Thread: Popular Domestic Programs Face Ax Under First Trump Budget

Popular Domestic Programs Face Ax Under First Trump Budget

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and ALAN RAPPEPORT
FEB. 17, 2017

Former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, was confirmed as White House budget director on Thursday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The White House budget office has drafted a hit list of programs that President Trump could eliminate to trim domestic spending, including longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

Work on the first Trump administration budget has been delayed as the budget office awaited Senate confirmation of former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, as budget director. Now that he is in place, his office is ready to move ahead with a list of nine programs to eliminate, an opening salvo in the Trump administration’s effort to reorder the government and increase spending on defense and infrastructure.

Most of the programs cost under $500 million annually, a pittance for a government that is projected to spend about $4 trillion this year. And a few are surprising, even though most if not all have been perennial targets for conservatives.

Mr. Trump has spoken volubly about the nation’s drug problems, yet the list includes the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, which dispenses grants to reduce drug use and drug trafficking. And despite Mr. Trump’s vocal promotion of American exports, the list includes the Export-Import Bank, which has guaranteed loans to foreign customers of American companies since the 1930s.

While the total amount of annual savings of roughly $2.5 billion would be comparatively small, administration officials want to highlight the agencies in their coming budget proposal as examples of misuse of taxpayer dollars. An internal memo circulated within the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday, and obtained by The New York Times, notes that the list could change. Proposals for more extensive cuts in cabinet-level agencies are expected to follow.

During his campaign, Mr. Trump promised large but unspecified cuts to rein in the deficit, even as he promised to protect programs for his working-class voters and to drastically expand spending on the military, roads, bridges and airports. While the memo in no way resolves that contradiction, it suggests that he could lean toward a small-government philosophy that conservatives like Mr. Mulvaney have fiercely advocated.

The Office of Management and Budget is currently operating with a skeleton staff; Mr. Mulvaney was only confirmed on Thursday. Still, officials there plan to ask agencies targeted for elimination for their responses by next Friday and to finalize the list by March 13, according to a person familiar with the process.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the proposed cuts. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said this month that the administration would release a detailed budget in the next few weeks. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has spoken about government spending only in general terms.

“A balanced budget is fine,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News last month. “But sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going.”

He added: “I want a balanced budget eventually. But I want to have a strong military.”

The president’s hope to increase military spending, shared by many Republicans, will probably be at the center of the looming budget battle in Congress. Funding for the current fiscal year is set to expire on April 28. The administration is expected to make a supplemental request before then for money to go to the military — and possibly a wall on the Mexican border.

But under the Budget Control Act of 2011, spending on defense and domestic programs is capped. Democrats will demand that any lifting of those caps for the military be matched by a higher ceiling for domestic programs, setting the stage for a legislative logjam or a showdown over whether to preserve the parliamentary stalling tactic known as the Senate filibuster.

Steve Bell, a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee who is now with the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the programs identified in the memo are standard targets for Republican budget-cutters but of little significance in the government’s financial picture.

“It’s sad in a way because those programs aren’t causing the deficit,” Mr. Bell said. “These programs don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

One surprise for some close watchers of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign is the inclusion of the Export-Import Bank on the O.M.B.’s list. Other Republican candidates had promised to eliminate the bank, a favorite target of House conservatives like Mr. Mulvaney. Conservatives, led by the billionaire Koch brothers, have run a multimillion-dollar campaign to kill the bank, which guarantees loans for overseas customers of American corporations, by denouncing it as “crony capitalism.”

But Mr. Trump was more circumspect during the campaign, saying he favored programs to promote American exports. The biggest recipient of the bank’s assistance — and its biggest booster — is the aerospace giant Boeing, which President Trump visited on Friday and lavishly praised.

But the president has stacked his White House with budget hawks. Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s most senior advisers, was a top aide to Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general and spent much of his Senate career trying to rein in government spending.

For director of budget policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, Mr. Trump chose Paul Winfree, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation. In its own proposed budget blueprint, the Heritage Foundation recommended eliminating virtually the same programs listed in the Office of Management and Budget memo, along with a long list of others.

Many of those programs have been attacked by conservatives since the Republican “revolution” of 1994. Led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the House of Representatives at the time repeatedly went after funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose supporters dragged Big Bird and Kermit the Frog to Capitol Hill to make their case.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, a Depression-era independent agency aimed at developing some of the poorest parts of the country, has also been a target.

These agencies have managed to survive partly because of powerful patrons in the Senate, including the late Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia. Even now, with 48 seats in the Senate, Democrats have considerable leverage to save popular programs.

Backers of the National Endowment for the Arts are likely to put up a particularly vigorous fight.

“The public wants to see agencies like the N.E.A. continue,” said Robert L. Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization. “There is always a debate, but there has been agreement among Republicans and Democrats that funding for the arts is a good thing, and it has been kept in place.”

Other agencies on the budget office’s list of cuts include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which finances programs run by AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps. The memo also proposed reducing funding for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on urban development.

Stephen Moore, another Heritage Foundation economist who advised Mr. Trump during his campaign, acknowledged that powerful constituencies were behind many of the programs that are on the chopping block. But he said now that Republicans are finally in control of the government, they must make a valiant effort to fulfill the promises they have been making to voters for years.

“I think it’s an important endeavor to try to get rid of things that are unnecessary,” Mr. Moore said. “The American public has a lot of contempt for how government is run in Washington, in no small part because there is so much waste.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/u...et-office.html

All these expenses paid for by US taxpayers add up...chop chop...get a BIG AX President Trump.

