Making budgets great again 
Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Trump unveiled his first budget — titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” — on Tuesday. You can read the whole thing at the Office of Management and Budget’s website. [OMB]
The biggest change included is a 47 percent cut to Medicaid, achieved through assuming that the Republican replacement for Obamacare passes, and then another $610 billion in cuts are added on top of that. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
Medicaid is often pigeonholed as a program for the poor, but in part because it also covers people with disabilities, a wide swath of Americans have had contact with it. 26 percent have been covered through Medicaid at some point, 6 percent have had a child in the program, and 25 percent have a friend or family member who's been on it; in total, about 56 percent of Americans have some kind of connection. [Kaiser Family Foundation / Ashley Kirzinger, Elise Sugarman, and Mollyann Brodie]
The budget hits other important safety net programs, like Social Security Disability Insurance, the earned income tax credit, and, perhaps most notably, food stamps, a.k.a. SNAP, which gets a 25 percent cut despite copious evidence that it reduces hunger and improves the health of children who receive it well into adulthood. [Vox / Julia Belluz]
The budget contains no new details on Trump's tax plan. However, it assumes that the tax plan will not increase the deficit because it will increase economic growth — and then goes ahead and assumes that that increased growth can also be used to help eliminate the deficit over 10 years. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers calls this the “most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.” [Washington Post / Larry Summers]
Asked about this egregious error, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin responded, "This is a preliminary document that will be refined." (This is false. Budget requests are not "preliminary documents.") [David Wessel]
It's unlikely that many, or any, of the budget's proposals will become law in their original form. But the budget still matters. Cuts like those in the budget could help fund the tax cut package Republicans are set to consider after health care, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities director and budget expert Bob Greenstein states, "I would not rule out that these things will be seriously considered and could actually occur." [Huffington Post / Arthur Delaney]
www.fotavgeia.blogspot.com
Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Trump unveiled his first budget — titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” — on Tuesday. You can read the whole thing at the Office of Management and Budget’s website. [OMB]
The biggest change included is a 47 percent cut to Medicaid, achieved through assuming that the Republican replacement for Obamacare passes, and then another $610 billion in cuts are added on top of that. [Vox / Sarah Kliff]
Medicaid is often pigeonholed as a program for the poor, but in part because it also covers people with disabilities, a wide swath of Americans have had contact with it. 26 percent have been covered through Medicaid at some point, 6 percent have had a child in the program, and 25 percent have a friend or family member who's been on it; in total, about 56 percent of Americans have some kind of connection. [Kaiser Family Foundation / Ashley Kirzinger, Elise Sugarman, and Mollyann Brodie]
The budget hits other important safety net programs, like Social Security Disability Insurance, the earned income tax credit, and, perhaps most notably, food stamps, a.k.a. SNAP, which gets a 25 percent cut despite copious evidence that it reduces hunger and improves the health of children who receive it well into adulthood. [Vox / Julia Belluz]
The budget contains no new details on Trump's tax plan. However, it assumes that the tax plan will not increase the deficit because it will increase economic growth — and then goes ahead and assumes that that increased growth can also be used to help eliminate the deficit over 10 years. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers calls this the “most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.” [Washington Post / Larry Summers]
Asked about this egregious error, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin responded, "This is a preliminary document that will be refined." (This is false. Budget requests are not "preliminary documents.") [David Wessel]
It's unlikely that many, or any, of the budget's proposals will become law in their original form. But the budget still matters. Cuts like those in the budget could help fund the tax cut package Republicans are set to consider after health care, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities director and budget expert Bob Greenstein states, "I would not rule out that these things will be seriously considered and could actually occur." [Huffington Post / Arthur Delaney]
www.fotavgeia.blogspot.com
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