The Trump budget:
War is up!
$639 billion in total defense spending, including both base budget and Overseas Contingency Operations (the war budget) — a $52 billion increase.
Increases of 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Veterans Affairs. That includes funding for a border wall, $1.5 billion more to remove undocumented immigrants, $314 million to hire more Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and a $667 million reduction in grants to state and local governments, including FEMA grants.
Science is down.
Huge cuts to medical and science research spending, including a $6 billion or 18 percent reduction in the National Institutes for Health budget, a $900 million cut to the Energy Department’s Office of Science, a $250 million cut to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants for research and education, and eliminating the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
A 31 percent cut in the Environmental Protection Agency budget, from $8.2 billion down to $5.7 billion, the lowest level (after adjusting for inflation) in 40 years and below where even congressional Republicans wanted it. More than 50 programs would be eliminated, as would 3,200 jobs. Specifically, the budget “discontinues funding for the Clean Power Plan, international climate change programs, climate change research and partnership programs, and related efforts,” and reduces Superfund cleanup funding.
Art is to be eliminated.
Total elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, the United States Institute of Peace, and 14 other agencies.
Follow the money, people. This is a president who wants to gut the country and start a war to distract us.
Wow. The US defense budget is already bigger than the next 7 or 8 countries combined (I’ve read different numbers, but it’s still BIG) and still it’s not enough?
Stupid people, think they’re only safe with a gun under their pillow, and still scared.
Hey! You people knew what you were going to get when you elected him………insanity with a handful of pussy! Are we Great yet?
Trump says our military has been destroyed under Obama. The opposite is true.
• The US has 19 aircraft carriers, 10 of those are nuclear powered Nimitz class; plus 2 Gerald Ford class under construction with 7 more ordered. Each of the big carriers has a fleet of escort vessels and about 75 aircraft.
• There is only one other nuclear powered carrier, owned by France. No one else has one. The Russians used to have two conventional powered carriers, but sold one to the Chinese so that they now have one each.
• US has 18 Ohio class missile subs carrying 24 missiles each plus 36 Los Angeles class attack subs
• Russia has maybe 6 missile subs and 4 attack active.
• UK and China have about the same as Russia
• US; 13,444 military aircraft. Russia; 3,547. China; 2,942
• Active military manpower: China; 2,335,000. US; 1,400,000 then India then Russia at 766,000
• Nuclear warheads: Russia has more active; 1,880 to 1,400 give or take. Ours are better and better able to be delivered so that we can each kill the other by a factor of say, 20. Check out Tsar Bomba
• We spend over 1 trillion dollars per year on national defense; more than just about everyone else combined yet Trump wants a 10% increase. Crazy
Trump’s next tweet will warn that an army of giant land walking squid have been developed by a crazed Professor in Minnesota! We need a bigger army!!!!!
This is what really depresses me about the modern world – large numbers of people are actively working to make it worse. I can just about cope with things getting worse through decay or neglect or the random fluctuations of circumstance, but when human beings set their minds and resources not to improving the world but to ruining it… there are few words that can do the depression justice.
And judging by his behaviour so far, fill his own pockets while he’s at it.
Yes this country is so unsafe, so everyone needs a gun to protect themselves, this country has the most deaths by gun per person so everyone needs a gin to protect themselves./sarc
Never seeing the internal contradictions within that attitude. “Guns are dangerous so we need guns for safety” *i roll my eyes*
I use “gin” to protect myself. A gun would not be nearly as useful. :)
It’s not just this president, of course. Don’t forget the oil moguls, investment bankers (Goldman-Sachs), politicians, and other globalization billionaires in the oligarchy that are in a position to make a huge amount of money. Not just because of defense spending, but policies that they are determining that directly improve their financial positions.
Congenital cynic, #8
I would suggest you also take advantage of those nifty little “concealed curry” laws your country has, to whip out a lamb biriani in public.
congenital, I on the other hand prefer a nice Islay single malt, though I happily admit that my preference ruins the joke.
I would say “this way lies madness” except you are. apparently, already there.
