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Also see: Government shutdown; foreign aid; CBO;
spending bill; debt; deficit; Federal hiring freeze; finance; government waste;
taxes; tariffs;
Jump to: 2018; 2019;
-- 2017 --
The plan reflects a conservative vision of smaller government, a drastic rollback of programs for the poor and disabled and a robust hike for the military and border security. It foresees scuttling the Affordable Care Act and a tax code overhaul, a boon to the wealthiest Americans.
The plan holds $3.6 trillion in cuts to domestic agencies, food stamps,
Medicaid, highway funding, crop insurance and medical research, among others.
Many of the voters who propelled Trump into the presidency last November would
see significantly less from the federal government.
http://www.startribune.com/trump-budget-slashes-programs-affecting-fifth-of-americans/423877543/
May 24: "We've lost 40 per cent of our wheat
crop and you're telling me there's going to be large cuts to crop insurance?"
asked Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. "Come on. That
doesn't add up."
The Trump plan would roll back Obama-era increases to a children's health
program for lower-income families who don't qualify for Medicaid, take an axe to
the Environmental Protection Agency and climate change programs, cut $95 billion
from highway trust fund transfers to state highway departments, and curb
payments to disabled veterans of retirement age who are eligible for Social
Security.
"In the America of President Trump's budget, children, working families, seniors
and people with disabilities will be 'fined,' while the wealthiest Americans
will get a 'bonus.' What's so 'great' about that America?" asked Sen. Dick
Durbin of Illinois.
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/7330718-trump-s-4-1-trillion-budget-basically-dead-on-arrival-/
May 24: It is
true that the U.S. Treasury reported a $182 billion budget surplus in April
2017, the largest April surplus since 2001 (and the second-largest in history),
according to
MarketWatch. It’s unclear exactly how that surplus is attributable to
President Trump, however. April is typically a surplus month because of tax
receipts. In addition, citing a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) review as
its source, Associated Press reported that the April 2017 surplus was “inflated”
because of a tax deadline change allowing corporations to pay federal taxes in
April that in previous years were paid in March.
It remains to be seen what effect Tump’s policies will have on the
budget deficit for 2017 as a whole (the fiscal year ends on 30 September). The
CBO projects a 4.6 percent drop in the deficit from what it was in 2016, but
that is based on laws and policies already in effect when Trump took office.
https://www.snopes.com/everything-donald-trump-accomplished/
May 24: [ ... via the latest Republican AHCA
bill] ... the $119 billion deficit reduction represents a decline from previous
versions. When the CBO
first scored the AHCA, it said the plan would save $337 billion over 10
years. Later revisions reduced those savings
to $150 billion.
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/24/529902300/cbo-republicans-ahca-would-leave-23-million-more-uninsured?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20170524&utm_campaign=breakingnews&utm_term=nprnews
July 27: The House voted Thursday to approve
a spending bill with $1.6 billion to put toward a border wall along the
US-Mexico border, part of a high-profile campaign pledge from President Donald
Trump.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/27/politics/spending-bill-vote-border-wall-money/index.html
August 1: President Trump wrongly described
the estimated 2.6% growth in the nation’s gross domestic product for the second
quarter as “a number that nobody thought they’d see for a long period of time.”
In fact,
real GDP growth was higher than 2.6% in eight of the last 18 quarters,
according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That includes a 2.9%
increase in the third quarter of 2016, which the Trump campaign
dismissed at the time as “modest.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/01/fact-check-donald-trumps-puffery-gdp-growth/529064001/
October 19: The Senate voted Thursday to
pass a budget resolution for next year that is mostly significant because it
could make it easier for Republicans to pass major tax cuts, a top GOP priority.
The 51 to 49 vote was split mostly on party lines. Only GOP Sen. Rand Paul of
Kentucky voted no.
... the Democrats lost and the
Republicans won. Either way, none of the amendments are binding because the
budget resolution doesn't become law.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/politics/vote-a-rama-gop-tax-reform/index.html
-- 2018 --
January 18: The House on Thursday passed a
GOP-backed short-term spending bill that would fund the government through Feb.
16. The Senate debated the bill, but ultimately voted to adjourn until Friday at
11 a.m., leaving the Senate only one day before the government shuts down.
If lawmakers don't extend funding by Friday night, the government will shut down
early Saturday. It would be the first government shutdown since 2013.
On the Senate floor, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said
Republicans and Democrats don't want a shutdown, blaming the situation on the
president's shifting opinions and pitting Congress against the president.
