budget cuts

We’ve had weeks of exciting news elsewhere, but I’m finally updating an earlier post on President Trump’s budget plans. Where we are:

The U.S. national debt is at $20 trillion and counting, with an operating cash deficit around $800+ billion per year. (Thanks, Obama!)
Trump hasn’t changed anything – yet; he has allowed Congress to pass continuing resolutions that change nothing.
Having said that: his proposals are revolutionary.

From the Associated Press:

JULY 07, 2017 – The Trump administration aims to further tighten its grip on spending, issuing a memo Friday that calls for eliminating some federal agencies and cutting government jobs as part of the upcoming fiscal 2019 budget.
…the 2019 budget would be a “comprehensive plan” to reduce the number of government workers and merge or terminate federal agencies as requested by an executive order signed in March…
…sharply reduce spending for Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, among other programs. Even Republican lawmakers called the cuts draconian…
The memo for fiscal 2019 is an initial step for a budget the White House would propose early next year.

FY2019 begins a little over a year from now, in October 2018. That’s a ways off. Trump’s proposals don’t touch Social Security or Medicare, the most fiscally-dangerous entitlements. And Congress will mangle any cuts that he does propose. So, all this is slow progress.

Having said that: It is very different from what Obama or Hillary would have proposed. While the President does not set the budget, he runs OMB and gives important input. Trump has suggested that food stamp recipients should have to work. And here are 66 programs that Trump would want to eliminate.

All this surely adds to the intensity of left-wing and Deep State opposition to Trump. As the saying goes, “Follow the money”.

Re: Deep State, consider that Trump has proposed deep cuts to the State Department and foreign aid. And I’ve heard tales (sorry, I can’t find the link right now) of CIA employees adoring Obama because of the way he boosted their budgets and salaries; if true, of course they would perceive the “unknown”, budget-cutting Trump as an enemy.

Again, the President does not dictate the budget – constitutionally, the Congress does – but the tendency/direction of his proposals has an impact. That we have a President who will propose cuts, is a Regime Change. Let’s hope it sticks.

A few weeks ago, I took a dim view of President Trump’s tax proposal:

The true level of taxation is the government’s spending level. All spending must be paid for, one way or another. There are 3 possibilities.
1. Overt taxes.
2. Borrowing. This is a covert tax, a tax on the future (when either the debt must be repudiated, or more and more government revenues must be diverted to servicing it).
3. Money-printing. Another hidden tax, this time on the real value (the purchasing power) of everyone’s wages and savings. Also known as “inflation”.
So really, it isn’t a tax cut unless it’s a spending cut also. Trump wants to cut the overt taxes. So, what? Without spending cuts, it’s only a corresponding increase in the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

I gotta give credit where it’s due. It looks like Trump is going to propose spending cuts?

More details from President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal are trickling out via a flurry of overnight reports from The Washington Post, Associated Press and Bloomberg News…
The budget will slash $1.7 trillion in spending on entitlement programs, according to Bloomberg.
Trump’s budget will include a massive nearly $200 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the modern version of food stamps, over the next 10 years – what amounts to a 25% reduction, according to The Washington Post.
The food stamp cuts are part of a broader $274 billion welfare-reform effort, according to a report by The Associated Press.
The budget calls for about $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid for fiscal year 2018, WaPo reported.
The budget is also expected to propose major domestic discretionary spending cuts – an earlier version of the budget called for $54 billion in such cuts next year alone.

Whether the Republicans in Congress will tolerate any cuts, is another matter.

Note that these cuts are hardly draconian. OK, the numbers sound large. But only because:

some of the numbers are totals across many fiscal years, and
the government IS large. Spending and promises (entitlements) skyrocketed under Bush 43 and Obama.

But the Controlled Media is sure to make them sound like the Entropic Heat Death of the Universe.

The real coup d’etat?

He will propose spending cuts?