Committee chairs in Congress look at White House budget proposals with something between indifference and disdain. Congress, not the White House, writes the budget, or so the thinking goes. So why, besides the law mandating he submit one, does a president spend so…
Committee chairs in Congress look at White House budget proposals with something between indifference and disdain. Congress, not the White House, writes the budget, or so the thinking goes. So why, besides the law mandating he submit one, does a president spend so much time and energy crafting a budget?
“It’s a message, ” said Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters Monday, “from the president of the United States to Congress that says, ‘Look, here are my priorities in terms of where I want to spend more. Here’s where I think we shouldn’t be spending as much. And here are some of the big-ticket items.'”
If a budget proposal is a message about priorities, it’s clear entitlement reform isn’t even on President Trump’s radar. When starting on 2018 budget proposal, Mulvaney came to the president with a one-page list of entitlement programs to reform.
“We went down the list: Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, ” said Mulvaney. “The nos were all Social Security and Medicare. And that’s it. He said, ‘I promised people on the campaign trail I would not touch their retirement and I would not touch Medicare, and we owe it to them.'”
When he was a Republican congressman from South Carolina, Mulvaney was a hawk on the budget and the national debt. He was among the House Republicans who voted multiple times for Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget that would have made major reforms to the two entitlement programs that continue to grow as a share of the federal budget and drive up the debt. Mulvaney said he tried to convince Trump of the problem.
“I made the case for why those programs would need reform, ” said Mulvaney. “The president said, ‘No, I’m going to keep my promises.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’d still like to balance the budget. He said, ‘I still want you to balance the budget. Just don’t do it changing these programs.'”
The new proposed budget, which is titled the “New Foundation for American Greatness” and which the White House will officially roll out on Tuesday, indeed fulfills Trump’s campaign promise of not touching either Medicare or Social Security. It also offers policies the administration says will balance the budget in 10 years and start reducing the deficit in the first year. Fundamentally, however, Mulvaney says the budget is about growth.
” [This is] an effort to get to sustained 3-percent economic growth in this country again, ” he said. “That’s a dynamism that used to be normal in the American economy, and that’s what we’re trying to get back to. That’s what this budget is part and parcel of. It drives our tax reform policy, our regulatory policy, trade, energy, welfare, infrastructure, and our government spending priorities. Everything is key to getting us back to three percent.”
Trump’s budget claims it will aid in stimulating economic growth by reducing burdensome regulations, reforming welfare programs to get more unemployed back to work, and repealing Obamacare. The proposal would make significant cuts to federal discretionary spending, including big cuts to Medicaid on the assumed repeal of Obamacare. The administration also seeks to reduce spending on welfare and student loan programs through reforms. It’s not all cuts, however; the budget provides for increases on defense, border security, infrastructure, and paid family leave.
“This is, I think, the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes, ” Mulvaney said. “So often in Washington we only look on the recipient side. How does the budget affect those who either receive or don’t receive benefits. I can’t remember the last time we actually looked at a budget from the perspective of the people who are paying it.”
But what of the future of the chief drivers of the national debt, the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare? The administration’s line, according to Jonathan Swan of Axios, is that “conservatives will love” the budget because of its proposed $1.7 trillion in savings on mandatory spending, or “entitlements.” Swan identifies these cuts as coming from food stamps, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and disability insurance. Food stamp spending increased by more than 30 percent over the presidency of Barack Obama, and was higher than it was at the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008. The Trump budget seeks to cut back from these programs to put them, the administration says, more in line with current needs.
But these are welfare programs, not the traditionally understood “entitlements” of Social Security and Medicare, which taxpayers pay into over their working years. That’s what makes the true entitlements more difficult to reform—taxpayers understandably see themselves as “entitled” to the programs and are resistant to changes. Paul Ryan’s successful effort in the House during the Obama years to unify Republicans around major entitlement reform was significant. But Trump’s insistence throughout the campaign, including during the GOP primary, that he would not touch either program suggests the battle had not been won or deemed threatening enough with Republican voters. Mulvaney acknowledged the growing national debt as a problem.
“We’re $20 trillion in debt. Every one of you in here owes the federal government roughly $60,000. Each of my 17-year-old triplets owes the federal government $60,000. Every man, woman, and child in the country is $60,000 in debt because of the $20 trillion debt we’ve run up, ” he said.
Mulvaney suggested that more robust economic growth would help, but not completely solve, the problem if more unemployed and underemployed Americans begin working more.