"The only person who's ever rooted for a shutdown frankly is our president,"
Schumer said, referencing a presidential tweet from May 2017 in which Mr. Trump
suggested the country "needs a good shutdown."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spending-bill-house-passes-short-term-bill-today-faces-senate-vote-government-shutdown/
January 19: House Republicans overcame a
major obstacle late Thursday when the most conservative wing of the conference
announced its support for the short-term spending measure to avoid a government
shutdown. The measure passed the House on a mostly party line 230-197 vote.
But the fate of the measure is uncertain in the Senate where at least six
Republican senators have come out against the measure and Democrats are
confident they can block it from advancing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gop-leaders-race-keep-party-together-avoid-government-shutdown-n838851
January 19: On the day that government
funding is set to expire,
confusion has gripped the Capitol as the House-passed continuing
resolution faces long odds in the Senate. If lawmakers pull out a fix to keep
the lights on past midnight, it will most certainly be with only hours remaining
before a deadline.
This is completely normal.
Since the 16-day government shutdown in 2013 — the last time such a shutdown
took place — Congress has only once passed a spending bill with more than one
legislative day to spare.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/there-are-just-hours-left-before-a-government-shutdown-this-is-totally-normal
January 22: The leaders of the Senate
Intelligence Committee are furious at appropriators for inserting a provision
into the must-pass spending bill -- at the White House's request -- that they
say would strip Congress' authority to direct how the intelligence agencies
spend their funds.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and the committee's
top Democrat, Mark Warner of Virginia, said they were blindsided by the push,
and they argued that the change would make it harder for lawmakers to oversee
moves by an intelligence community that operates in secret.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/politics/intelligence-spending-bill-senate-committee-appropriations/index.html
January 26: In December, the Air Force
awarded Boeing a contract to replace two "chillers," or refrigerators, on Air
Force One — for a total cost of $23,657,671.
The presidential jet, which must be able to serve as a mobile national command
center, needs to carry enough food for weeks at a time without resupply — up to
3,000 meals.
Five such chillers cool 26 climate-controlled compartments, the Air Force says
... The two chillers Boeing is to provide will cool eight of those
compartments.
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-one-new-refrigerators-cost-24-million-2018-1
February 7: U.S. Senate leaders, in a rare
display of bipartisanship, reached a two-year budget deal on Wednesday to raise
government spending by almost $300 billion, attempting to curb Washington’s
fiscal policy squabbling but also widening the federal deficit.
The deal appeared to have bipartisan support in the Senate, but it could face
resistance among conservative House Republicans concerned about the deficit
impact.
If the Senate deal is approved, it would then go to Republican President Donald
Trump for him to sign into law.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-shutdown/u-s-congressional-leaders-forge-budget-deal-that-adds-to-deficit-idUSKBN1FR26M
February 7: Lawmakers balk at potential cost
of Trump’s military parade
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/sen-durbin-trump-s-military-parade-would-be-fantastic-waste-n845476
February 8: As a massive bipartisan budget
deal moved towards a vote Thursday, temperatures were rising on the left, where
Democrats were fuming that — once again — immigration was being left behind.
https://www.108praiseradio.com/?p=1781619
February 9: Trump signs massive budget deal
after Congress votes to reopen government
President Donald Trump signed a major budget deal into law early Friday morning,
hours after Congress voted to end a brief government shutdown overnight.
The House of Representatives voted 240-186. The GOP-controlled chamber needed
help from House Democrats to clear the bill, and 73 Democratic members gave it.
Sixty-seven House Republicans voted against the plan.
The colossal bill, which lawmakers have been negotiating for months, is a
game-changing piece of legislation, clearing the decks for Congress in dealing
with major spending issues as well as doling out disaster relief money and
hiking the debt ceiling which was set to be reached next month.
After the vote, Pelosi vowed that the fight to protect undocumented immigrants
brought to the United States as children from deportation was not over.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/08/politics/budget-vote-congress-shutdown/index.html
February 8: President Donald Trump’s budget
proposal to be unveiled on Monday will include a request for $3 billion as a
down payment on building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, a senior
administration official said on Thursday.
Wall funding has been caught up in a debate over how to protect young
“Dreamers,” people who were brought to the country illegally as children.
Trump has offered to give the Dreamers protection from deportation and a pathway
to citizenship over 10 to 12 years, in exchange for $25 billion in wall funding
and tightened restrictions on legal immigration, but Democrats have balked at
the terms.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-wall/trump-budget-to-include-3-billion-for-border-wall-official-idUSKBN1FT09M
February 12: White House wants to deliver
food to the poor, Blue Apron-style ... Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp
recipients.