Partially cross posted from the Political Madness All the Time thread:
Trump’s budget cuts both meals on wheels and home-heating assistance funds for low-income people. Poor, elderly, and disabled people he does not manage to starve may freeze to death in the winter.
War is good for business.
Trump’s brain, Bannon thinks (for imaginary values of thinking):
1. We will have a war between civilizations, 1.4 billion Muslims versus 2.1 billion xians.
2. A war with China, the other superpower.
This is all gibbering nonsense.
The Muslims aren’t a unified block and spend a huge amount of time fighting, among themselves.
A war with China would destroy both us, them, and much of the world.
It’s more likely we will start a war with someone much smaller, as usual. Maybe Iran, Lebanon, Iraq again, Grenada if anyone can find it on a map, North Korea, Russia, etc..
I’m expecting at least one somewhere.
The budget is appalling but not as bad as it could be.
Cutting those programs while increasing the military means, we are able to defend something that isn’t worth defending any more.
NIH has a large budget for one reason.
Even Tea Party moron politicians get sick and die.
NIH is a big part of the reason why our life spans are long and getting longer.
They are literally cutting their own throats here.
Hair Furor, a.k.a. #45, is not so much Hitler as Generalissimo Leopoldo Galtieri (albeit with a much, much, much bigger budget). I expect his next move with be to go to war with New Brunswick to take Machias Seal Island back.
No doubt all those nuclear-powered carriers would come in handy for this operation.
[/snark]
They wanted to own the world and now that they think they possess it they’re looking to own the future…
Except there ain’t gonna be much of it left to own.
Everyone in the USA should join the armed forces. Everyone.
Food, shelter, clothing are all supplied.
Full training and employment.
Opportunities for travel.
etc.
That’s where the money is going, might as well follow it.
I believe that’s what passes for a Republican healthcare plan.
#18: and have to listen to those morbid goddamned hymns? Honestly? I’d rather kill myself.
Trump’s budget: the dream of a paranoid strongman and a vicious Scrooge: “It reflects a kind of banana republic militarism designed to fleece taxpayers, enrich defense contractors, [punish] disloyal agencies and screw the poor at every turn”.
@18 reminds me of the “Join the Army, Travel to Foreign Lands, Meet Interesting People, and kill them” signs of some years ago.
Eliminating support for the arts is bad enough, but abolishing the Legal Services Corporation, which provides most of the funding for non-criminal legal aid throughout the country, will be devastating for poor folks with legal troubles.
What about NSF funding? Any news?
Trump is crazy enough to start WW III.
Maybe he really did become a Christian?
aaronbaker #23
While increasing DHS and anti-immigrant laws which, combined with gutting legal-defense for the poor, allows us to line the pockets of corporations through private prisons *and* round up a shit load of brown people in the process.
For them that’s win win win, win win win win.
He also wants to privatize air traffic control. What could go wrong,huh?
in making budgets and policy it is easy ignore how and why things got the way they are. It is easy to ignore history.
The budget is an appalling mistake, it reduces the overall strength of the people to strengthen the military which even as proposed will probably not even achieve their desired results. The military is made of human beings and it is very easy to stretch it past the breaking point. It is something lazy politicians seem all to prone to do.
Add the reducing of financial regulations to the distorted budget the only thing I can see ahead will be a colossal economic disaster that could make the 30’s look tame by comparison the only real question is when will it happen and what will set it off.
uncle frogy
It has just occurred to me that Trump may very well be doing what Obama should have been doing all along, just from the right. One of Obama’s big mistakes was that his *starting* point would be to lay out what he actually wanted. Then he’d inevitably be dragged to the right when the bargaining started.
Trump may very well be starting from a point that he knows he’s not going to get, figuring that “doing the deal” will put him more where he actually wants to be. That’s more what I’d expect from a businessman (not that Trump is a particularly good one).
his record is one of a businessman who made it a habit of going bankrupt
this budget continues along the same lines his tax proposals also support his record of business management practices
we will see if the republican will go along with him for their own selfish reasons or be more reasonable.
