Predict all the details of the Trump budget

[Blue3]

I wouldn't be surprised if the budget includes

1. a 2-year timetable to completely, totally eliminate the EPA, Department of Education, Department of HUD (with the jobs of Pruitt, DeVos, and Carson to oversee their abolition)

2. a 2-year timetable with huge cuts to Commerce and Labor departments, demoted to agencies and broken-up, and reorganize the remaining pieces

3. huge cuts to the State Department and HHS

4. some cuts to Justice (probably repeal all the civil rights and "affirmative action" departments), Interior, and Agriculture

There's also the old reports he's going to dissolve the CIA and other intel agencies, and reform them into something he finds "better."


I can only see him keeping the funding levels for the VA, Energy, Transportation, and the SBA about the same (VA Reform will probably come next year)...

and big increases for ICE at our ports/airports/borders and for deportation task forces under Homeland Security,

and of course big increases for Defense as reported, close to 20% this coming fiscal year alone.

[The_Doctor]

Typical GOP budget that cuts a lot of good programs that are nickels and dimes worth and leaves the big ticker items that need stringent reforms. In other words, a budget that doesn't do anything. The GOP as usual plays into the trap of cutting EPA, cutting small after school programs, whatever instead of going after the real drivers of the deficits.

You need a mandate to do entitlement reforms. Absent that, you don't have a choice but to go this route. The clown car crash of 2016 guarantees that Trump has no real political leverage to do real budget reforms that would matter. Entitlement changes hurt too many Trump voters. (Suspect that a Democrat will be the one to do entitlement changes, towards the left, btw).

Deficits will begin climbing again in 2018 as the economy begins to slow down and the tax cuts are mis-timed to soften the economic blow. (Most of the stimulus would end up coming in before the slowdown). The GOP will hem and haw.

Defense spending going up, though of course, might threaten China and if we ever got serious about challenging MOscow, might put Russia in a corner.

[The_Doctor]

Well the GOP could continue Obama's budget path by and large and tie it to some entitlement reforms but their donors would revolt, their base would revolt, and Trump is too weak to really exert leadership here.