When the Trump administration isn't "horrifying" Americans with endless scandals and controversies, they're horrifying us with draconian legislation that means to overwhelm the system such as they did when they released their new budget proposal for 2018. The reaction by President Trump's critics was expected, where they highlighted various proposals that threatened to take billions of federal dollars away from human welfare programs. What we've learned over several months of this administration, however, is that they are clearly testing Congress to see what they do.
Budget was 'dead before arrival' (D.B.A.)
We've also learned in the process that Congress has a line, as they have rejected Trump's latest proposal. This would be the second one submitted by the administration to be rejected by Congress, as Blasting News has already documented. With Republicans providing cover for the Trump White House, they too have reportedly rejected this draconian proposal, along with Democrats before it was formally released on Tuesday. meaning that it was "dead before arrival." The reasons they gave, in general, were that the numbers in the proposal were not realistic and that the cuts were too steep.
In the mentioned Blasting News article, it pointed out that a complete budget proposal would be released in May which Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said was simply President Trump's agenda put on paper.
Its been noted that even Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX.) said that the budget was "dead on arrival." Cornyn went further to say, however, that all the president's budget proposals were D.O.A. -- even with former President Obama. In general, it's said that the president's proposal will hurt lower-income Americans, as it cuts $600 billion from Medicaid, which is said to be more than the cuts proposed for the health program in the American Health Care Act (AHCA).
Also, a quarter of a trillion dollars will be cut over a period of ten years from low-income assistance programs.
Congress will write its own budget
Its also been mentioned that with regard to Medicaid, the President is going against his campaign promise to not cut the program as a candidate, but now with the new budget proposal, it's as if he never made the promise at all.
Another Blasting News article pointed to President Trump's preference to not only cut the funding for those welfare programs but to pour more money into the military which completes his promise to increase the image of greater military power.
Other Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who has already been critical of the president, has said that the president's proposal wasn't going anywhere. While they've slammed, dismissed, or rejected it altogether, other Republicans have credited Trump for introducing something they could work with, saying that the proposal had a lot of good ideas. Congress has said that they are going to write their own budget but now it's a matter of how much of Trump's agenda will make it through legislation.
