Trump Lauded Farmers, Medicare and AIDS Programs. Then He Unsheathed the Budget Knife.
WASHINGTON — On Friday, the White House announced that Karen Pence, the second lady, would lead a delegation to the United Arab Emirates in support of disabled American athletes at the Special Olympics. On Monday, the White House’s budget proposed striking $17.6 million in grants to expand the event.
What a difference a few days can make.
The Trump administration’s annual budget proposal on Monday envisioned a series of cuts that contrasted with the president’s own words of support for both programs and people — including some groups that make up his political base. To help make way for more military and border spending, it would slash programs large and small, from Medicaid and Medicare — which President Trump as a candidate promised to protect — to safety nets for farmers.
Democrats, who control the House, immediately announced the budget proposal dead on arrival, and many of its ideas stand little chance of passing Congress. But it lays down a marker that could help chart the political course ahead, albeit a course that sometimes seems at odds with Mr. Trump’s own pronouncements.
Here are a few of the more visible contradictions:
Cuts That Would Affect Farmers
On Twitter and in speeches, Mr. Trump has made much of the bright future he believes he is securing for farmers.
“We’ve had so many good weeks and good days,” Mr. Trump said at the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention in January, “and it’s only going to get better because we’re doing trade deals that are going to get you so much business, you’re not even going to believe it.”
But America’s farmers, a key component of the president’s base and a group suffering the effects of his trade war with China, could be among those the budget would squeeze: The White House wants to ax 15 percent, or $3.6 billion, from the Agriculture Department’s budget. According to budget documents, officials plan to “efficiently use taxpayer resources” to find savings by eliminating “overly generous subsidy programs” and examining other safety nets.
Reactions to cost-saving measures have predictably fallen along Washington’s deep party lines. Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, said socialist-leaning Democrats were a bigger threat to farmers than a conservative budget proposal.
“I fully expect the president to be on board” to “keep our promise to farmers and ranchers and rural America made under the five-year farm bill,” he said in a statement.
But the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who battled with the White House over its approach to carrying out last winter’s sweeping farm bill, saw a different proposal.
“The steep cuts to the U.S.D.A. would jeopardize the department’s ability to implement the farm bill at a time when farmers are struggling with economic instability and trade uncertainty,” she said in a statement.
Cuts to AIDS and Other Health Programs
Mr. Trump has promised that his administration will help eradicate AIDS over the next 10 years. Last week, he even sent a celebratory tweet hailing the news that a patient had been cured of the disease.
He was similarly optimistic in February during his State of the Union address.
“My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the H.I.V. epidemic in the United States within 10 years,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “Together, we will defeat AIDS in America and beyond.”
His pledge is one seemingly at odds with other moves the administration has made — namely, a November decision to cut costs for Medicare by reducing the number of drugs that must be made available to people with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Mr. Trump’s budget would provide $291 million to the Department of Health and Human Services to defeat the disease, but funding would shrink for global programs trying to do the same thing.
Steep cuts to the international affairs budget would include a 22 percent reduction to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, according to the One Campaign, which seeks to eliminate global poverty and preventable diseases.
“Congress will forget this budget by Friday, but the signal it sends to the world’s poorest will be remembered,” Tom Hart, the North America executive director for the campaign, said in a statement. “We can’t end the AIDS crisis by cutting programs proven to fight this disease.”
The budget also includes renewed calls to curb the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs, despite Mr. Trump’s pledge as a candidate that he would make “no cuts” to them.
The budget proposal would cut $818 billion from Medicare over 10 years, in part by squeezing payments to hospitals, nursing homes and home health providers. And it envisions cutting nearly $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, replacing the open-ended federal contribution with grants to states that would essentially cap payments and would not keep pace with rising health care costs.
Cuts to Domestic Programs Like the Special Olympics
Some suggested cuts, like the proposal to slash Special Olympics funding, have become a perennial target.
When the Education Department put funds for the Special Olympics on the chopping block again on Monday, it determined that the funding could be better found privately or at the state level. The department faces a 10 percent overall budget reduction, and has proposed eliminating dozens of programs it says “achieved their original purpose, duplicate other programs, are narrowly focused or are unable to demonstrate effectiveness,” according to budget documents.
The Special Olympics did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, but the effort to eliminate funding for that program and others alarmed and angered Democrats, some of whom opposed it in blunt terms.
“It would be a cold day in hell before I helped pass a budget like this,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the chairwoman of an appropriations subcommittee, said in a statement.