We begin today’s roundup with an analysis of the president’s budget and his priorities. First up, John Cassidy:
So how does the “Budget for a Better America” treat Medicare and the other programs that Trump vowed to safeguard at all costs? By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this time last year, when it formally abandoned Trump’s campaign pledges. The budget for the 2019 fiscal year called for five hundred and fifty billion dollars in cuts to Medicare over ten years. With the budget deficit skyrocketing as a consequence of the Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, the 2020 budget would reduce spending on Medicare by eight hundred and forty-five billion dollars over the next decade. Even in Washington, that’s a lot of money.
Adam Harris at The Atlantic:
At a granular level, the budget request looks similar to the ones released by the administration in 2017 and 2018. It would, again, eliminate a range of programs such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, an incentive program that forgives the student loans of public-service workers, and there would be steep cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which funds a lot of research in higher education. And it would cut funding for teacher development under Title II, the part of the law funding preparation and pathways to develop better teachers.
Senator Leahy sums up the reaction on the Hill:
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on Monday slammed President Trump's 2020 budget proposal, calling it "dead on arrival and divorced from reality."
Leahy added in a statement that the proposal "is not worth the paper it is printed on" and predicted it will be rejected by Congress. He called it based on a "gimmick" said it was "not a serious proposal."