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Trump Team
Prepares Dramatic Cuts
By Alexander
Bolton
January 19, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Hill"-
Donald
Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending.
Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting
with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s
presidential inauguration to outline their plans for
shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned.
The changes they
propose are dramatic.
The departments of
Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in
funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either
being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The
departments of Transportation, Justice and State would
see significant cuts and program eliminations.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be
privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts
and National Endowment for the Humanities would be
eliminated entirely.
Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would
reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.
The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published
last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a
think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition.
Similar proposals have in the past won support from
Republicans in the House and Senate, who believe they
have an opportunity to truly tackle spending after years
of warnings about the rising debt.
Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017
budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study
Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of
House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce
federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.
Two members of Trump’s transition team are discussing
the cuts at the White House budget office: Russ Vought,
a former aide to Vice President-elect
Mike Pence and the former executive director
of the RSC, and John Gray, who previously worked for
Pence, Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Speaker
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House
Budget Committee.
Vought and Gray, who both worked for the Heritage
Foundation, are laying the groundwork for the so-called
skinny budget — a 175- to 200-page document that will
spell out the main priorities of the incoming Trump
administration, along with summary tables. That document
is expected to come out within 45 days of Trump taking
office.
The administration’s full budget, including
appropriations language, supplementary materials and
long-term analysis, is expected to be released toward
the end of Trump’s first 100 days in office, or by mid-
to late April.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Trump’s choice to head the
Office of Management and Budget, has not yet weighed in
on the proposed spending reforms because he is still
awaiting confirmation by the Senate.
Mulvaney voted for the RSC budget offered as a more
conservative alternative to the main House Republican
budget in 2015. The House did not vote on the RSC budget
for fiscal year 2017.
The preliminary proposals from the White House budget
office will be shared with federal departments and
agencies soon after Trump takes the oath of office
Friday, and could provoke an angry backlash.
Trump’s Cabinet picks have yet to be apprised of the
reforms, which would reduce resources within their
agencies.
The budget offices of the various departments will have
the chance to review the proposals, offer feedback and
appeal for changes before the president’s budget goes to
Congress.
It’s not clear whether Trump’s first budget will include
reforms to Social Security or Medicare, two major
drivers of the federal deficit.
Trump vowed during the campaign not to cut Medicare and
Social Security, a pledge that Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.),
his pick to head the Department of Health and Human
Services, told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday has not
changed.
Yet it could be very difficult to reduce U.S. debt
without tackling the entitlement programs. Conservative
House budgets have repeatedly included reforms to
Medicare and Social Security, arguing they are necessary
to save the programs.
The presidential budget is important in setting policy
and laying out the administration’s agenda, though
Congress would be responsible for approving a federal
budget and appropriating funds.
Moving Trump’s budget through Congress could be
difficult. In 2015, with the GOP in control of the
House, the RSC budget failed by a vote of 132 to 294.
Moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations
Committee are likely to push back at some of the cuts
being considered by Trump.
But they seem likely to have the support of Mulvaney, a
conservative budget hawk who backed the RSC budget.
“Mick Mulvaney and his colleagues at the Republican
Study Committee when they crafted budgets over the
years, they were serious,” said a former congressional
aide. “Mulvaney didn’t take this OMB position to just
mind the store.”
“He wants to make significant, fundamental changes to
the structure of the president’s budget, and I expect
him to do that with Vought and Gray putting the meat on
the bones,” the source added.
The Heritage blueprint used as a basis for Trump’s
proposed cuts calls for eliminating several programs
that conservatives label corporate welfare programs: the
Minority Business Development Agency, the Economic
Development Administration, the International Trade
Administration and the Manufacturing Extension
Partnership. The total savings from cutting these four
programs would amount to nearly $900 million in 2017.
At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for
eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal
Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its
Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources
divisions.
At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding
for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing
research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of
Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil
Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions.
Under the State Department’s jurisdiction, funding for
the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris
Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates
for elimination.
Conservatives allied with fiscal hawks such as Pence,
Paul and the Heritage Foundation say the time is long
past due to get serious about cutting the federal
deficit.
“The Trump Administration needs to reform and cut
spending dramatically, and targeting waste like the
National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment
for the Humanities would be a good first step in showing
that the Trump Administration is serious about radically
reforming the federal budget,” said Brian Darling, a
former aide to Paul and a former staffer at the Heritage
Foundation. |
