Democratic lawmakers are quickly rejecting the Trump administration’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2021. While lawmakers don’t have to follow the president’s goals in the budget, it does outline the president’s priorities heading into the election. The budget, released Monday, shows President Trump wants to boost military spending while slashing domestic spending.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) told Yahoo Finance the proposal was “destructive.”
“It cuts very, very important investments in our human capital in this country. It does damage to the environment. It does damage to education, cuts housing funding,” said Yarmuth.
Yarmuth also warned against lowering foreign aid by 21%, as the White House has proposed.
“Diplomacy is an important part of our role in the world and it's what keeps us from getting engaged in more hostilities and more pressure points around the world, which cost us even more,” he said.
Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought defended the cuts saying foreign aid spending would still be “substantial.”
“It’s time to rethink how we do foreign aid in this country,” Vought said. “We have to begin to make choices when we have the level of deficits right now that we’re experiencing.”
Yarmuth said if lawmakers want to tackle the $1 trillion deficit, they should not propose cutting taxes further. The White House budget recommends extending the 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025.
“We could actually undo some of the tax cuts that were done in 2017 — the vast majority of which have benefited corporations and very wealthy Americans. So we can deal with the revenue side in dealing with deficits, as well as the spending side,” said Yarmurth.
Yarmuth called the Trump administration’s 3% economic growth projections “irrational.” The Congressional Budget Office has projected much lower rates of growth through the next decade.
Vought told reporters on Monday the growth projections assume the policies laid out in the budget are put into place.
“This is a post-policy budget,” said Vought. “It assumes an infrastructure package, it assumes getting a handle on our spending, it assumes people getting off of welfare and getting back into the labor force.”
While the idea of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure has bipartisan support, lawmakers disagree on which projects to prioritize and how to pay for them.
“We not only have to repair a lot of infrastructure, we have to develop infrastructure to adapt to a very rapidly changing society, with technology and so forth,” said Yarmuth. “It would be nice if we can get a bipartisan deal.”
The White House calls for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, but in an interview with Yahoo Finance, Yarmuth said he was skeptical about the administration’s plan.
“At least they showed that they're interested in doing something on infrastructure and we’d love to work with them on it,” he said.
Jessica Smith is a reporter for Yahoo Finance based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaASmith8.
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