The Congressional Budget Office has some unwelcome news for President Donald Trump on Thursday.
The CBO's report on Trump's proposed budget found that although it would reduce the federal deficit by $3.3 trillion between 2018 and 2027, it would not balance the federal budget, according to CNBC. By 2027, America would run a budget deficit of $720 billion. That's not the "balanced" budget the administration promised when it was released in May.
The Trump budget contains $1.4 trillion in cuts that disproportionately target poor and vulnerable communities while providing generous tax breaks to the wealthy. While the budget would spend $54 billion over the CBO baseline on the proposed border wall, the military and law enforcement, it also takes more than $800 billion out of future Medicaid spending within the upcoming decade.
Budget director Mick Mulvaney also revealed his prejudices against the disabled and poor by defending his budget's cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance and food stamps on the grounds that "there are people who are getting SSDI who should not be getting it" and that "here we are, eight years removed from the end of the recession . . . We’re at what we consider to be full employment . . . Why is the number still that high?"
Trump's budget will include $21 billion in cuts to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and $193 billion in cuts to food stamps. As Mulvaney himself put it in May, "If I take money from you and I have no intention of ever giving it back, that is not debt. That is theft."
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