Originally Posted by Beezer

All these expenses paid for by US taxpayers add up...chop chop...get a BIG AX President Trump.

Almost every one of those "programs" are money laundering operations designed to allow politicians to reward friends!

They all need to be ended, including the National Endowment for the Arts which brought us such things as Andres Serrano's anti-Christian bigotry called "Piss Christ", Robert Mapplethorpe’s homosexual display called “The Perfect Moment”, and Annie Sprinkle’s pornographic performances at a New York theater.

JWK





80% of green energy money taxed away from hard working American Citizens WENT TO our Washington Establishment’s donors!

An internal memo circulated within the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday, and obtained by The New York Times, notes that the list could change.

Says a lot about the swamp.

What we are talking about are appropriations not authorized by our Constitution, one of which is funding what is alleged to be "art".

And what does our Constitution say with regard to this?


Under our written Constitution we find Congress has been granted power :

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts“ and what is the limited way by which Congress is authorized to do this? “…by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” .

Note that "useful Arts" in our Constitution is a reference to new discoveries, advances in the manufacturing of goods, husbandry, etc.

Congress has not been granted power to tax hard working wage earners living in Harlem, South Philly, Newark and Camden, N.J., and other inner cities, and then hand these people’s hard earned wages over to privileged individuals to finance their pursuits of happiness.



In fact see Annals of Congress Feb 7th,1792 Rep Page the extent of Congress’s powers regarding the “fine arts and sciences”

"The framers of the Constitution guarded so much against a possibility of such partial preferences as might be given, if Congress had the right to grant them, that, even to encourage learning and useful arts, the granting of patents is the extent of their power. And surely nothing could be less dangerous to the sovereignty or interest of the individual States than the encouragement which might be given to ingenious inventors or promoters of valuable inventions in the arts and sciences. The encouragement which the General Government might give to the fine arts, to commerce, to manufactures, and agriculture, might, if judiciously applied, redound to the honor of Congress, and the splendor, magnificence, and real advantage of the United States; but the wise framers of our Constitution saw that, if Congress had the power of exerting what has been called a royal munificence for these purposes, Congress might, like many royal benefactors, misplace their munificence; might elevate sycophants, and be inattentive to men unfriendly to the views of Government; might reward the ingenuity of the citizens of one State, and neglect a much greater genius of another. A citizen of a powerful State it might be said, was attended to, whilst that of one of less weight in the Federal scale was totally neglected. It is not sufficient, to remove these objections, to say, as some gentlemen have said, that Congress in incapable of partiality or absurdities, and that they are as far from committing them as my colleagues or myself. I tell them the Constitution was formed on a supposition of human frailty, and to restrain abuses of mistaken powers.”

Trump is right on the mark in wanting to end the enslavement of one group of individuals to finance another groups' pursuits of happiness.


JWK


"To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen and with the other to bestow upon favored individuals, [our national endowment for the arts group] to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes is none the less a robbery because it is done under forms of law and called taxation." ____ Savings and Loan Assc. v. Topeka,(1875).

Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation

We have a quite a bit on this redistribution scam, organization..

La Raza Funding in Bail Out Bill ???
https://www.alipac.us/f9/la-raza-fun...05/#post694481


New plan gives government first dibs on foreclosures
Kyle Clark
https://www.alipac.us/f19/new-plan-g...t-dibs-202028/

DOJ To Give Money From Bank Of America Settlement To Liberal Activist Groups
​https://www.alipac.us/f9/doj-give-mo...laraza-310155/

The fact is, our federal government taxing and spending to fund the “Arts” violates our First Amendment protection! Let me explain.

In 1998, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in the case National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, that NEA grants are constitutional if content does not offend "...general standards of decency..." But the Court not only ignored the absence of a power granted to Congress by our Constitution to fund the promotion of art, it likewise ignored the carefully limited wording in our Constitution granting power to Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." and how shall this be done? "... by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Is this not a "limited" grant of power?

Aside from the fact that our Constitution does not grant a power to Congress finance the promotion of art, how does federal funding of the arts violate a taxpayer’s guarantee that Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech?

Federal funding does so by allowing person A, who has received federal grant money taxed away from person B, to vocalize and express their opinions and feelings in a more forceful manner than person B who has been taxed to finance person A’s freedom of expression. The fact is, while B’s financial resources have been diminished by our federal government to fund A’s freedom of expression ___ resources which may have been used by B to finance his/her own expressions and feelings ___ they have been reduced by the hand of the federal government in its quest to fund A’s freedom of expression. In clear and simple language, federal funding of the arts provides a select group with a powerful megaphone to express their opinions and feelings, while such funding is forcefully taken from those who may object to the expressions and opinions spewed out over a federally funded megaphone which today has a dominant socialist, progressive, and leftist drumbeat.

And this brings us back to the danger of allowing the federal government to engage in such funding as stated by Representative John Page:

"The framers of the Constitution guarded so much against a possibility of such partial preferences as might be given, if Congress had the right to grant them, that, even to encourage learning and useful arts, the granting of patents is the extent of their power. … the wise framers of our Constitution saw that, if Congress had the power of exerting what has been called a royal munificence for these purposes, Congress might, like many royal benefactors, misplace their munificence; might elevate sycophants, and be inattentive to men unfriendly to the views of Government …Annals of Congress Feb 7th,1792 Rep Page

Trump needs to end federal funding of the “Arts” and restore equal freedom of expression.

JWK


As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of darkness.___Supreme Court Justice William Douglas