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Also see: Government shutdown; foreign aid; CBO;
spending bill; debt; deficit; Federal hiring freeze; finance; government waste;
taxes; tariffs;
February 27: Trump plans to cut funding for most government agencies
February 27: More than 120 retired three and
four-star generals just sent a letter to the House and Senate leadership calling
on Congress to “ensure that resources for the International Affairs Budget keep
pace with the growing global threats and opportunities we face.”
February 28:
Here's what we know about Trump's budget math ... most federal programs would be
cut in Trump's vision. Defense and law enforcement spending would rise. He also
plans to dramatically increase infrastructure spending ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/trumps-budget-numbers-cuts/index.html
February 28:John Glaser, an Associate Director of Foreign
Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, said cuts were not likely to significantly
worsen the plight of people facing famine and war, because a lot of the aid
comes in the form of military aid to foreign countries.
March 1: The US was heavily involved in combating the recent Ebola crisis in
West Africa. Had there not been the global response there could have been an
international pandemic ... If we were to significantly recede, it would be a
matter of life and death for a lot of people ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politics/trump-budget-foreign-aid/index.html
March 8: In the wake of reports
that the Trump Administration is proposing budget cuts to the Coast Guard to
help pay for the Mexican border wall, one of the president’s early supporters
appeared on CNN to rip the White House’s plan.
Speaking to host Kate Bolduan, Rep.
Duncan Hunter (R-CA) highlighted that
the entire operating budget of the Coast Guard is $9 billion, which he described
as “shoestring.”
April 26:With just two days left to stop a partial shutdown of
the federal government, the Trump administration on Wednesday removed another
major sticking point in the spending bill negotiations.
April 25: President Trump reportedly backed off his demand that
Congress include a down payment for a wall spanning the entire U.S.-Mexico
border in a crucial
spending bill that must pass by Friday night to keep the government funded.
April 28:With just hours left until a government shutdown at
midnight, Congress passed a stopgap funding bill Friday that will keep the
government open for another week.
May 22:The Trump administration says it can
balance the federal budget within a decade. Its blueprint calls for significant
cuts to social safety net programs and assumes more robust economic growth. ...
Over a decade, it calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid,
food stamps and disability benefits.
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/22/529567550/white-house-to-release-taxpayer-first-budget-plan-with-cuts-to-safety-nets?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20170522&utm_campaign=breakingnews&utm_term=nprnews
May 23: President Donald Trump fulfilled a major campaign
promise Tuesday, proposing a $4.1 trillion budget plan that would upend
Washington in a big way. But he drew rebukes, even from some Republican allies,
for the plan's jarring, politically unrealistic cuts to the social safety net
for the poor and a broad swath of other domestic programs.
The budget, Trump's
first as president [as opposed to an earlier budget draft], combines his
spending plan for the upcoming 2018 fiscal year with a promise to balance
government books after a decade, relying on aggressive cuts, a surge in economic
growth - and a $2 trillion-plus accounting gimmick.
https://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=151&sid=44353913&title=trumps-4t-budget-arrives-on-capitol-hill
May 22:“Basically dead on
arrival,” opined the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas [about the
WH budget].
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.
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.
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/
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 slashthemby 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.
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.
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
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.
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
