Follow the Money
by Kelle Keyles
Photography Courtesy of Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The U.S. Government’s finances are a complicated business—but ultimately, the annual budget is like pie. If one department gets a bigger slice, another department’s slice shrinks.
The Trump administration recently released its preliminary budget proposal for 2018 and has proposed many cuts to vital programs, as well as a significant increase in defense spending.
According to Trump, our military really needs more pie.
According to the Washington Post, the budget proposes adding 54 billion dollars to defense spending, 2.6 billion of which will go to the infamous border wall. To fund this wall and the other defense programs, many government agencies will see budget cuts, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department, as well as over 15 other agencies.
The agency that will be hit the hardest is the EPA, which will stand to lose 31 percent of its spending. The Agriculture Department could have its budget reduced by 21 percent; the Department of Labor also by 21 percent; the Department of Health and Human Services by 18 percent; the Education Department by 14 percent; and the Justice Department by four percent, among others.
The proposed increases will only go to three agencies: the Department of Veterans Affairs (six percent), the Department of Homeland Security (seven percent), and the Department of Defense (nine percent).
To sum it up, Trump proposes reduced spending on education, environmental protections, labor protections (including wage and hour standards), health and justice in order to embolden defense programs and his insistences of our country under attack.
Aside from the discretionary spending cuts to several government agencies, Trump’s proposed budget for 2018 will cut a significant amount of funding to an extremely important program, Meals On Wheels.
After severe backlash and media attention due to the cuts proposed for Meals On Wheels and after-school programs that feed children, the Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney offered an explanation: these types of programs do not “show results.”
In reality, the “results” are that these needy people are still alive; these programs give them access to food.
Cutting the educational budget is an incredibly damaging move, since most schools are underfunded, overcrowded and severely lacking funding to begin with. Also, federal funding for libraries and museums will be eliminated, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This budget proposal will severely and negatively impact our country’s educational system, cultural atmosphere, workplace safety, wage standards, our elderly and our youth.
From the beginning of his presidency in January to mid February, Donald Trump has cost taxpayers approximately 10 million dollars on vacations alone. And yet he thinks it is an unnecessary cost to feed the elderly or poor children.
On top of that, because the First Lady Melania Trump and their son Barron are living in New York rather than in the White House, it could cost taxpayers about 60 million dollars a year to protect them.
Trump is cutting compassionate programs while he takes his million dollar vacations, even though he has only been in office for a little over two months. Trump has proposed a budget that will take from his voter base and give to an already-inflated defense budget.
If this proposed budget comes to fruition, many American will suffer—especially those already suffering.
Trump says he wants to make America great again, the only way to do that is to make sure our future generations are protected and that they get a good education so they can make America prosper and grow. This budget will do the exact opposite and make sure that the future generations of America inherit a dying earth and a poor education. It seems as though all Trump wants to do his line his and the one percent’s pockets again.