Fricke column: Trump’s budget amounts to economic genocide

Trump’s $4.1 trillion budget is shameful. According to the Associated Press, Trump’s proposed budget contains cuts of $3.6 trillion to domestic programs over 10 years. Budget cuts to the food stamp program would amount to $191 billion over 10 years. Plus, Medicaid gets a $600 billion cut over 10 years as well.
More than 45 million Americans depend on food stamps on a yearly basis. As of March 2017, 69 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid. This includes Americans who are poor, elderly, pregnant women, disabled and children. For me, this is one of the most impeachable offenses that Trump would commit if this proposal passes.
Trump’s presidency is about robbing the poor and giving more money to the rich. I have seen estimates in the media that the wealthy would receive somewhere between $2 trillion to $13 trillion in tax cuts. Why do they need more tax cuts? Most of the wealthy pay less in taxes from their incomes while the poor pay more of their income toward taxes.
The bogus 10-year budget cut plan will never work. Trump’s budget office is using a 3 percent growth factor for America’s economy in this 10-year period. Several economists find this economic growth overly optimistic. It is dangerous to lock in budget numbers for this length of time. There will be no relevance for this 10 years from now.
According to some experts, Trump’s budget contains a $2 trillion mistake or it may be a budget gimmick. In this case, the experts see it as a budget gimmick. The Trump administration is using $2 trillion in tax cuts to either add to economic growth or make up for the tax cuts. You can’t have both. Trump’s budget people also claim that there will be a $16 trillion budget surplus by 2027 from all of the tax cuts. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, must have gone to the G.W. Bush school of fuzzy math. Delusion runs deep in the Trump administration.
If the Trump administration believes the budget can be balanced in 10 years due to economic growth, they know nothing about America’s current economy. That’s not going to happen.
As long as we have this same broken capitalistic system, economic growth will remain slow at 2 percent or less. Economic growth during the next 10 years, if any, will be interrupted by another recession that will be worse than the one in 2008. The stock market is riding high right now due to Trump’s deregulation-themed economic policies. The overvalued stock market will crash sooner or later due to Wall Street’s high-risk debt refinancing. America’s economy grows very little due to its debt-based economy. Long-term stagnant wages also contributes to a no-growth economy.
Other cuts in Trump’s budget include highway funding, farm crop insurance, medical research and other domestic programs.
Trump’s budget also includes $1.6 billion for the wall on Mexico’s border and $200 billion in infrastructure spending with a possible $900 billion in private investments for infrastructure. There is a question of privatizing some of these projects. Where are the commitments for this? This is an easy fake promise.
The AP and other news media did not say much about the military budget. I assume that Trump is sticking to his $54 billion increase.
I hope that the negative reaction to Trump’s budget by Senate Republicans prevails.
On another note, Trump’s first overseas diplomatic visit was an edgy adventure in diplomacy by the rookie president. According to the Associated Press, Trump received a surprisingly lavish welcome to Saudi Arabia. Maybe it was a celebration of the $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
According to The New York Times, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, quickly negotiated this arms deal with the Saudis on May 1 at the White House. These continued arms sales to Saudi Arabia are always controversial. In one of her recent columns, Amy Goodman points out that the Saudi arms sales motivate terrorists like the ones that hit the concert in Manchester, England. It has been reported that thousands of innocent civilians have died in Yemen due to the Saudi-led coalition fighting terrorist factions. The U. S. involvement in the Middle East has resulted in the same atrocities.
Trump’s irrational behavior is all over the budget. Trump’s budget is so outrageous that it must have been a fantasy originating from his incurable narcissism. Trump’s budget clearly represents economic genocide directed at America’s poor.
Randy Fricke is an environmental advocate and a political activist who lives in New Castle. He is the author of “If I Were President/Saving Main Street America.”

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