Trump's Brutally Honest Budget Puts GOP Lawmakers On The Spot

from: http://www.investors.com/politics/e...honest-budget-puts-gop-lawmakers-on-the-spot/

Editorial 4:13 PM ET

Fiscal Policy: President Trump has clearly brought his business acumen to bear when crafting his first budget proposal, producing the most gimmick-free, strategic, focused — and deeply conservative — spending plan we've ever seen.

The White House had already revealed the basic outline of Trump's budget plan: He intended to cut domestic program by $54 billion so he could fund a much-needed boost in military spending...


...real spending cuts. They aren't cuts against some "baseline"..


...The budget plan is also remarkably strategic. These aren't mindless, across-the-board cuts...


...to drain the swamp, this is what it takes...


...Obama recklessly allowed our national defense capabilities to weaken...


...Trump's budget has caused big-government liberals to go into a state of apoplexy, spewing vitriol about how "heartless," "draconian," "extreme" it is...


...Trump has just given these Republicans a clear opportunity to back their promises with action. They'd be wise to take it.

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This is going to be interesting --deep sixing baseline budgeting makes this a whole new ball game...

 

If he cuts $54 Billion from domestic programs but gives it to the military won't the overall spending remain the same? So it's not a real budget cut. It's just a transfer from one pot to another, the old "rob Peter to pay Paul" trick.

 

I think Trump has met the military industrial complex. His comments on the F35 JSF were telling. Can't just can it because there are jobs in multiple Congressmen's districts as a result and this makes its cancellation politically untouchable.

As I remember Trump was supposed to be vaguely opposed to American expansionism, instead favouring to get in and get out. Less bases, less involvement in NATO, etc. He needs to run a fine line in placating his neocon colleagues or he'll end up with sh%t on his face.

 

This isn't an expansion to the military, it's to make the military combat-capable again.

 

Trump has run on infrastructure, which is basically just another method of big government stimulus. The infrastructure itself isn't as important as the economic input required to construct it. This input creates jobs and brings people off the welfare rolls.

Trump could very well use the military as an unemployment killer, and that's a scary position for a country to be in. Means continued war is necessary to prevent a collapse of the economy. Encourages unnecessary wars, becomes politically impossible to repeal, etc.

He definitely has an odd mix of allies and enemies.

 

Yes. A big beautiful Bold Budget.

OMB Director Mulvaney: This is a Hard Power Budget, Not a Big Bird Budget

Nice framing of the question:

"One of the questions we asked was can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no," he said. "We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can't ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

One strange thing about Trump, which no one really knows what to make of yet, is that he is liberalish on some issues and yet is the embodiment of common conservatism on the other.

The fact that the Establishment derides stuff like zeroing out NPR and the NEA s as being Talk Radio Entertainment Wing conservatism -- despite having the candidates they work as consultants for parrot those same lines during campaigns -- a tells you a lot about their own brand of insincere conservatism. They like to posture as True Conservatives, but then, when a president pushes the very sorts of things they have instructed their candidates to insincerely campaign on, they start hemming and hawing.

They like trickin' the hicks while patting themselves on the back for being so much more clever and enlightened than the hicks to actually believe the crap they're peddling to the hobbit wack-a-doos.

Trump is at least attempting to move the Overton Window on many issues the True Conservative Crying Eagle Brigade has long pretended to want to move themselves, if only they could do so.

Trump has a mix of virtues and flaws that make him dangerous to the current intolerable Standard Operating Procedure of Washington DC.

You don't get many presidents who are not only willing but eager to serve as lightning rods for criticism. He seems to enjoy bad press as much as good press.

This was a guy that few conservatives expected much from.

But is shockingly willing to defy the established liberal order and propose things that no conventional politician ever would.

I certainly did not expect him to propose a Budget like this as one of his first moves.

Are alleged conservative elected officials going to seize upon this moment -- which might never come again, as it's never really come before -- or are they going let it slip by, claiming, as they always do, "Well we really want to do that but (fading muttering about "political realities" and "the media")..."?

Obama was brazen. He was doctrinaire ideologue, as Paul Ryan called him, and he lied his way into imposing state-run health care on the nation, as his socialist party had been determined to do for 30 or 40 years.

