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Saturday, March 18th, 2017

The 62 agencies and programs Trump wants to eliminate

Author:     Gregory Korte
Source:     USA TODAY
Publication Date:     12:04 a.m. ET March 16, 2017
 Link: The 62 agencies and programs Trump wants to eliminate
Stephan:   The thing about budgets is the details, so here are the details. I had three main takeaways: 1) Look at the percent of the budget that goes to the military -- 54% It is greed at a Greek tragedy level. 2) How much little programs that help the young, the elderly, and the poor, and particularly the rural White people who voted for Trump are getting snuffed. 3) The moral depravity of the vision this budget represents. This is a nasty bit of business, promoted by a President and Vice-President who are defining themselves through their nasty meanness.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s proposed budget takes a cleaver to domestic programs, with many agencies taking percentage spending cuts in the double digits.

But for dozens of smaller agencies and programs, the cut is 100%.

Community development block grants. The Weatherization Assistance Program. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The National Endowment for the Arts. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All would be axed if Congress adopts Trump’s budget.

Also proposed for elimination are lesser-known bureaucracies like the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program and the Inter-American Foundation.

Many of those programs have constituencies in states and cities across the country — and their champions in Congress. “The president’s beholden to nobody but the people who elected him, and yes, I understand that every lawmaker over there has pet projects,” said Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

He said not every program would disappear overnight. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which now receives $485 million a year, might still get some federal funding in 2018, for example. “It might take a while to unwind that relationship. It’s just the nature […]

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