It is standard operating procedure for Congress to scoff at a president’s budget proposals, and that’s what happened this week when President Donald Trump’s administration submitted its first recommendations.
Generally, Trump wants to spend less and reduce taxes. So the surprise was how much of the criticism came from the president’s Republican Party.
GOP lawmakers immediately said that some of Trump’s ideas, especially huge cuts in Medicaid and food stamps, went too far. Others rightly questioned whether the budget really can be balanced in a decade, as the president claims, without addressing financial problems in Social Security and Medicare.
There are plenty of proposed spending cuts in the $4 trillion proposal. If Trump had his way, agriculture, education, the Environmental Protection Agency, Medicaid and housing are among the departments that would get a lot less money next year.
The president clearly wants to get a handle on government spending and should be commended for that. However, reducing expenses will take a lot of detailed negotiations with Congress, and so it’s a mystery why the administration chose not to discuss its ideas with influential lawmakers in advance. For example, why should farm-state legislators support reduced crop insurance programs without being asked for advice on how to get it passed?
There is one element of the budget where spending seems certain to rise without serious questioning, and that is the military. Trump proposes $647 billion for the Department of Defense, a 3.3 percent increase. Among the plans are adding 43,000 troops to the active military and another 13,000 in the reserves.
Even if you accept the contention that the military, worn down by two decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, needs to rebuild, somebody should ask why the country needs so many more soldiers. It’s as if another war is expected, and adding more troops will increase the future costs of the Veterans Administration, which is already $170 billion a year.
It’s simply impossible to believe that the Defense Department’s current budget, along with all the other departments where cuts are proposed, doesn’t include a bit of excess that could be removed without affecting operations.
