WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump Administration released it’s fiscal year 2018 budget entitled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” on Tuesday morning which prioritizes money for defense, border security, law enforcement, veterans and school choice.
Documents previewed on Monday included a summary of the plan.
One document entitled “A New Foundation for a Balanced Budget” stated that this budget “will reverse the damaging trends from previous administrations and restore the American Dream.” It asserts that under this budget, by 2027 “publicly held debt will be reduced to less than 60 percent of GDP, the lowest level since 2010, when the economic policies of the last Administration took effect.”
Mulvaney reinforced this in a Monday budget preview briefing. He said that the budget will balance in 10 years under this plan, “the concept we put in place is a general, what we call the two-penny plan, which is that every single year we see those reduced by two cents on the dollar, every single year.”
The document emphasizes that there are no cuts to core Social Security benefits and no cuts to Medicare.
Another document entitled “A New Foundation for American Jobs” laid out a vision for regulatory, welfare, and tax reform. The summary states that fiscal year 2018 budget projections include the Congressional Review Act resolutions that roll back certain Obama Administration regulations. This, the summary states, will generate “annual cost savings of approximately $600 million to $1.2 billion per year.”
The budget reforms the federal SNAP program for an estimated combined savings of $193 billion over 10 years. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reforms are estimated to save $21 billion over ten years. The OMB document states that total welfare reforms in the budget proposal will save $274 billion over 10 years.
The tax reform element of the budget assumes several reforms laid out in the Trump Administration’s recently released tax reform outline. This includes paring down tax brackets from 7 categories to three, cutting the business tax rate to 15 percent and making many small businesses eligible for the 15 percent rate.
A third document “A New Foundation for a Secure Nation” laid out an increase in defense spending and spending on border security immigration enforcement.
Defense spending would be increased by $54 billion or 10 percent more than the 2017 CR President Barack Obama signed into law and the 2018 budget cap. Border security and immigration enforcement is allocated $2.6 billion for “new infrastructure and technology investments in 2018 to give CBP frontline law enforcement officers the tools and technologies they need to deter, deny, identify, track and resolve illegal activity along the border.”
The President’s budget assumes passage of the House-passed American Health Care Act AHCA as well as tax reform, though a tax reform plan is still being formulated.
The full plan was posted to the Office of Management and Budget website at 11 a.m. eastern at the same time Director Mick Mulvaney began a briefing on the details.
This is a developing story.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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