No Medicaid cuts in Trump budget? Really?

He warned of a potential pox on the Trump White House: “I’ll tell you, sometime in the president’s term, you will have a pandemic”.

As a candidate and as president Trump has frequently talked about making health care more affordable for regular folks, including by lowering premiums and deductibles. Seems like a good way to discourage grocers from even participating in the program, so food stamp recipients’ lives can get a little less convenient.

And, Social Security disability payments would be cut to some Americans as well, in the name of Mulvaney’s theme of putting people back to work.

But the budget does feature a major domestic initiative – a six-week paid parental leave program headed by Ivanka Trump that would be designed and financed by the states through cuts to unemployment insurance, at a projected cost of $25 billion over the next 10 years.

“This is the President of the United States turning his back on our nation’s poor and daring them to survive on their own”.

Mr Trump’s budget is simply a proposal. And Trump’s Medicaid cuts appear even bigger than those in the health care bill recently passed by House Republicans, above what would be needed to fulfill the GOP vow to repeal “Obamacare”.

A day after the budget’s release, a handful of senior administration officials fanned out on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, facing tough questions from Democrats opposed to the blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year and Republicans skeptical about the administration’s math.

The budget not only slashes funding for food stamps by $191 billion over the next decade – that is, by more than a quarter – but also proposes charging retailers a new fee if they want to accept food stamps from customers.

In her opening remarks, Black was the first to suggest the notion that the federal budget might have moral implications. As Politico details, Trump’s “first budget as president would increase the debt by more than $3 trillion - and that’s only through rosy assumptions about economic growth and double-counting of tax revenue”.

“We are now bearing the cost [s] of excessive government commitments of previous years and this has forced us into making hard choices, but the remarkable thing about economic growth is it builds on itself”, he said. But those were forecasts for a short-term spike in economic growth.

“You have said that the foundation of your budget is 3% growth and I have looked every which way about how you might get there and you can’t get there”. Growth has averaged less than 2% a year since 2001. But they also credit the Trump administration with at least trying to get things into balance, and welcome the bullish attitude on the economy.

Mulvaney also promised that the administration would not kick “anybody off of any program who really needs it. we have plenty of money in this country to take care of the people who need it”.

A reality check by economists finds the presidential predictions somewhat unreliable. Growth will provide opportunity, raise incomes, improve the standard of living and reduce many vexing social problems.

Trump’s supporters are right that Obama’s projections did prove to be too optimistic.

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