MPCA chief sounds alarm about Trump cuts to EPA grants

Get free real-time news alerts from the White House Patch. The current federal budget expires on April 28 of this year, meaning another shutdown is possible if either a complete budget or stop-gap measure isn’t passed. “BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering”.

The plan to be released is a “skinny budget”, a first draft of the line-by-line appropriations request submitted by first-term administrations. He expressed anger over a mere 3 percent increase above former President Barack Obama’s defense budget proposal for 2018. The Department of Homeland Security with a 7 percent hike, including $4 billion for the Mexico border wall.

Under the proposed blueprint, the administration would boost spending on the Department of Veterans Affairs by 6 percent.

MICK MULVANEY: We’re $20 trillion in debt.

“We are going to do more with less, and make the government lean and accountable to the people”, President Donald Trump wrote in a note accompanying the plan.

The Trump administration unveiled its budget proposal, which significantly reduces spending on climate change, earlier this week. The State Department would be cut 29 percent, mostly foreign aid and United Nations peacekeeping.

Spending is also slashed at the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Labor, among others.

Over 50 EPA programs could be lost under the Trump budget, including large-scale cleanup efforts for the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes and assistance for Alaskan villages hurting because of climate change.

Friday’s included a Washington Post article titled “Trump’s budget makes ideal sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why” – a positive-sounding headline. “When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was, can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?” he said Thursday on MSNBC. Yet the Trump administration has used its budget to assault the agencies tasked with protecting America’s public health.

Trump’s proposal would eliminate funding to 19 agencies including the African Development Foundation, the Chemical Safety Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Institute on Peace and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. He told The Washington Post that the “message we’re sending to the Hill is, we want more money for the things the president talked about, defense being the top one, national security”.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress and President Trump to create a budget that is fiscally responsible, makes our country safer and preserves wise investments in our future”, Graham added.

REP. PAUL RYAN, R-Wis., Speaker of the House: We will have a full hearing about how our priorities will be met. Single mom of two in Detroit, give us your money.

Trump’s budget blueprint features double-digit cuts to social and environmental programs, while also pitching a $54 billion increase in the defense budget.