DDT’s Budget: Cruel

Amid the continuing scandals this week, including purchasing college placements and Boeing’s aviation disaster, the month-late budget from Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) lost its media traction after a day. It does, however, present his priorities of wall ($8.6 billion) and the military ($750 billion) with a $34 billion increase, priorities which translate into a white country and war. Every line item except the census, private VA care, and deportation/detention took hits—some of them huge. The budget even indicates expectations of ongoing annual deficits of at least $1 trillion while keeping tax cuts for the wealthy and big business. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow claimed that rapid growth needs these cuts, but the Congressional Budget Office projects 2019 GDP growth at 2.3 percent, down 25 percent from 2018. Last year’s unbalanced budget of $4.4 trillion relied on rose-colored economic projections that didn’t see fruition.

Some of DDT’s annual cuts:

• No increase in opioid funding;
• $5 billion cuts to NIH budget, including huge ones to HIV and cancer (forgets his State of the Union promise);
• Repeal of Affordable Care Act with no alternative;
• Insurer permission to discriminate against clients with preexisting conditions and greatly reduce insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income people;
• $77 billion cut for Medicaid and ACA, converting Medicaid into block grants so that states can determine coverage guidelines, mandating work requirement and increasing co-pays;
• $84.5 from Medicare;
• $22 billion from food stamps;
•  $20.7 billion from student aid for higher education;
• $2.5 billion from Social Security’
• Almost one-third loss to EPA and over two-thirds cuts for renewable energy research and innovation;
• 31 percent cut for the Army Corps of Engineers;
• 23 percent cut for the State Department;
• 15 percent cut for the USDA (there goes any food safety);
• 14 percent cut for Interior Department, including national parks;
• And much more.

The ten-year budget projects a $1.1 trillion deficit in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and a $1 trillion deficit in 2022 with the national debt ballooning by 50 percent in the next decade by 2029.

DDT’s budget already cuts food help by almost 30 percent, but he has returned to wanting the scam of giving people a box of canned food instead of allowing them to determine what they can purchase with food stamps. Last year, Budget director Mick Mulvaney, now also acting chief of staff, tried to compare the “Harvest Box” that lacked any fresh ingredients to a luxury meal service, but he had no idea what the costs and logistics would be, especially with the promise of home delivery to each recipient. He still doesn’t have any ideas about these questions. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation opposes the idea which has been called “flawed and harmful.”

Over 51 million U.S. households—43 percent—cannot afford the basics of food, transportation, and healthcare. The food stamps for 19 million people are equivalent to the tax cuts for the top 1 percent, and they go directly to improve the nation’s economy, unlike tax cuts for the wealthy. The nine percent cut to non-defense programs hits Section 8 housing vouchers, public housing programs, Head Start, the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program, and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, among others.

DDT’s budget cuts the Community Development Block Grant that includes Meals on Wheels program that delivers meals to low-income seniors to help them eat and stay in their homes. The cut of 16.4 percent in HUD eliminates the public Housing Capital Fund and the HOME Investments Partnerships Program as well as the National Housing Trust Fund that helps low-income renters such as veterans, people with disabilities, seniors, and households experiencing homelessness. DDT’s federal work mandate for food stamps and Medicaid opposes even the GOP Congress. Despite his promise to help manufacturing workers, he eliminates the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which helps small- and mid-size manufacturers compete.

The budget also funnels the funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) through Congress instead of the Federal Reserve. If Republicans regain control of the House, the CFPB can return consumers to the mercy of financial scammers, big banks, and Wall Street special interests. DDT’s biggest cuts are to agencies designed to protect people in the United States, including workers’ safety and rights.

This Monday, March 18, another shoe will drop in the series of financial disasters when DDT has to release the proposed detailed budget. Last year, he tried to cut Head Start by $1.3 billion a year, eliminating vital early education for hundreds of thousands of low-income children. He also tried to wipe out Legal Services Corporation, legal representation for almost 2 million low-income people, along with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance for 6.7 million low-income families, 90 percent of them with a senior, a child, or a person with a disability. If DDT meets his deadline, people will see the next hit list of poor people.

DDT’s budget feeds his ravening base: increases call for his wall and military, and decreases punish the poor, considered by his base as undeserving. He expects more money from additional fees, already dismissed by Congress, and a rosy high economic growth of over 3 percent, an idea negated by the Congressional Budget Office which predicts 1.6 and 1.8 percent over the next ten years. More optimistic, the Federal Reserve settled around 2 percent annual growth. The lowest growth rate in a half century, the 0.4 percent increase because of the tax cuts is 4 to 9 percent lower this year when considering inflation.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders began her defense of DDT’s budget with a lie, that it keeps his promises, and Russell Vought had to cover for her with more lies. (The White House calls Vought “director of Office of Budget and Management” although Mick Mulvaney, acting chief of staff, never resigned from being OBM Director.) Asked about DDT’s promise “eliminate the national debt in eight years,” Vought blamed President Obama—who had nothing to do with DDT’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, his inflated military funding, and his trade war with China. Vought also lied about what DDT said in saying that he would “attempt” to pay off the debt. In addition, DDT’s promise was to “balance” the budget, which means eliminating the annual deficit that went higher than $1 trillion last year.

Questioned about DDT’s breaking his promise for not reducing Medicare and Social Security, Vought said: “What we are doing is putting forward reforms that will lower drug prices and that, because Medicare pays a very large share of drug prices in this country, has the impact of finding savings. We’re also finding waste, fraud and abuse, but Medicare spending will go up every single year by healthy margins and there are no structural changes for Medicare beneficiaries.” DDT’s NAFTA proposal guarantees monopoly rights for big pharma so that they can avoid competition from generic drugs.

DDT is already contorting the existing congressional budget by removing $385 million from programs to cover health needs for lower-income preschool children, HIV and cancer patients, and Alzheimer’s sufferers to detain over 15,000 undocumented youth in DDT’s manufactured border crisis. HHS Secretary Alex Azar reallocated $446 million to detention centers from healthcare programs such as those for teen pregnancy prevention and research for flu vaccine and women’s cancer. Azar’s latest announcement came after the report that 4,500 children have been sexually abused in U.S. immigration centers since 2014, including 178 abused by HHS staffers or government contractors running the facilities.

People keep saying that they voted for DDT and still support him because he is a businessman and they want the United States to be run like a business. DDT business style is to use corruption and fraud to make money, declare bankruptcy and take money from investors, fail and get more money from his father, and move on to another company. When he applies the same system to the U.S., over 300 million people will be lost because there is no other country where we can go.