Donald Trump’s Budget Is ‘Nasty’ And A ‘Scam’ According To Fortune, New York Times, And The Tea Party
President Donald Trump took to Twitter a few moments ago to hail his budget proposals as having received “great reviews by everyone except the Democrats.” Trump claims that his budget proposals “have taken care of our military,” and that we can now “fix our roads, tunnels, airports, and more.” It is difficult to understand who exactly President Trump means when he says that “everyone” has given the budget “great reviews,” because today’s news headlines suggest the exact opposite. Even Fox 32 is critical of Trump’s plans. They report that Trump’s budget shows that he is “formally retreating from last year’s promises to balance the federal budget.”
Fox claims that Trump’s plans increase military spending at the cost of undermining America’s social safety net. Of course, Fox is not the only media outlet critical of President Trump’s plans. The New York Times calls Trump’s budget “nasty,” pointing out that it will massively increase the federal deficit whilst cutting back on “essential government services,” and damaging welfare services including Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and transportation. They go on to claim that Trump’s budget takes out a huge mortgage on future generations of American’s, and when combined with recent tax-reforms the budget sees “the greatest transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich in generations.”
Our infrastructure plan has been put forward and has received great reviews by everyone except, of course, the Democrats. After many years we have taken care of our Military, now we have to fix our roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and more. Bipartisan, make deal Dems?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 13, 2018
Fortune is equally scathing about President Trump’s budget and infrastructure plans. They claim that Trump’s plans are a “scam” saying that “when the president makes big plans and claims that someone else will pay, he’s scamming us.” For the sake of clarity, Trump claims that a $200 billion investment by the federal government will act as “seed money” encouraging private companies to invest $1.5 trillion in America’s infrastructure. Fortune claims that this is a fallacy, especially given that the federal investment amounts to only $20 billion per year for 10 years.
“Just like Mexico won’t pay for a border wall, private investors won’t pay for roads, bridges, and energy infrastructure just because the president says they will.”
If the media are scathing about President Trump’s budget plans, you would at least expect that he would have universal support from within the GOP. It would seem that that is not the case.
Hard-Right Republican’s From The Tea Party Slam Trump’s Budget Deal
As reported by Newsweek, Representative Mark Meadows, Chairman of the Tea Party-allied House Freedom Caucus, slammed Trump’s plans to grow the federal deficit by spending trillions of extra dollars. Meadows claims that Trump’s plans amount to a “cave in” by the president, and says that “the swamp won, and the American taxpayer lost.” The Freedom Caucus also released a statement criticizing Trump’s plans to increase the size of government.
“Growing the size of government by 13 percent adds to the swamp instead of draining it. This is not what the American people sent us here to do.”
Politico also weighs in with criticism of Trump’s budget plans. They claim that President Trump’s budget and infrastructure plans “take aim at blue states.” In effect, they claim that Republican voting rural states will benefit from Trump’s infrastructure plans, whilst urban areas, where 86 percent of the American population live, will be left to “fight over scraps.”
CNN sums up President Trump’s budget plans rather nicely, if somewhat sarcastically. They point out that “presidential budgets are more like political fan fiction than passable agendas” and they claim that President Trump’s budget is from a “parallel universe.”
President Trump is often accused of being a fan of “alternative facts,” so his claims that his budget proposals have been received “great reviews by everyone,” seems to fit nicely into the sphere of alternative facts.
