President Trump’s Growth Budget
It will restore the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reforms that made it more profitable to work than not work.
the measure of budget success for the Trump administration is not how much federal assistance is given out, but how many people leave government dependency and join the private labor force as full-fledged workers.
.. the best of government intentions have actually backfired by reducing incentives to work and earn.
.. The expansion of food stamps, welfare, health-insurance subsidies, unemployment assistance, and disability assistance have led to unintended consequences and perverse after-tax incentives, such that it pays more to stay on assistance then to go to work. At the working-poor margin, taking a job may rob you of Obamacare subsidies. So better off not to work.
.. Mulligan estimated that the marginal tax rate — the extra taxes paid and subsidies foregone as the result of working — had increased from 40 percent to 48 percent.
.. increase federal Medicaid spending from $378 billion today to $524 billion in 2027. That ain’t a cut either. It’s an increase.
.. Adding up each and every new year between now and 2027, the federal government will spend about $55 trillion. Do we think that’s enough? And the Trump budget would curb that by about 7 percent, or roughly $4 trillion. That’s all that’s happening.