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Trump's Budget is a Nightmare

   

Trump released his budget proposal today. It’s a good thing the President’s budget doesn’t automatically become law, because this one is a turd.

Here’s a partial list of what’s being cut:

  * Housing and Urban Development -- $6.2 billion cut, -13.2%
  * Transportation -- $2.4 billion cut, -12.7%
  * Health & Human Services -- $12.6 billion cut, -16.2%
  * Education -- $9 billion cut, -13.5%
  * Environmental Protection Agency -- $2.6 billion cut, -31.4%
  * State Department -- $11 billion, -28.7%
  * Labor Department -- $2.5 billion, -20.7%
  * Agriculture Department -- $5 billion, -20.7%
  * Army Corps of Engineers -- $1 billion, -16.3%
  * National Institutes of Health -- $5.8 billion, -20%

You can find more details at CNN. The only departments getting increases are Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

Most of what’s being cut impacts poor people, often the poorest of the poor: the homeless, people who have difficulty affording heat in winter, and others who rely on myriad government programs to survive. This budget is an assault on the poor. Given how many rural voters broke for Trump, if much of this budget is implemented, they are in for a rude surprise.

You know the drill: tell Congress not to support these excessive cuts. They don’t in any way represent “fiscal responsibility,” but an attack on government functions. Trump’s goal, regardless of what he says, is to shrink government, and to justify those reductions by making virtually every domestic agency as incompetent and dysfunctional as possible–this is why he appointed total incompetents to virtually every Cabinet position so far.

Here’s hoping that these cuts are too extreme even for his fellow Republicans to stomach.