I see little reason to be optimistic.
uncle frogy
I seem to remember an empire that spent too much on their military and not enough on their people.
They collapsed.
Hmmm, I think it was called…the USSR.
chigau @18,
Prison offers many of the same benefits. And Jeff Sessions seems to want to provide that opportunity to an ever-increasing population.
What a Maroon @ 32:
Yes. Yes, he does.
And where will that new war be?
Tillerson says diplomacy with North Korea has ‘failed’; Pyongyang warns of war
Yeah, that seems like as good a place as any. I wonder how the Russian government and the Chinese government would react to Korean War 2.0.
@ chigau (違う), comment #18
That was pretty much my plan until my late teens. Alas, I didn’t figure the army and navy would particularly want someone who came preloaded with PTSD (among other things). In 2002, when I turned 18, that was probably true. If I’d tried to join up a couple of years later, I’d probably have gotten in, despite being noticeably more fucked-in-the-head.
In another couple of years, I may get another shot, despite being in my mid-30’s and staggeringly unfit. They’ll probably be taking anybody who knows which end of a rifle to point at somebody else, just to keep our heads above water in Trumpco’s wars.
I am not optimistic about the future.
What I want? No. What the assholes who voted for Trump want? Yeah, probably.
Caine,
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. It’s bad enough that recreational users are targeted, but it’s absolutely unconscionable that they’re going after people with medical needs.
(Note to self: I have to start hanging out at your place more often.)
I don’t see why the armed forces should have any choice in who to enlist.
The militaryses should be obliged to take everyone then train and place everyone where they are best suited.
Feeding, clothing and housing them the whole time.
Here’s my question: what happens when the USD collapses? China is moving to give the world an alternative for the carry trade, and (I believe) within ten years the USD is going to be seriously weakened, and (again I believe) within 20 years the USD will no longer the currency of international trade. How is that massive military going to be maintained with no tax base, and without the rest of the world subsidizing the US dollar?
codeslinger2001:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/800-pound_gorilla
Remember all those promises to build infrastructure, the one part of the Trump platform that was halfway reasonable? The Department of Transportation and HUD are taking a 13% cut, the Department of the Interior a 12% cut, because clearly there’s excess there when the budget can’t even handle basic maintenance and the ASCE is handing out D ratings left and right.
@John Morales:
Every empire believes that before they fall. When to money to pay for the legions is no more, so are the legions.
Knabb wrote:
It was only reasonable if you didn’t look at what specifically they were proposing. The infrastructure projects were supposed to partnerships with the private sector. In other words, they’re planning on giving big tax cuts to private toll road operators and accepting a promise that they’re do road maintenance.
raven@31,
Kennedy explicitly applies this observation to both the USSR (still in existence when he wrote), and the USA.
I wish @andersoncooper, @jaketapper and @cnn, while doing good work on the “facts are a thing” front, would realise the wiretap tweets are meant to distract from Trump’s horrible policies being proposed right now. Right from the Putin playbook. Divide et impera.
43:
To be fair, the best maintained road in America is the NJT (New Jersey turnpike I95) with the highest toll per mile in the country.
Still , tolls not the solution. We have a thing called gasoline tax that is targeted to road maintenance. Tolls are a form of double tax
Our highways are our version of the pyramids, a massive construction project to last millenia
Focusing on Trump = Focusing on Obama = falling for the misdirection, allowing the Illusionists and assistants freedom to move the mountains around, as if suddenly by Magic! (I am fully aware of the strength of the pull toward that focus)
Good. Action.
http://secure.artsactionfund.org/page/s/trump-arts-petition
follow-up to Rorschach @45
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39300191
Cross posted from a comment by SC on the Political Madness All the Time thread.
GCHQ can get White House press secretary Sean Spicer (and Trump?) to stop saying that Obama used GCHQ to spy on Trump Tower, but they can’t get Fox News hosts to shut up … nor InfoWars, nor Breitbart, nor any other rightwing “news” sources that seem to have a direct line into Trump’s brain.