When the Budget Director Calls "Cut!"

Government budgets are convoluted, and no one is ever going to be happy about everything in them when an administration trots its new budget out.  So, to go through what the Trump administration released on Thursday and pick out the complaints -- and yesterday it was mostly complaints -- would just be like typing a laundry list.  But I think two things stand out to speak for it all.

The first is not just that the Meals for Wheel program providing food for seniors was cut -- but remarkably, the explanation for it in some ways is even worse. It just "wasn't showing any results," said budget director Mick Mulvaney about those annoying seniors.  If you needed something to show how cold-hearted and petty the new budget is, you could point to a lot of things, like cutting completely the relatively small amount given to public broadcasting, Council on Homelessness, museums, Institute of Peace, the National Endowment of the Arts, Chemical Safety Board, and more, but cutting food for seniors because it's not "showing any results" is about as spot-on a poster child for it as you can get.

By the way, the amount of money that goes to feed a senior for an entire year is equal to the cost of that senior being in the hospital for ONE DAY.  I'm just going to guess that the Trump and Director Mulvaney definition of "showing results" are different than most people's.

And the second thing that stands out from the budget is that for all of these 100% cuts to Meals on Wheels, public broadcasting, museums, the homeless, peace, and chemical safety, and a massive and shocking 28% cut to the State Department, as well as a 31% cut to the EPA, and a 21% cut to both agriculture and labor, none of this reduces the budget at all.  That's because, among other things, there is a huge 10% increase of $54 billion dollars to the already immense military budget.

"Vindictive" was the way Steve Bell described the budget -- and Mr. Bell knows a great deal about budgets.  After all, he was the Senate budget director for many years, and not as a partisan liberal Democrat.  Actually, he worked on the Republican side during the Ronald Reagan years, and is currently a senior adviser at the.bi-partisan Policy Center.

Just to reiterate, "Vindictive" was his word.

(By the way, just for whmsy's sake, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is the same fellow I wrote about a few days ago who was echoing Trump's words that Obama jobless numbers were fake.  Which means he painting himself into a major corner -- either the new jobless numbers will stay low, proving the Obama Administration right, or the jobless numbers under Trump will skyrocket up.)

So far, the reaction to the budget -- and to the reasoning for the petty, vindictive decisions -- has been very negative, across the board.  And it's hard to see a great deal of support even from the full GOP, most especially at the state level.  With so many cuts to these federal programs, the burden will now be on the states (yes, including Republican ones) to deal with the fall-out of carrying for the poor, elderly and needy.

It just wasn't "showing any results." All those darn old people, I guess they all just stayed old.  And sick and hungry.  And then died.  It just wasn't showing any results.

Sort of like the first seven weeks of the Trump administration.  

Vindictive.  The whole budget.  Vindictive.  Seems like a spot-on description.

And the thing is, we are not surprised.