Trump’s budget – The Burning Platform

Guest Post by Ron Paul

Listening to the howls from Democrats and the applause from Republicans, one would think President Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2021 budget is a radical assault on the welfare state. The truth is the budget contains some minor spending cuts, most of which are not even real cuts. Instead they are reductions in the “projected rate of growth.” This is equivalent of saying you are sticking to your diet because you ate five chocolate chip cookies when you wanted to eat ten.

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President Trump’s plan reduces the Education Department’s budget by nearly eight percent, leaving the department with “only” 66.6 billion dollars. Cuts to other departments are similarly small, while reductions in entitlement spending consist mostly of reforms that will not affect most of those dependent on these programs.

Continue reading “Trump’s Budget: More Warfare, Slightly Less Welfare”

Guest Post by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

But the least that Republicans can do is support his budget as is

On 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.

Continue reading “President Trump should have made even deeper cuts in Washington’s bloated budget”