OPINION:
President Donald Trump is proposing in his “New Foundation for American Greatness” plan some of the largest cuts to government programs the country’s seen in a decade, including a provision that will reign in debt and cut spending by $3.6 trillion over the next ten years.
That means by 2027, the budget would be balanced.
Finally. A budget plan that actually helps taxpayers without so much relying on socialist distribution methods, but by letting those who work for their money actually keep more of their money.
Trump’s plan calls for cuts to several social welfare and entitlement disbursements, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — you know, the one that earned Barack Obama his famous nickname as the “food stamp president.” It also cuts Social Security disability insurance benefits and income disbursements under Social Security Insurance for poorer seniors, disabled adults and children.
Mainly, the cuts to these SSI programs would be realized through tightened eligibility requirements — meaning, stricter oversight and accountability. And what’s wrong with that?
As Mick Mulvaney, White House budget director, put it in CNN Money: “If you’re on food stamps and able-bodied, we need you to go to work.”
Right. No free handouts in a democratic-republic society like ours. That stuff belongs in the Bernie Sanders crowd — in the socialist societies of the world that, by the way, are always collapsing under the weight of their own fiscal demands.
In total, Trump’s proposed budget calls for a total of $4.1 trillion in spending, with the focus on defense, border security and infrastructure.
The sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare won’t be cut. And it uses savings from the budgets of the State Department, education, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp program, to shift a collective $54 billion in cut funds to the Pentagon. Liberals will howl. My, how they hate military spending — unless it’s of course used for purposes to advance social justice causes, like LGBTQ sensitivity training.
It also spends $2.6 billion on the border, including $1.6 billion for a border wall.
There hasn’t been a fiscally responsible budget like this proposed from the White House in well over eight years.
Already, the criticisms are flying.
Joe Scarborough, host at “Morning Joe” on NBC, tweeted: “The Medicaid cuts would gut health care for the poorest among us. It is a heartless and destructive budget approach that hurts America.”
This is an apt summary of the logic of the left: that taxpayer budgets are supposed to be charitable contributions to the less fortunate.
They’re not. Proper U.S. budgets are supposed to provide for the maintenance and operation of the constitutional duties of the government — nothing more. Founding Fathers wouldn’t have given the OK to taxpayers in, say, Massachusetts paying for food or child care for families in, say, Virginia. See how far we’ve strayed? Trump’s budget plan, very likely to be revamped and overhauled by lawmakers, nevertheless, offers a breath of fresh air in a thriftless society that constantly gives the nod to more spending, more borrowing, more quantitative easing — all the while driving up debt and pushing off looming economic disasters on the next generations.
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