Mick Mulvaney, calls for $33 billion in new defense and border spending — and $18 billion in cuts to other priorities, such as medical research and jobs programs.
.. But it appeared that few on the Hill shared the White House’s appetite to flirt with a government shutdown over the border wall, which Democrats have pledged to oppose and which even some conservative Republicans object to on fiscal grounds.
.. cuts intended to offset the defense spending, including more than $7 billion from labor, health and education programs. Many of the cuts would be aimed at key priorities for Democrats, such as money for global reproductive health education, but they also take aim at more broadly popular agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
.. Democrats also scoffed at the idea that the White House would ask Congress to cut widely supported domestic programs to pay for the wall despite Trump’s campaign pledge to make Mexico pay.
“Cutting cancer research, slashing affordable housing and programs to protect the environment, and making middle-class taxpayers pay for a wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for?”
.. It is common for White House budget officials to send Congress a list of proposed cuts to offset new spending priorities. But rarely do the cuts target popular programs such as medical research at the National Institutes of Health in exchange.
Coulter to Trump: Get Back to Immigration, Trade, Infrastructure, Building a Wall — Not Paul Ryan’s ‘Standard GOP Corporatist Stuff’
“They seem to be Paul Ryan’s priorities, and also just the standard GOP corporatist stuff,” Coulter said.
.. “What made Donald Trump stand apart from the crowd and apart from the crowd from every presidential candidate for 20 years was immigration, trade, infrastructure, building a wall.
.. getting mandated coverage doesn’t mean insurance companies won’t cover it. It means Ann won’t be required to pay for 15 services more like 50 services that I have no interest in
Trump’s Wall Meets Texas’s Biggest National Park
Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has publicly opposed a wall in Big Bend, as has the area’s Republican congressman, Will Hurd. Big Bend’s wild, dry, imposing terrain poses its own natural barrier: In 2016, Big Bend had the fewest illegal border crossings “of any sector along the Texas border
Senate Democrats prepare for spring battle over Trump’s border wall
They begin citing estimates that the wall “could cost as much as $25 million per mile”
.. “First, many experts believe that such a border wall will not work,” the Democrats wrote. “Second, there is real concern that the Administration, put simply, has no plan to build the border wall.”
They go on to say they are worried that the administration has not provided information about how they will use eminent domain to assert federal control over private land, where the wall will be, how it will be built or if Trump plans to follow through on his promises to make Mexico pay for the wall.