It did cost him, no doubt -- he did lose the Congress.

Remember the spectacle of vulnerable Democrats begging Nancy Pelosi to be one of the handful of Democrats permitted to vote "no" on Obamacare? A few (like 7 or 12) got free passes to vote "no;" the others were ordered to fall upon their swords.

And they did fall upon their swords.

Obama and the Democrats seized that moment and risked the seats of their vulnerable members to make a change that, sadly, America will probably be at least partly saddled with forever.

They lied to the country, sure. But they kept all the promises they meant to keep.

So are we ever going to do that ourselves?

We don't even have to lie. We just have to actually follow through on things we've claimed to support for 30-40 years.

So: Do we really support these things, or not?

Because if you finally have the opportunity to get the things you claim you want -- or at least fight desperately to get them -- and you decide instead to let the country continue drifting towards socialism, you really don't get to run on these claims in the future, ever again.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/368883.php

 

Wow! Real cuts! President Trump is really doing it. He is making real savings to get military funding. We really need this, with threats all over the world.

 

The self-proclaimed "King of Debt" has called for a $54 billion hike in military spending next year.

Why not just cut their budget by $71 billion and tell them if they don't waste what remains, that's their $54 billion increase?

 

brutal honesty??????????

his constant lies are not honest.

 

Given the cuts from Obama, its amazing we even have a military.

 

Reverting to an Obama fixation is not a viable diversion for those unable to confront current realities.

The messiah wants to throw $54 billion more taxpayer dollars at a military that has recently been found, in an independent audit by business experts, to squander $125 billion in bureaucratic waste.

We can reminisce about Obama - or Chester A Arthur, or Millard Filmore - but such nostalgic indulgences do not address the current plight.

 

Let's be clear that providing for a common defense is a primary reason for forming the U.S. in the first place:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence...

The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription​

--and over the past half century that responsibility has been neglected---


---to the point where % defense spending is now insufficient and at an all time low.[/QUOTE]

Confiscating private wealth to fund gov't whim does not encourage private economic activity. Look at it this way:If Concrete Pouring Were a Stimulant, the U.S.S.R. Would Be Booming.

 

Besides the fact that those numbers are over six years old and are from some guys blog ("94% of all quotes on the internet are false" --Abraham Lincoln), let's consider that the U.S. has accepted the responsibility of protecting those nations that spend less than we do --all except China and Russia who have nuke missiles targeting U.S. cities.

 

Of course. It is as much a constitutional mandate as promote the general welfare, and a rabid militarist might claim that $54 million thrown at the Pentagon is insufficient bloat, that all Social Security and Medicare funding must be re-allocated to the armed forces, but adding to the $125 billion squandered on bureaucratic waste does not address the common defence need in any respect whatsoever.

 

600 billion isn't enough to make a 3million manned military combat ready?

 

Confiscating private wealth to fund gov't whim does not encourage private economic activity. Look at it this way:If Concrete Pouring Were a Stimulant, the U.S.S.R. Would Be Booming.[/QUOTE]

Thank you! One of the few legitimate functions of the federal government is providing for the common defense. I really don't understand why some people have such a hard time grasping that fact.

 

Even ignoring the $125 billion that is currently allocated to bureaucratic waste, the U S has been enfeebled throughout the current millennium according to the "Let's throw even more money at the Pentagon!" crowd:

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I was in during the Reagan buildup, we couldn't get shelf stock parts to fix anything that broke down..

 

The decrease in military spending as a percentage of GDP is due to the exponential growth of GDP in the last 50 years, not due to any decrease in spending.

 

You're talking but your not saying anything. Obama demised the military. Case in point look at how many people are in the air force? 300,000. That is about how many people were in when it was created as a sep. branch in 47. How many of our aircraft are down for repairs percent wise. Obama broke the military, Trump is going to fix that.

bureaucratic waste huh? How much as been spend on the War on "poverty"? I'm guessing somewhere in the 100 trillion range that is been total spend. But good look finding that those number bc its failure and we keep pumping money in to it. Bureaucratic waste to the max.

 

Keep it going, rather then looking at the chart, why don't you look a bit further in to it. FYI that is the spending budget under Bush.

 

Nothing has changed.. the US still spend more on the military than any other county.

 

For 2014..........