Trump proposes record $4.7T budget

Valley lawmakers opposed to president’s plans

Staff/wire report

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump proposed a record $4.7 trillion budget Monday, pushing the federal deficit past $1 trillion but counting on optimistic growth, accounting shuffles and steep domestic cuts to bring future spending into balance in 15 years.

Reviving his border wall fight with Congress, Trump wants more than $8 billion for the barrier with Mexico, and he’s also asking for a big boost in military spending. That’s alongside steep cuts in health care and economic support programs for the poor that Democrats – and even some Republicans – will oppose.

Trump called his plan a bold next step for a nation experiencing “an economic miracle.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called his cuts “cruel and shortsighted ... a roadmap to a sicker, weaker America.”

Presidential budgets tend to be seen as aspirational blueprints, rarely becoming enacted policy, and Trump’s proposal for the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, sets up a showdown with Congress over priorities, especially as he reignites his push for money to build the U.S-Mexico border wall.

The deficit is projected to hit $1.1 trillion in the 2020 fiscal year, the highest in a decade. The administration is counting on robust growth, including from the Republican tax cuts – which Trump wants to make permanent – to push down the red ink. Some economists, though, say the bump from the tax cuts is waning, and they project slower economic expansion in coming years. The national debt is $22 trillion.

Even with his own projections, Trump’s budget would not come into balance for a decade and a half, rather than the traditional hope of balancing in 10.

Titled “A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First,” Trump’s proposal “embodies fiscal responsibility,” said Russ Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Despite the large projected deficits, Vought said the administration has “prioritized reining in reckless Washington spending” and shows “we can return to fiscal sanity.”

The budget calls the approach “MAGAnomics,” after the president’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan said Trump’s budget proposal is “a nonstarter,” and “is dead on arrival.”

Ryan of Howland, D-13th, said: “At a time when we should be funding programs that work for the American people, the president continues to push for a vanity project that most Americans don’t want and experts say we don’t need. This administration continues to run up the deficit – adding over $2 trillion to our record-breaking $22 trillion national debt – thanks to unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet President Trump has the audacity to ask taxpayers to give him $8.6 billion for his ineffective, unnecessary wall.”

Ryan added: “On top of that, President Trump’s budget attacks the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and makes extreme cuts to agriculture, education, workforce development, environmental protections and health and human services, to name a few. It also targets transportation BUILD grants that are helping Youngstown and Akron transform our communities. The president has zero focus on the needs of everyday Americans.”

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown blasted the Trump administration’s proposed budget saying it proposes significant cuts to programs that will negatively affect hardworking Ohioans.

“Instead of investing in Ohio communities so they can grow and create jobs, President Trump is asking Ohioans to pay for permanent tax cuts for millionaires by slashing the programs that hardworking families rely on,” said Brown, a Cleveland Democrat. “I have always fought to ensure we are making critical investments in our communities, and I will continue fighting for Ohio priorities throughout this budget process.”

Perhaps most notably among spending proposals, Trump is returning to his border wall fight. Fresh off the longest government shutdown in history, his 2020 plan shows he is eager to confront Congress again over the wall.

The budget proposes increasing defense spending to $750 billion – and building the new Space Force as a military branch – while reducing nondefense accounts by 5 percent, with cuts recommended to economic safety-net programs used by many Americans.