRAIG GRAZIOSI
YOUNGSTOWN
Northeast Ohio loses under the new $4.1 trillion federal budget proposal.
Called “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” President Donald Trump’s first budget plan was unveiled Tuesday, calling for massive cuts in social-services funding and business regulations while promoting increased spending on law enforcement, the military and immigration reform.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan said the budget’s monicker is “laughable.”
“As nice as that title may sound, closer inspection reveals that it is not a new foundation for shared growth, but a recipe for decline, suffering and mediocrity,” said Ryan, of Howland, D-13th. “Despite the president’s ability to talk a big game, he once again has moved to gut the very programs and institutions that truly make America the envy of the world.”
Youngstown Mayor John McNally, a Democrat, said Trump’s budget is “woefully inadequate” in addressing the needs of cities.
“I’m not sure if there’s anyone on either side of the aisle who believes this will be passed by Congress,” McNally said. “I don’t see how even a Republican-led Congress will roll over and support this. That he’s overseas when the budget is introduced shows he believes he’s got a long road to hoe to get this passed.”
Like other White House budget proposals, Trump’s plan is “basically dead on arrival,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican.
Losers
Alongside a $191 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – colloquially called food stamps – which serves more than 1 million Ohioans, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative would be eliminated and costs for further restoration efforts would be left for the states to handle independently.
Jordan Lubetkin, director of the National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Center, called the idea that the states can handle the effort alone “pure fantasy” and that returning to a status quo of limited federal involvement in the Great Lakes would hurt clean water, air and the numerous communities tied to the lakes.
Individuals utilizing Section 8 to help defray their rent payments would be expected to pay for 35 percent of their monthly housing costs rather than the current 30 percent under the new budget, and would be required to pay a minimum $50 per month toward rent, according to a statement from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Medicaid also is facing a 25 percent reduction – $600 billion – over the next decade. Seventy percent of Medicaid spending in Ohio is funded through the federal government. Gov. John Kasich has committed $1 billion annually to fight the opioid epidemic ravaging the state, but two-thirds of that money comes from Medicaid.
Ryan took issue with Trump’s proposal to eliminate the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program and cut $1.1 billion in other community development programs that help Youngstown and other economically distressed areas.
The budget also calls for the shifting of air-traffic-control functions from towers run by the Federal Aviation Administration to “nonprofit, nongovernment” entities for the sake of reducing both air-traffic congestion and federal spending on the FAA.
Dan Dickten, director of aviation for the Western Reserve Port Authority, said he is wary of the proposed shift, citing safety concerns.
“Essentially it would take operators who know that airspace very well out and replace them with people from other parts of the country who don’t have experience with that airspace,” Dickten said. “It really wouldn’t impact many jobs. My primary concern is that it could compromise safety.”
Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, Pittsburgh International Airport and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport all use FAA-controlled towers.
The federal government as a whole loses under the Trump plan, as the budget calls for a $54 billion reduction to federal nondefense discretionary spending by 2018, and an annual 2 percent reduction through 2027, for a total cutback of $385 billion.
WINNERS
Trump’s budget includes a $52 billion increase in defense spending and calls for the recruiting of an additional 56,400 troops. The increased defense budget also would cover equipment modernization and purchases, including “84 new fighter aircraft” and an increase in the naval fleet.
Law enforcement across the board also fares well under the president’s plan. The budget calls for $44.1 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $27.7 billion for the Department of Justice. Similar to the military portion of the budget, a portion of the DHS allocation will go toward increasing the Border Patrol by 500 agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement by an additional 1,000 personnel.
The proposed budget also calls for a focus on investment in cybersecurity, but provides no specific, actionable items or spending goals.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, said he knows Trump has a “tough job” trying to “balance competing priorities and be respectful of every hard-earned taxpayer dollar.”
He argued that priorities must be put on “efforts to strengthen our national security and help protect the most vulnerable.”
Corporations will benefit under Trump’s plan, as several pages of the budget are focused on tax reform, regulation rollback and reinvestment in creating a business-friendly economic climate.
Paid parental leave – an issued championed by Ivanka Trump – was included in the plan and would allow new parents or parents of newly adopted children six weeks of paid leave.
As he promised during the campaign, the president included no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, though the administration does plan to crack down on Social Security Disability Insurance recipients in an effort to root out fraudulent claimants.
One trillion dollars also was allocated for use toward national infrastructure projects, with $200 billion of direct funding toward projects and $800 billion allocated for use in incentivizing the private sector and state entities to undertake projects.