Trump budget to increase defense, slash EPA, other agencies

WASHINGTON — President Trump has signed off on top-line numbers in a budget outline that seeks to make good on his campaign promises to bolster military spending while making deep cuts to other federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency.

"This budget will be a public safety and national security budget, very much based on those two with plenty of other things but very strong," Trump said Monday. "And it will include a historic increase in defense spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America at a time we most need it."

He said he will lay out more detail during a prime-time joint address to Congress Tuesday.

"This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government," Trump said. "We're going to do more with less."

Source

So Trump has started floating an outline for his first budget proposal. Among the key points is a massive $54 billion dollar increase in defense spending. To cover this it sounds like other agencies like the EPA (which only has an $8 billion budget to begin with) will be gutted. Interestingly enough it sounds like Trump has no plans to apply any cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare.

It will be interesting to see how Trump goes about balancing his budget. That $54 billion will have to come from somewhere and with 70% of the budget accounted for from mandatory spending on welfare programs and debt interest he doesn't really have a lot of room to work with. Not to mention he also made it clear that they were going to "start spending on infrastructure big."

I personally don't see this proposal working. At least from what has been revealed. For one that's a lot of money to cut from other areas. And second, I can't see the Republicans passing a budget that doesn't cut from social programs in any way. I also don't see the need for such a drastic increase in defense spending. We already outspend every other government by far. If there's one place that could benefit with doing more with less it's the defense sector. They've been resting on their laurels for far too long. Countries like Russia and China are still giving us a run for our money despite having a fraction of the budget.

In the end this budget comes across as either Trump is in the pocket of the defense industry or he's gearing up for war. Possibly both. Either way it doesn't exactly fill me with hope.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

When the Military Industrial Complex AND the Prison Industrial Complex are winning, the people are LOSING.

I hope you're not right about Trump's administration "gearing up for War", but I wouldn't at all be surprised if this were the case.

*quivers

a reply to: FamCore

The military is in the process of rebuilding. As it stands right now, if they gave a war, most of the military couldn't go. The Navy currently has two or three carriers capable of deploying or deployed, with the other 7 in for various levels of maintenance. Naval Aviation forces, including the Marines are currently capable of flying about 1/3rd of their aircraft. They're the worst of the forces, but the rest aren't in much better shape. The Air Force has about half of their air in for maintenance. The worst part right now is the flying hours. Units are robbing their worst pilots, to keep their best pilots certified and flying their required hours. They're getting into a vicious cycle that's cost many lives, and will continue to do so until they solve it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wow! Fantastic explanation of the state of our military right now. I had no idea it was that bad across the board. Thank you Zaphod

I hope some of these larger issues can be effectively resolved without too much waste or down time

I guess the environment is pretty irrelevant when you are dropping bombs on it anyway.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
I guess the environment is pretty irrelevant when you are dropping bombs on it anyway.

Well when teh EPA is busy turning rivers orange an then effectively saying, "Oops! Our bad!" It doesn't seem like they really need to be funded to begin with.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I get that. But how much of the current budget could be redirected to fix these problems while cutting out superfluous spending?

I guess the point I'm getting at is that we keep throwing more and more money in defense spending and yet we're not seeing any drastic improvements. It seems like the only thing our spending is achieving is padding the wallets of contractors and top brass while the grunts continue to get screwed and their equipment continues to break down. While at the same time it seems like countries like Russia and China gain on us every year.

If it was anything other than defense the Right would be talking about sending good money after bad. Just look at the desire to gut departments like Education or the EPA. But for some reason they have no problem increasing the defense budget by almost the budget of both those departments combined.

It just seems to me that there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed from defense spending. Then we could have plenty of cash to fund infrastructure projects here at home. Or maybe even start paying off this massive deficit we have accrued.

After nearly 20yrs of non-stop, boots on the ground activities
I can easily imagine that the armed forces are in need a 'revamp'
Men and machines need to be upgraded... sometimes

That's understandable

However, it certainly is v.v.good news indeed for the MI-complx, for homeland sec. and intelligence
Whether or not The Donald is in cahoots with or under the thumb of
They're back in business !!


What, then, appens once the armies are bright 'n' spanking again ?
This new model army can't just be left on the shelf, to get all dusty again....

And there we go,
things just gone a bit more supervillainy on us

The Donald's got his hands on a brand new toy
He just needs to find somewhere nice to play with it :p


Interestingly enough, the first voices to give hue and cry, were not the usual 'offenders'

...more than 120 retired US generals and admirals – including George Casey, former chief of staff of the US army, and David Petraeus, former CIA director and commander of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – sent a letter to Congress, urging it fully fund US diplomacy and foreign aid.

“Elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development alongside defense are critical to keeping America safe,” they said.

“We know from our service in uniform that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

Even more exciting is what will happen after March 16, 2017 (if we've exceeded the debt ceiling by then, and Treasury may have a few tricks to extend that)) when the debt ceiling suspension rules expire. Mr. President will get unprecedented power to approve or deny most spending.

"I like this. I don't like that. Or that."

I can hear the snowflakes crying now.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

There is quite a bit that can be revamped, but at some point it comes down to just needing more money thrown at it. If they tried to fix it with the current budget, even if they cut a lot out, one of three things would happen. Either we'd have to drastically cut badly needed new procurement, such as the F-35 and KC-46, requiring our aircraft that are already older than their crews to go on a lot longer than planned.

Or, we would have to ground several types of aircraft and take the money out of their flying budget and put it into maintenance, cut ship deployments, and put that money towards maintenance, etc.

Or, option three, start retiring the oldest ships and planes, take the money from their budget and start buying new aircraft as fast as we can and hope we don't need them before they're ready.

Personally, I'm in favor of a smaller military equipped to do more, but to get there we need to fix what we have first to get to the point we can start reducing what we need to, and still be capable of using said military if we need to.

What we need is to put the Admin State on a deep diet to slim it down, hit the sweet spot between tax rate and reguatiory reform to kick start the economy so that what we seem to be losing in taxes is more than made up for in the development of new tax base and then start work on shining up the big stick that has gone to seed.

It's a tall order. I'm not sure we'll get there.

Why do we need more money going into our military? It's already the biggest in the world bar none.

I really don't like this move by Trump, military is the last thing we need to put money towards. Why not put this $50+ billion into infrastructure or education? Seems like it would be better used there instead of funding war crimes.

Oh wait, I almost forgot about ISIS. I'm sure their presence will get people behind this move, how convenient for the MIC.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

It will be interesting to see how Trump goes about balancing his budget. That $54 billion will have to come from somewhere and with 70% of the budget accounted for from mandatory spending on welfare programs and debt interest he doesn't really have a lot of room to work with. Not to mention he also made it clear that they were going to "start spending on infrastructure big."

I think Trump can get the Mexicans to pay for that along with his WALL. Remember he's a business man!!

originally posted by: olaru12
a reply to: Xcalibur254

It will be interesting to see how Trump goes about balancing his budget. That $54 billion will have to come from somewhere and with 70% of the budget accounted for from mandatory spending on welfare programs and debt interest he doesn't really have a lot of room to work with. Not to mention he also made it clear that they were going to "start spending on infrastructure big."

I think Trump can get the Mexicans to pay for that along with his WALL. Remember he's a business man!!

He should make Germany and all the other dead weights in Nato pay for it.


Currently the USA , UK and Estonia are the only countrys paying what they should be.

The USA is pretty much paying for mainland EU protection as well as Japan and South Korea......make them dead beats pick up the tab.

Question already answered.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

Whenever we start building up our military, we ALWAYS find an excuse to use it.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

It's not a buildup. It's an overhaul and repair. Big difference.

a reply to: Zaphod58

According to who? All I saw was that we are increasing military spending. Does Trump know this? I see you say it is the case, but Trump doesn't tend to care about the details. He may just see it as a military build up.

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: olaru12
a reply to: Xcalibur254

It will be interesting to see how Trump goes about balancing his budget. That $54 billion will have to come from somewhere and with 70% of the budget accounted for from mandatory spending on welfare programs and debt interest he doesn't really have a lot of room to work with. Not to mention he also made it clear that they were going to "start spending on infrastructure big."

I think Trump can get the Mexicans to pay for that along with his WALL. Remember he's a business man!!

He should make Germany and all the other dead weights in Nato pay for it.


Currently the USA , UK and Estonia are the only countrys paying what they should be.

The USA is pretty much paying for mainland EU protection as well as Japan and South Korea......make them dead beats pick up the tab.

I often wonder where the UK's military spending goes.

Considering how underequipped, undermanned and undermaintained the current military is.

I suspect a good deal of it goes towards bonuses for defence contractors.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

And if he does it won't affect anything. It still can't be used as it stands. But according to Trump.

Trump vowed to rebuild the country's "depleted military" during a meeting with state governors at the White House on Monday, adding that he will make a "big statement" about his plans to rebuild the nation's roads and bridges in his address to Congress on Tuesday.

www.cbc.ca...