That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's
proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a
box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in
food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.
https://www.markettamer.com/blog/white-house-wants-to-deliver-food-to-the-poor-blue-apron-style
February 12: Why Trump's budget proposal is
too optimistic on deficits ... He makes some pretty unrealistic claims about how
his current proposals would reduce deficits.
His budget proposes to slash them by more than
$3 trillion over the next decade, bringing the annual deficit down from 4.4% of
GDP this year to 1.1% by 2028.
How? Largely by proposing severe spending cuts combined with optimistic growth
projections of roughly 3% a year. ... "The depth of the budgetary hole that has
been dug over the past year is made clear by the fact that the administration
could not produce a balanced budget even with unrealistic growth assumptions and
scoring gimmicks," ...
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/12/news/economy/trump-budget-proposal-deficit/index.html
February 12: The White House is proposing to
spend more than $2 billion in funding for a new FBI headquarters, infusing cash
into a stalled effort to replace the downtown Washington building.
The allocation, which would have to be approved by Congress, comes tucked inside
President Donald Trump's new infrastructure proposal and amid a war Trump is
waging against the law enforcement agency's top officials.
http://www.weny.com/story/37488909/trump-proposes-money-for-new-fbi-headquarters
February 12: The Trump administration aims
to privatize the International Space Station
In January,
The Verge reported that the Trump administration was preparing to
end US support for the International Space Station by 2025,
prompting outcry from Congressional officials.
The Washington Post says that it has viewed an internal NASA
document that outlines the agency’s intentions to privatize the station after
funding ends in 2024.
... the space agency will focus on expanding its commercial partnerships in the
coming years to prepare for an eventual handover, and says that the White House
“will request market analysis and business plans from the commercial sector and
solicit plans from commercial industry.”
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/11/17001404/nasa-international-space-station-president-trump-privatization
February 20: President Trump is considering
more tariffs that would punish China. But he needs China more than ever in the
coming years to pay for the U.S. government.
China is by far the largest holder of Treasuries, the debt that the United
States sells in the form of bonds when it needs to borrow money. China's
holdings
just passed $1 trillion.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/20/news/economy/china-us-trade-gap-government-debt/index.html
February 21:
President Trump says he wants to
improve background checks [for guns], but budget calls for cuts
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-improve-background-checks-budget-calls-cuts/story?id=53216967&cid=clicksource_interest_band
March 22: The budget bill before Congress
includes an update to federal law that makes clear that authorities with a
warrant can obtain emails and other data held by American technology companies
but stored on servers overseas.
The Cloud Act has the backing of both the administration and Microsoft, but it's
opposed by privacy groups. In particular, those groups object to parts of the
plan that would regulate how foreign governments could obtain data from U.S.
companies.
The court took up the case to determine whether the 1986 law was intended to
cover data controlled by U.S. companies, but held overseas, [Jennifer Daskal, an
American University law professor and former national security official at the
Justice Department] said. "The Cloud Act definitely answers that question,
saying yes it covers data held overseas," Daskal said in an email.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/22/budget-bill-likely-would-end-supreme-court-email-search-case.html
June 4: Air Force puts a chill on Trump's
$24 million fridges for presidential jet
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/us-air-force-one-refrigerator-cancel/
November 27: Bipartisan budget reform effort
hits roadblock in final days
A special congressional committee tasked with proposing changes to reform the
budget and appropriations process hit a political roadblock just days before a
statutory deadline and after eight months of work.
The Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations, which has until Friday
to send its proposal to the Senate floor in legislative form, agreed to
reconvene Thursday after co-chair
Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) raised concerns about the lack of an assurance
from Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that he would prevent political amendments
from being offered on the floor alongside the panel’s proposal.
“In the absence of such an agreement, our work is at serious risk of partisan
sabotage in the Senate,” Lowey, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations
Committee and a member of the special panel, said Tuesday. “For that reason,
many of us are not prepared to vote to report the bill out of committee.”
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/418592-bipartisan-budget-reform-effort-hits-roadblock-in-final-days
December 13:
The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday published its annual compendium of
options for shrinking the massive federal deficit, which stands at $779 billion.
Most of the savings would come from changes to entitlement programs like
Medicare and Social Security. But other suggestions would drum up trillions in
savings and revenue over the next decade. CBO lays out 121 options, most of
which would save $10 billion or more over that period.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/13/cbos-big-ideas-for-shrinking-the-deficit-1031646
-- 2019 --
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