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.
Trump’s Budget Asks the Right Questions for Conservatives
While America’s libertarian streak is often wildly exaggerated, this much is not: most people don’t like the idea of a government that runs a zillion programs they have never heard of, to help some special interest they’ll never meet, and which have little accountability for actually generating results. This structure is a recipe for a lot of such programs.
.. the 1986 Reagan tax reform, widely viewed as a model for those who want to broaden the tax base: rather than trying to tidy up the wild proliferation of tax exemptions that had grown up since the inception of the federal income tax, they went after all of it at once. In the resulting melee, there was simply not enough bandwidth for all the lobbies to make their case; congressmen have only so many hours in the day.
.. while there is a coherent conservative argument to be made for many of these cuts, I would not go so far as to say that the budget as a whole has a coherent conservative logic.
.. While I am probably friendlier than most libertarians to high levels of military spending, I do not see a pressing need to make them higher still.
.. Some of the EPA cuts look like ideological warfare more than a carefully-thought-out program of agency reform
.. This is the sort of thing that the federal government should be doing, because there are great economic benefits in having national standards for companies that operate across state lines, and great economies of scale in developing this sort of research and expertise once, rather than trying to duplicate them fifty times. Similar arguments hold for scientific research, controlling pollution (no respecters of state lines), and space exploration. These things have a clear goal, that goal is worthwhile, and it is best achieved at the federal level. Conservatives should be no happier than liberals if they go.
.. it isn’t really a small government budget; it’s just a poke in the eye to blue states.
Chief Senate Parliamentarian Will Play Crucial Role in Health Care Legislation
Generally speaking, Ms. MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian since early 2012, will allow measures to benefit from the budget’s special, procedural shortcut if they are related to the budget. If not, the provision can be challenged under the “Byrd rule,”
.. That means Republicans likely won’t be able to address many health-insurance market regulations in their first legislative attempt to dismantle the law—Ms. MacDonough would likely rule those to be too unrelated to the budget to merit inclusion in the privileged legislation.
.. Republicans are using as their blueprint a measure repealing the Affordable Care Act that passed Congress in early 2016 under reconciliation, before being vetoed by President Barack Obama.
.. After conferring with Ms. MacDonough, Senate leaders altered the bill. For example, instead of simply repealing the individual mandate—the requirement that many individuals buy coverage or pay a penalty—the Senate simply set the penalty at zero dollars.
.. Parliamentarians are considered nonpartisan and are hired by the Secretary of the Senate, though they can lose their jobs if their decisions displease powerful lawmakers. Then-Majority Leader Trent Lott fired parliamentarian Robert Dove in 2001 over decisions he made
.. Ms. MacDonough, who has worked in the parliamentarian’s office since 1999, is popular with GOP leaders.
“She’s a brilliant lawyer, a thorough and fair referee and a walking encyclopedia of Senate precedent and procedure,” said Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).
Canada Stays the Course on Budget Amid Improving Economy
Last year, Canada pledged to spend roughly 24 billion Canadian dollars ($18 billion) in infrastructure by 2020 in an effort to spur growth. It also introduced tax breaks targeted at middle-income earners and households with children
.. Deficits will remain a mainstay in Canadian public finances for the foreseeable future. Ottawa projects a deficit of C$28.5 billion next year, or 1.4% of Canada’s gross domestic product, and remain in the C$20 billion range for each year through 2022. The debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to stay slightly above 31% over the next four years.
.. the government is also benefiting from stabilizing oil prices, which is lifting fortunes in the resource-rich region of western Canada.
.. suggest Canada’s economy has moved into a higher gear, following two years of lackluster growth because of the swift fall in commodity prices.
.. The government projects growth of 1.9% this year and 2% in 2018, which is below the Bank of Canada consensus.
.. Three quarters of Canada’s exports—or the equivalent of 20% of Canadian output — go to the U.S.