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Trump’s 2019 budget: what he cuts, how much he cuts, and why it matters

"President Trump has finally released his comic book"

The budget proposes massive, historic cuts to everything from the EPA to Medicare.

By Dylan Matthews@[e-mail] Feb 12, 2018, 4:10pm EST


Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled the second budget proposal of his presidency, encompassing proposals affecting defense and non-defense funding for government agencies, tax changes, and funding for social insurance and assistance programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

The budget broadly resembles the budget Trump released last year, and both closely follow budget plans put forward by House Speaker Paul Ryan when he was the House Budget Committee chair. Ryan’s previous budget proposals featured trillions in cuts to programs for the poor. While Trump largely leaves the non-disability portions of Social Security unscathed, and boosts funding for border security, veterans, and defense, he cuts just about everything else — including Medicare, which was largely spared in the fiscal year 2018 budget.

The new budget also calls for passing an Obamacare replacement bill that deeply cuts Medicaid to far below its pre-Obamacare levels, making the tax bill passed in 2017 permanent, and slashing food stamps dramatically.

As with last year’s, this budget assumes an extremely unrealistic economic growth rate — 3 percent, above the currently projected 1.9 percent. This assumption results in $3.1 trillion lower deficits than would otherwise result — which, since the budget claims $3.1 trillion in net deficit reduction through spending cuts, suggests the budget might not close the deficit at all if you use more realistic assumptions.

It’s an ambitious document that stands in marked contrast to the actual actions of the administration and its allies in Congress, who just last week agreed to a massive increase in non-defense discretionary spending, which this budget now proposes to cut by more than 40 percent.

[...]

2) So are these changes going to happen?


Senate leaders McConnell and Schumer, who will play a big role in deciding which of these changes take effect.
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

No — not likely.

[...]

4) How big are the social program cuts included in this budget?

Massive. As with last year’s budget, this year’s includes some of the largest cuts to social programs and the safety net to be proposed by a president in decades.

The biggest proposed cuts, totaling nearly $2 trillion over 10 years, are to the non-defense discretionary budget. Those are also the least likely to take effect. Just last week, Republicans in Congress embraced significantly higher domestic spending levels, and in any case, discretionary cuts are filibusterable in the Senate. They can’t be achieved through budget reconciliation.

But the health care cuts can be achieved, and this time around, Trump has chosen not to spare Medicare, which his previous budget didn’t cut. He still wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, and in the process to cut Medicaid by either capping its per capita spending levels or block-granting it to the states. Either would dramatically reduce the program’s effectiveness. On Medicare, the administration’s focus is on trying to cut costs without reducing access to care by improving incentives to avoid wasteful treatments and changing how the program deals with providers.

The budget includes a bevy of cuts to non-health safety programs as well, most notably food stamps (which is cut by a quarter) and Section 8 Housing (which is cut by 20 percent). Disability programs also come in for cuts, and the budget includes a broad call for measures to improve “program integrity” by cracking down on faulty payments and making eligibility criteria stricter. The budget envisions such provisions raising $151 billion over the years. The budget also credits “welfare reform” measures (including the food stamps and Section 8 cuts) with $263 billion in savings over 10 years.

These are smaller net figures than the health care or discretionary cuts, but in percentage terms they are devastating to individual programs, some of which, like Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), are eliminated entirely.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/12/16996832/trump-budget-2019-release-explained

There's no shake rattle and roll for el presidento. It's shake rattle and roil.