This budget captures, in dollars and cents, the broken populist promises of Trump’s 2016 campaign. On the heels of a massive, deficit-busting tax giveaway for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the president has proposed slashing programs that support working- and middle-class Americans—health care, education and job training, infrastructure, housing, and nutrition assistance included. Oil and energy companies scored a win with deep cuts to resources that keep our air and water clean.
President Trump’s proposed cuts to domestic programs are immoral and irresponsible. The budget sequester was designed to be so unworkable that it would never go into effect. But the Trump budget is seeking to cut domestic programs to sequester levels, effectively cutting them by about 9 percent next year and, ultimately, by 35 percent. That would be devastating for families, children, and communities across America, as well as for our future economy. By releasing only a partial budget today, Trump and his cronies are concealing the true nature of the cuts they are demanding—even as wealthy corporations are reaping tens of billions of dollars each year from the Trump tax cuts.
On top of his preposterous emergency declaration, the president has requested an absurd sum of funds from the departments of Homeland Security and Defense for his immoral wall with Mexico—just months after Congress, on a bipartisan basis, rejected his last request to fund the wall. He has proposed stripping money for foreign assistance and diplomacy—a proposal that will, make no mistake, make our country less safe.
It’s time for Trump to turn off the Fox News fantasies and work with the new Congress on priorities that put the American people, rather than corporate CEOs and Washington lobbyists, first.