TrumpBeat: Follow The Money If You Want To Know What Trump Will Do
President Trump’s (technically not a) State of the Union address Tuesday night included lots of policy proposals but few details. He promised a new version of his controversial travel ban but didn’t explain how it would pass judicial scrutiny. He nodded to a tax overhaul favored by House Speaker Paul Ryan but didn’t quite endorse it. And he gave the rough outlines of a replacement for the Affordable Care Act but didn’t resolve any of the thorny questions that have made Republicans’ “repeal and replace” promise harder to keep than they expected. (“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump told reporters Monday, drawing incredulous reactions from the approximately 100 percent of people who knew that health care could be so complicated.)
Fortunately, we’ll learn more details soon thanks to everyone’s favorite hundred-plus-page doorstop: the federal budget. The multi-trillion-dollar annual wish list is the best indication of where any president’s priorities lie.
Trump won’t present his first formal budget to Congress until later this year (a preliminary outline is expected this month), but a few details are starting to trickle out. The White House this week told reporters that Trump wants to boost military spending by $54 billion over planned levels. To pay for it, Trump plans deep cuts to other agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department. As Trump promised on the campaign trail, Social Security and Medicare, the government’s main programs for retirees, would be spared cuts. But other elements of the safety net probably won’t be so lucky, meaning that the poor, the disabled and the unemployed could all see their benefits reduced.
Various news outlets in recent weeks have reported that Trump’s budget will draw heavily on a plan released by the conservative Heritage Foundation last year. That document proposes slashing spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years by eliminating dozens of federal programs and offices. But Trump appears to be departing from the Heritage plan in significant ways. The think tank’s plan calls for eliminating whole categories of tariffs, for example; Trump has suggested he might impose steep new ones. And Heritage wants to get rid of programs that provide support for entrepreneurs and small businesses, arguing that the free market would do a better job allocating resources to the best companies; Trump, in his address to Congress, proposed a new program to encourage women entrepreneurs.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumpbeat-to-know-what-trump-will-do-follow-the-money/
