But the least that Republicans can do is support his budget as is
EPA/Olivier Douliery/POOLOn Thursday President Trump released his proposed budget for fiscal 2018. It would increase defense spending by $54 billion and cut the budgets of other government agencies by the same amount.
He wants to trim executive-branch agencies with a chain saw rather than with pruners. The State Department would get a 28% cut, the Environmental Protection Agency would get a 31% reduction and the Labor Department would get a 20% decrease. Gone are a wide swath of programs that could be funded by the private sector or individual states, such as the National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
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Washingtonians are complaining [about the proposed budget], but those who do not live on the coasts are undoubtedly cheering.
Although many in Washington are saying the sky is falling, Trump has not moved to cut Social Security and Medicare, the main sources of the budget deficit. That would have the most effect in reducing government spending in the future. When he issues a fuller 10-year budget, it is to be hoped that he will include even more cuts.
Cutting entitlements would be a welcome change. Although the U.S. economy is doing better than most of its competitors, our government for the past 15 years has been spending with abandon, increasing debt to dizzying levels. Concern about deficits was abandoned in 2002 after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Debt today is a staggering $20 trillion.
Wasteful and duplicative government programs cost taxpayers billions annually, according to the Government Accountability Office. America has over 90 anti-poverty programs, 17 food-aid programs and 22 housing-assistance programs. The federal government even pays over $150 million for “official time” for union officials who happen to be federal civil-service employees in practically all its agencies. These officials work for their unions rather than for the taxpayer.
To make Trump’s budget a reality, Congress must pass it as a budget resolution. One would expect that a Republican Congress would pass a Republican president’s budget, but senators and representatives often have their own priorities — such as getting reelected. That means retaining expenditures within their states’ borders.
Legislators are required by law to pass spending bills for the next fiscal year by Sept. 30, a rarely met deadline that has existed for more than 40 years. The Senate and the House have eight months to develop budget resolutions and to complete the appropriations process now that the president has submitted his budget request. If all goes according to plan, this would be the first year since the 1990s that Congress would meet all the deadlines.
In the absence of a congressional budget, the federal debt has tripled from less than $6 trillion in 1997 to $20 trillion today. Interest on the debt totaled more than $433 billion in fiscal 2016, higher than the combined budget surpluses achieved in the late 1990s. Those payments represent money that people cannot use on more worthwhile activities.
Enormous deficits have been financed in recent years through a mixture of continuing resolutions, stopgap measures to keep the government temporarily funded, and massive omnibus bills consisting of traditionally separate appropriations bills. Continuing resolutions allow Congress to postpone spending decisions to a more politically feasible time, while smaller appropriation bills get lumped together into an omnibus bill to prevent closer scrutiny on specific agencies and programs. That needs to change.
The failure of Congress to execute its legal responsibility in favor of scoring political points was emblematic of legislators’ inability to reform antiquated policies that have become major barriers for economic growth and budget stability, especially entitlements, the tax code and immigration laws.
Americans deserve representatives who develop responsible budgets for the federal government, carefully consider legislation that affects millions of Americans, and work to reform policies that needlessly inhibit economic prosperity. That is the platform on which President Trump was elected. Washingtonians are complaining, but those who do not live on the coasts are undoubtedly cheering.
In the 1990s, with a Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic president, a divided government noted for its stark ideological differences was nonetheless able to develop a balanced budget that generated surpluses for several years. With both the presidency and Congress in the hands of Republicans, budget cuts should be able to become reality.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of its Economics21 program, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, and a columnist for MarketWatch.com and Tax Notes. She served on the transition team for President Donald J. Trump, and also worked under presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Furchtgott-Roth is most recently coauthor, with Jared Meyer, of “Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying America’s Young” (2015).
The author stated: “With both the presidency and Congress in the hands of Republicans, budget cuts should be able to become reality.” That would be logical and probably true if Republicans did in fact control Congress…..sadly it is the RINOs who really have the control so we are screwed again.
To really get the regulators off our backs, here’s an idea;
Instead of cutting their budgets, why not just issue paid furloughs to every employee of those regulatory agencies. If the assholes were paid to stay home, their unions would have no complaint and businesses would be unleashed to create wealth. Wouldn’t that suit everybody?
Whatever group of recipients benefits from some particular largess that Trump wants to cut – those recipients will be whining and crying at his proposed cuts. I say massively cut everything, and lets get everyone whining and crying! Cut with a chainsaw? Damn straight. Cut, cut, cut.
Sorry this makes no sense. Cut defense after a decade of no spending on the military? All the money that should have been spent on research,development, training, new equipment was diverted into mindless military adventures without maintaining the actual readiness of the military.
Why cut the Dept of Energy by 10% when it shouldn’t exist. Kill the Dept of Education, HEW, Agriculture, AID, all the EEO departments, the civil rights office at DOJ, in fact cut DOJ by 50%-start with the overpaid judges.
Eliminate the federally guaranteed student loans, mortgages, etc.
But cut social security? No cut those agencies that cannot justify their existence by contributing to the economy and economic growth. Strangle those regulatory agencies like the EPA that limit growth.
In the wake of a trillion dollar fighter plane that can’t defend itself, and will soon be obsolete anyway, Defense needs to be heavily cut. Enough that the US doesn’t invade any more nations, for sure.
Former Libertarian Prez candidate Harry Browne used to say pretty much the same thing.
In the process of cutting spending, taxpayers have few methods to demand budget cuts; but eventually, without those cuts, the more extreme methods of fiscal relief from an out of control government appear. Whether those in the capitol understand this isn’t as important as the citizens that do.
