President Trump Unveils 2020 Budget And Dems Are Furious

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President Trump just unveiled his 2020 budget and the Democrats are absolutely losing their minds.

This is a proposed budget and Congress has the last say as they approve funding, but Trump could refuse to sign what they approve which could set the table for another shutdown in September.

That is unlikely as budget proposals are usually the opening shot in difficult budget negotiations with Congress. If this budget is that, the fight will be brutal and will be very political heading into the 2020 election.

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From The New York Times: Mr. Trump’s budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending — which is more than the Pentagon had asked for — and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico.

White House officials said the budget would include a total of $1.9 trillion in cuts to mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid. It also proposes new work requirements for working-age adult recipients of supplemental nutrition assistance, federal housing support and Medicaid, a move the administration said would reduce spending on those programs by $327 billion.

The president is asking for a 5 percent, cut in nondefense discretionary spending, compared to 2019 spending caps set by Congress. That would amount to $100 billion less than Congress actually spent on nondefense discretionary programs in 2019, when it busted those caps.

From The Hill:

President Trump on Monday unveiled his 2020 budget proposal, calling for domestic spending cuts of 5 percent across the federal government.

The White House would turbo-charge defense spending in Trump’s latest budget, while providing $8.6 billion to fund his proposed southern border wall.

The budget is especially unlikely to go anywhere with the House in Democrats hands, but it lays out Trump’s priorities and could set the stage for shutdown fights this fall, when Congress and Trump will have to agree upon spending to keep the government open.

The request for increased border wall funds — enough to build 722 miles of a wall — follows a brutal fight with Congress that resulted in the longest government shutdown in the country’s history.

In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) excoriated Trump’s budget request.

 “President Trump hurt millions of Americans and caused widespread chaos when he recklessly shut down the government to try to get his expensive and ineffective wall, which he promised would be paid for by Mexico,” they said. “Congress refused to fund his wall and he was forced to admit defeat and reopen the government. The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again. We hope he learned his lesson.”

 The proposed cuts to non-defense spending would hit the Departments of State, Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Labor, Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.

 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee and a leading Democratic presidential candidate, said the proposal was filled with “cruelty,” citing the mandatory spending cuts as well as the 31 percent cut to the EPA, the 22 percent cut to the Department of Transportation and the 12 percent cut to Health and Human Services.

“This is a budget for the military industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street and for the billionaire class. It is dead on arrival. We don’t need billions of dollars for a wall that no one wants. We need a budget that works for all Americans, not just Donald Trump and his billionaire friends at Mar-A-Lago,” he said.

 

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