Where will the money go?
Richard Fulton
The country, indeed the world, is mesmerized by the Congressional hearings featuring James Comey and possibly later the Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats. Both have said that President Trump tried to get them to back off of FBI investigations of Michael Flynn.
This, if nothing else, has given congress coverage against the fact they seem not able to get anything done. The health care revisions are stuck, immigration discussions are a mess, the deadline for dealing with the debt ceiling is closing in, and the long process of building a budget for the coming fiscal year is moribund.
Issues abound, these only scratch the surface. The budget is the one issue that touches most of government’s policy choices though. It reflects the priorities of congress and the president. Thus President Trump presented to Congress his suggested budget for the 2018 fiscal year that begins in October and that projects over the next decade.
The winners and losers in the budget proposal reflect the conservative perspective of the president and his party. The number one winner in the proposal is the military. He asks for an increase (not the budget but the increase in the budget) of $469 billion dollars over the next 10 years.
Other winners in the proposal would be that “wall” thing which Trump projects to cost $8-$12 billion (others double or triple this cost estimate), veterans for a Choice program to let them use private doctors if needed ($28 billion over 10 years), the fraud division of Medicare/Medicaid ($70 million), and school choice programs ($1.4 billion over the decade).
Losers are predictable. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be cut $619 billion.The food stamp program would be cut $193 billion. Repeal of the Affordable Care Act would save $25 billion. Education Department would be cut $140 billion, Energy programs cut $30 billion.
And to reward all those farmers who voted for him, Trump would cut $47 billion from farm programs, especially the crop insurance program.
Environmental protection, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, medical research, and science programs would all take a hefty hit.
All these program cut over 10 years.
A dangerous cut in foreign assistance in refugee programs and global health programs. American isolation, then, is reflected in the budget. Exit from the Paris agreement is reflected in a cut of the $1.6 billion commitment to attack climate change.
Most egregious is the military spending. For example, the navy is building expensive war ships to the tune of $12.4 billion that Senator John McCain, a Navy veteran, decries as “indefensible.”
My view is we should slash the military budget not increase it, and let the military make up for it by eliminating wasteful spending. Like the billion dollars in weapons and equipment unaccounted for in Iraq. Government auditors said this “provides a worrying insight into the U.S. Army’s flawed—and potentially dangerous system for controlling billions of dollars” worth of equipment. Ask a vet if there is waste in the military.
A lost story says that the pentagon buried evidence of $125 billion in wasted spending. What happened to that story? Gone because congress likes military spending since most of it is spent throughout every district and state in the union.
Why can’t that money be spent on infrastructure for example. Or children’s health? Or rescuing the poor from privation? Or attacking the national debt that congress cries so much about?
Richard Fulton is an emeritus professor of political science.
