Trump budget is a joke. But take it seriously, because it would be bad for a lot of people

I saw our Fair President came out with his budget proposal for the next Fiscal Year, and it is both laughable and alarming. Its absurdity comes in its economic assumptions, which are the equivalent of Paul Ryan's magic asterisks of a decade ago. It counts on 3% GDP growth for the US deficit to keep from exploding, which is a level the US has never hit under Donald Trump's first 3 years in office, yet somehow will allegedly be reached despite the US's aging demographics and the country already being at full employment.

That unbelievable growth is part of the reason the Trump budget claims that the deficit will drop by 80% over the next 10 years, even while all tax cuts from the GOP Tax Scam are allowed to stay in place past their 2025 expiration date.

That's quite a contrast from the CBO's estimate of the deficit growing from $1 trillion this year to $1.7 trillion in 2030. But that's largely because the CBO has no incentive to lie.

As for the spending side, this AP rundown gives a good summary, and it involves deficit reductions through budget cuts that would hurt many working-class people and medical care providers.

Trump's budget follows a familiar formula that exempts seniors from cuts to Medicare and Social Security while targeting benefit safety net programs for the poor, domestic programs like clean energy and student loan subsidies. It again proposes to dramatically slash funding for overseas military operations to save $567 billion over 10 years but adds $1.5 trillion [to the budget deficit] over the same time frame to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent law.

Trump's proposal would cut $465 billion from Medicare providers such as hospitals, which prompted howls from Democrats such as former Vice President Joe Biden, who said it “eviscerates Medicare,” while top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York said Trump is planning to” rip away health care from millions of Americans" with cuts to Medicare and the Medicaid health program for the poor.

Trump's budget would also shred last year's hard-won budget deal between the White House and Pelosi by imposing an immediate 5% cut to non-defense agency budgets passed by Congress. Slashing cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and taking $700 billion out of Medicaid over a decade are also nonstarters on Capitol Hill, but both the White House and Democrats are hopeful of progress this spring on prescription drug prices.

Guns and macho overseas posturing + tax cuts for the rich over the health of people living in America. That’s an interesting set of priorities, Donnie. You run on that.

Remarkably, even though Trump's budget expects stronger economic growth, it plans to do so without the increases in domestic government spending that has added 0.3% to GDP in 2018 and 0.4% in 2019. However, it does plan to throw our tax dollars in some interesting places.

Trump has also signed two broader budget deals worked out by Democrats and Republicans to get rid of spending cuts left over from a failed 2011 budget accord. The result has been eye-popping spending levels for defense — to about $750 billion this year — and significant gains for domestic programs favored by Democrats. Trump's new budget essentially freezes defense at current levels while proposing a 3% military pay hike.

The White House hasn’t done much to draw attention to this year’s budget release, though Trump has revealed initiatives of interest to key 2020 battleground states, such as an increase to $250 million to restore Florida’s Everglades and a move to finally abandon a multibillion-dollar, never-used nuclear waste dump that’s political poison in Nevada. The White House also leaked word of a $25 billion proposal for "Revitalizing Rural America" with grants for broadband Internet access and other traditional infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges.

The Trump budget also promises a $3 billion increase — to $25 billion — for NASA in hopes of returning astronauts to the moon and on to Mars. It touts a beefed-up, 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure proposal, but $800 billion of that comes through existing surface transportation programs. It contains a modest parental leave plan championed by first daughter Ivanka Trump and includes $135 billion in savings over the coming decade as part of an unspecified set-aside to tackle the high cost of prescription drugs this year.

I think House Dems should call the bluff by backing rural broadband and drug price controls, to throw the spotlight onto Moscow Mitch and the do-nothing GOP Senate. I’d count on the Senate to do nothing before the elections, which can then be used against them as they face constituents who continue to fall further behind due to a lack of action on these fronts.

At the same time, I’d mock the hell out of the increased NASA spending, and combine it with rightful anger that Trump would throw money at that fantasy while cutting the budgets for the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control during an elevated flu season and concerns about coronavirus.

The Trump budget is as ridiculous as the (not-so) grown up stupid rich kid that is in the White House. But let's not laugh it off, and instead tie it around every Republican's neck, just like the GOP Tax Scam was tied around their neck and led to losses in the House for the GOPs in 2018. These lowlifes don't care who they hurt or what gets left behind after they're gone, which is why these reckless fools need to be gone as a group in the next 9 months, or else we'll be long gone as a country that leads the world economically and morally (if it hasn't happened already).