Trump’s Budget Cuts Deeply Into Medicaid and Anti-Poverty Efforts -

Trump’s Budget Cuts Deeply Into Medicaid and Anti-Poverty Efforts -
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISMAY 22, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to unveil on Tuesday a $4.1 trillion budget for 2018
that would cut deeply into programs for the poor, from health care and food stamps to student loans and disability payments, laying out an austere vision for reordering the nation’s priorities.
“He said, ‘I promised people on the campaign trail I would not touch their retirement
and I would not touch Medicare,’ and we don’t do it,” Mr. Mulvaney said.
It calls for an increase in military spending of 10 percent
and spending more than $2.6 billion for border security — including $1.6 billion to begin work on a wall on the border with Mexico — as well as huge tax reductions and an improbable promise of 3 percent economic growth.
“If the president is distancing himself from the budget, why on earth would Republicans rally around tough choices
that would have to be made?” said Robert L. Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that promotes deficit reduction.
Over the next decade, it calls for slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid, the federal health program for the
poor, while slicing $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion over all from welfare programs.
It’s an exercise in futility.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said Monday
that the Medicaid cuts would “carry a staggering human cost” and violate Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to address the opioid epidemic.