According to a report at Politico, President Donald Trump's proposed budget -- expected to be released on Monday -- contains spending cuts that will never pass muster and is already being bashed by top Republicans who fear another shutdown will hurt their party.
The report notes that Trump will unveil "an audacious plan for sucking 5 percent from the budgets of non-military arms of the federal government while using an accounting trick to bust beyond set spending limits for defense programs. The 5 percent would be below the fiscal 2019 budget limits for domestic agencies."
The combination of budget cuts along with using budgetary trickery that increases the national debt already has Republicans firing back before Democrats get their shots in.
While an administration official anticipated complaints by saying, “Congress wants an automatic big-spending deal, and now they’re upset because they lost their favorite talking point that the president’s budget assumes a caps increase,” that didn't stop some members of the GOP from going on the record saying the budget is a non-starter since Democrats will oppose it too.
That puts pressure on both parties to reach an agreement that would avoid the dreaded shutdown -- and Democrats may want to the GOP to suffer again because of Trump.
“Sorry, you’re elected to deal, you’ve got to deal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) “They’re going to all have to compromise … And the longer they delay, the more threatening it will be to the economy, the more likely we are to slide into some sort of confrontation that results in a government shutdown.”
Cole went on to bash the coming Trump budget in blunt terms.
“This one is frankly less realistic than most presidential budgets,” explained Cole, while accusing Trump of using a “gimmick” to avoid budget limits by trying to stash $174 billion of $750 billion in defense funding away so that it doesn't count toward the budget restraints, saying, “That’s fine, but Congress isn’t going to accept that.”
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) also said Trump's budget is dead on arrival, explaining the Democratic-held House along with a Senate that loves to fund military projects will never buy it.
"You’ve got the House, too. You’ve got a third leg of politics,” Shelby said last week.
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