President Trump is expected to propose his budget this week and the severe cuts to non-military discretionary spending could result in a wave of pink slips in D.C., the Washington Post reports.
Trump’s budget, which is not final, will reflect his campaign promises to make the “military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is going to mess with us.” But to offset the $54 billion increase in military spending he will seek, Trump will ask for cuts in spending on housing, the environment, government research, and foreign assistance.
The requested cuts, which will need Congressional approval to become law, are expected to be so deep that one expert told the Post they will lead to an employment reduction of 1.8 percent in the D.C. area and a 3.5 percent drop in personal income.
“These are not the kind of cuts that you can accommodate by tightening the belt one notch, by shaving a little bit off of a program, or by downsizing a few staff here or there,” said Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “These are cuts that would require a wholesale triage of a vast array of federal activities.”
Despite winning the election by promising millions of Americans that he’d bring back their jobs, President Trump is more than willing to fire those who work for the federal government. As National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn explained on Fox News Sunday, Trump has no choice. With “no alternative” but to boost military spending, cuts must be made elsewhere, he said.
And then the former Goldman Sachs exec, who walked away from the bank with a nine-digit compensation package, provided a helpful lesson on family budgeting. “It’s no different than every other family in America that has to make the tough decisions when they need to spend money somewhere, they have to cut it from somewhere else.”
