Trump’s newest budget would take food away from working families

  There are dozens of programs on the chopping block in the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal. Yet the administration’s most blatant attempt to gut the programs on which American families depend comes in the form of additional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program. The proposed budget contains a devastating $182 billion cut to SNAP over the next decade, a reduction of approximately 28 percent compared with the baseline level estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

Laurence M. Vance: Trump’s Democratic budget

  Although the Constitution doesn’t mention a federal budget, according to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, the president must annually submit a proposed federal budget to Congress for the next fiscal year by the first Monday in February. Because the government’s fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30, the budget submitted in February is actually for the next fiscal year that begins in October. But since it is not possible for a new president, who takes office on January 20, to submit a budget within a few days of taking office, he is given extra time to submit his first budget.

Left Behind: How the Trump budget fails rural communities

  Rural communities across the country continue to struggle to find the resources they need to strengthen their economies, improve quality of life, and maintain vibrant local connections. These communities rely on federal programs that support local economies and health and safety improvements.

Despite promises to the rural and small-town voters who supported him, President Donald Trump’s new budget blueprint delivers a massive blow to these programs, cutting or eliminating essential services for rural Americans.

John Norris: Trump’s siege on international development

  Up until the news dropped in February that the Trump administration plans to boost military spending by $54 billion and make cuts of up to 40 percent to foreign aid, the international development community was in overdrive to put its work in the best light. Development experts had been making the case for foreign assistance in terms that they hoped would resonate with the Trump administration—which on the diplomatic and development side consists of only one appointee, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

  Some tried quoting Ronald Reagan to make their case: “Our national interests are inextricably tied to the security and development of our friends and allies.” Others argued that to “Make America Great Again” would require renewed investments in Africa through new energy projects and expanded investment opportunities to help shape the United States’ future markets. And in The New York Times, former Republican Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) pushed to maintain support for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, insisting that buttressing weak states by combating AIDS is “a key element of America’s national security strategy.”

Harry Stein: President Obama’s budget resets the fiscal debate

  President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2015 shifts the political conversation toward our most urgent national problem: creating jobs and growing the economy. This should have been our political system’s primary focus for the past several years, but Congress instead allowed itself to get sidetracked by a misguided focus on austerity and debt. Presidents cannot control the economy, and President Obama does not have a magic wand to make Congress enact his budget. But presidents do have the power to set the agenda and focus attention on issues of their choosing. Setting the agenda on the question of how to grow the economy is among the most important aspects of President Obama’s new budget.

Budget agreement is imperfect, but a good first step

  Budgets are about choices. The budget agreement announced by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) makes plenty of choices—many of them good, others less so—but the sum total of their choices results in a package that moves the country in a positive direction. The Murray-Ryan deal would, for the time being, put the seemingly constant fiscal crises to rest and roll back some of the damaging austerity spending cuts that have been undermining the economic recovery.

Scott Lilly: The choice Congress won’t face up to

  Back in college, I had a textbook entitled Decision by Debate. The underlying premise of the book was that if you had a good debate, you were likely to end up with a good decision. It strikes me that the inverse of this lesson – that if you have a bad debate, you’ll end up with a bad decision – may explain much of the problem this country is having with budget policy.

  Much of what is commonly being said about the federal budget – including the causes of the mismatch of  revenues and expenditures and the options we have for resolving that imbalance – is either mischaracterization or flatly wrong. When you slice through all the heated rhetoric, the budgetary choices we face may be painful, but they are actually much simpler to make than the debate would suggest.

Scott Lilly: House Republicans still haven’t learned lessons from their 1995 government shutdown

  House Republicans have been contemplating their next move in the fiscal showdown this week as they huddle during their annual retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. There is a real sense of Armageddon in the air. President Obama took them on directly with respect to the central issue on their agenda, preserving low tax rates for high income individuals, and won—not by a little but by a lot.

Scott Lilly: Rep. Mack’s ‘Penny Plan’ disguises painful choices

  Budgets are about choices. Families must decide whether to replace the car or cut back on meals out and entertainment. Those of us who are weathering hard times must make far more difficult choices. But the fundamentals of budgeting are always about weighing alternatives and finding the one that is either the most enjoyable or the least painful.

  Then there are pretend budgets. The most egregious example may be the “Penny Plan” introduced in 2011 by Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), which now has more than 70 co-sponsors, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and is not really a budget at all. It contains the numbers but not the choices. Worse, it attempts to conceal from the public the kind of pain it would endure, particularly in states such as the one Rep. Mack represents, Florida.

Cameron Smith: If you built it, they paid for it

  President Obama recently noted that "[i]f you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own." But the President's argument did not stop with the assertion that economic success fundamentally requires paying customers. Instead, the President essentially argued that the successful person somehow "owes" the government for the fact that he or she makes a good living.

  For most businesses in America, making money is a fairly simple concept even if it is challenging to execute. In short, the business makes a product or provides a service that customers value more than the money in their pockets. As a result, the business profits and the customer receives something he or she values. But where is the government in that exchange?