Wake me when entitlements are means tested and the “defense” budget is cut in half.
Wake me when you volunteer for a draft and support the elimination of welfare programs.
Reagan use to say that nothing on earth comes as close to eternal life as a government program. The wool subsidy installed to support wool production for WW1 uniforms is still in effect. Hold the crowing about all of Trump’s ‘cuts’ until the fat bastard sings. You may find it all wound up coming to naught-well intentioned as it may be.
Getting rid of funding for PBS, NPR and NEA is a good start. These communist media organs have done untold damage for generations.
If you can’t get what you want all at once, you don’t give up you get it a little bit at a time.
The left knows this and has been doing it for 50+ years, which is why they have gotten so much of what they want.
The right has to learn this or it will fail at getting rid of any of what the left has accomplished for its side.
Time to make them start to compromise in our direction, even if only a little at a time, instead of us compromising in theirs.
An old political saying,”movement equals momentum.”
Bullshit, GOPtard. That’s just keeping the same old shitty game going. You know good and well that your team of imbeciles are interchangeable with the “other” side’s team of imbeciles. All of you assholes are on the same side and you know it, you’re just hoping that those of us on the outside will keep falling for the con long enough for you and people like you who live well without working to cash in and retire.
Right and left are false constructs used to keep the suckers’ eyes on the three shells being shuffled while the pea stays in the hand switching the shells around. Shills like you work the crowd to keep anyone from knocking the pitchman on his ass and turning over the shells to show that there’s no pea under any of them.
Your problem is that you think nobody sees what you’re doing.
The hell you have to be satisfied with a little bit at the time. When was the last time anyone saw a major federal agency eliminated? When was the last time anyone saw the number of federal employees cut?
Its time to gut the welfare programs. After 25 trillion dollars and more welfare leeches than ever isn’t about time we put a time limit on how long any able bodied person can get welfare?
I don’t recall anyone in government calling for compassion on the poor taxpayer whose blood is being sucked out of the marrow, a drop at a time.
So demand everything at once or nothing at all, and then get nothing.
That should satisfy you.
The agencies were established small and then grew in size and power over decades, they have to be cut and then eliminated the same way or they will continue as they have been.
You point out yourself that we’ve never seen any major Federal agency eliminated, but have you bothered to ask yourself why?
I’ve only seen one agency eliminated in my lifetime – the Civil Aeronautics Board. Some of its functions got absorbed into the FAA in 1985 (but not all of them). There was a brief wave of deregulation during the Reagan/Bush I years…then it was back to business as usual after 1992.
And Civil Aeronautics didn’t really affect most Americans much if at all.
Not like the new behemoth agencies anyway, it did fulfill a purpose at the time that was limited in scope (the way I remember it, I knew private pilots but am not one myself).
“You point out yourself that we’ve never seen any major Federal agency eliminated, but have you bothered to ask yourself why?” – Anonymous
The “why” is easy…..money for nothing, and they CAN. Unfortunately, the only way I see this ending abruptly is a massive Government shutdown. Not the theatrical presentation we get presented with every few years. No. A REAL shutdown, as in the bond market throws up all over itself, and the cost of funding that 20 Trillion in debt reaches the entire amount of the cash tax collected from the citizens. Then, and only then will you see the kind of cuts that make a huge difference. This is going to be a forced bankruptcy, not a “hey kids, we have to do without the extravagant vacation to Disneyland this year” event. The Fed has already monetized to the tune of 4 Trillion – 11 Trillion if you count foreign banks being made “whole” but we are seeing massive delusion of the currency from it. Math does not care, and we are getting dangerously close to the lily pad analogy of an exponential function. When the lily pad doubles again, we are toast, and so is all of this silly “wrangling” over budgets. You can only rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic until the sea overtakes you. The sea is rising fast, and the deck chairs are starting to float already….
Uh, Rocky, I suggest you listen to OBM Director Mick Muhlveny speaking yesterday at Sean Spicer’s daily briefing. He does exactly that. I will find it and link it.
Here you go. One example at 16:30.
Exactly. He should have cut the military 50% instead of giving it another $54B…
When I start to see sad little stories in the msm about pencil-necked, slope-shouldered, lifesucking, drones-AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT-forlornly packing up all the sad little trinkets, family photos, and “hang in there” cat pictures that have littered the sad little cubicles they’ve camped out in at my expense for their whole sad little lives, preparatory to shuffling out the door for good, I might begin to believe any of these “cuts” will actually happen.
When I see actual verified pictures of row upon row of empty cubicles in even one government building and video of tumbleweeds rolling across empty parking lots, then I’ll think about maybe beginning to sort of start possibly buying any of the bullshit about “reducing the size of government” that is being spewed out of the yapping cake-holes of anyone remotely connected to the governing authority.
The real tell will be when some pogue I actually know (and I know a few) is freaking out because they are faced with actually having to make it in the real world versus slobbering at the federal, state, or local teat. When their faces are contorted in abject terror, while standing in a puddle of their own urine, because they are facing the prospect of having to seek private employment, then I’ll begin to believe…but then, I’m a bit of a cynic.
Take it to the people,Donald. Pick a Republican Senator and a Congressman where you ran well and burn his ass. Primary them and spend your money to do it if necessary. Make the asshole pay. If the people don’t back you they deserve what they get.
He needs to have a townhall meeting on private property in the districts of uncooperative politicos and “invite” uncooperative senators/representatives & let them explain why they are not backing him.
He also needs to give one on one interviews to the local press.