This post The Truth About Trump’s “Skinny Budget” appeared first on Daily Reckoning.
[Ed. Note: To see exactly what this former Reagan insider has to say about Trump and the fiscal threats from politics and the debt ceiling, David Stockman is sending out a copy of his book Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back to any American willing to listen – before it is too late. To learn how to get your free copy CLICK HERE.]
I’ve been betting on the Great Disrupter, I find myself validated once again by the so-called “skinny budget” issued by the White House on Thursday.
After all, if you wanted to dump a truckload of sand into Washington’s fiscal gears, a plan to shift $54 billion from the shallow end of the Swamp (State, EPA, HUD etc.) to the deepest end (Pentagon) would be just the ticket.
And in the process you could throw your budget director overboard on day #1, which would be another plausible goal if disruption is your modus operandi. Otherwise, a credible fiscal spokesman might come in extremely handy in an environment where a bruising $20 trillion debt ceiling battle is just around the corner and where your multi-trillion “stimulus” plans are crushing up against inherited deficits of $10 trillion over the next decade.
Indeed, when you have already run-up Uncle Sam’s net debt by $260 billion during your first 50 days in office and will be out of cash before Memorial Day, you might want to have one of the GOP’s most experienced and competent budget hawks at your side and fit as a fiddle.
But not the Donald.
He just sent his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director, Mick Mulvaney, right into a nest of budgetary machine gun fire on Capitol Hill. I held that same position under Ronald Reagan, so I have some sympathy for the man.
Mulvaney will be eviscerated politically within weeks, and for no ascertainable purpose. The Trump skinny budget is already DOA, and couldn’t get 30 votes in the House on a secret ballot.
I should make clear I’m 100% in favor of every one of these cuts, and a lot more, too. For instance, I wouldn’t cut the Commerce Department by merely 16% or $1.5 billion; I’d ashcan the whole joint. Free enterprise doesn’t need thousands of bureaucrats to help it do “commerce.”
Likewise, the whole Agriculture Department is a relic of the New Deal. Farmers on $250,000 combines harvesting 16 rows of corn at a time by GPS navigation don’t need $23 billion per year from the taxpayers or even the $18 billion contained in Trump’s skinny budget.
But since even the $54 billion of nondefense cuts Trump has identified involve deep surgery without anesthesia on numerous bloated appendages of Big Government, the idea that such savings should be wasted on the Pentagon is downright appalling.
Imperial Washington already spends $600 billion on defense, which happens to be 10X what the Russkies spend, and even then it wastes upwards of …read more
Source:: Daily Reckoning feed
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