Page 8A
NATION
East Oregonian
Thursday, March 16, 2017
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FIRST BUDGET
Boost to the military, cuts domestically
By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
President Donald Trump has
finalized his first budget for
the federal government, a
blueprint that would make
deep cuts in the Environ-
mental Protection Agency
and other domestic programs
while significantly increasing
spending on the military.
The budget, to be
submitted
to
Congress
on Thursday, was widely
expected to cause political
pain for Republicans and
Democrats, who will have
the final say on spending in
the arduous budget process.
Trump has promised a
spending plan that fulfills
his campaign promises to
boost national security, from
spending more on defense
to building a wall along the
U.S.-Mexico border. Though
he repeatedly promised that
Mexico would pay for the
wall, U.S. taxpayers will foot
the bill.
“We are proposing a
budget that will shrink the
bloated federal bureaucracy
— and I mean bloated
— while protecting our
national security,” Trump
told supporters at a campaign
rally late Wednesday in
Nashville, Tennessee.
He boasted that the
expected increase for the
military will be “one of the
single largest increases in
defense spending history
in this country.” He also
predicted that under his
leadership the armed forces
will become “bigger, better,
stronger than ever before.”
Republicans
have
groused about some of the
preliminary plans, including
elimination of the $3 billion
community
development
block grant program that’s
popular among local GOP
officials; a 25 percent cut to
the EPA and elimination of
3,000 jobs; and the scuttling,
essentially, of a $300 million
per-year program to clean up
the Great Lakes.
Trump’s plan to eliminate
community
development
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn.
Trump’s allies melting away on wiretap claims
WASHINGTON (AP) — President
Donald Trump’s explosive allegation
that Barack Obama wiretapped his New
York skyscraper during the presidential
campaign has left him increasingly isolated,
with allies on Capitol Hill and within his
own administration offering no evidence to
back him up.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff
Sessions said he had not given Trump any
reason to believe he was wiretapped by
President Obama. Republican Rep. Devin
Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence
committee, said he had seen no information
to support the claim and then went further.
He suggested the U.S. president’s assertion,
made in a series of March 4 tweets, should
not be taken at face value.
“Are you going to take the tweets
literally?” Nunes said. “If so, clearly the
president was wrong.”
But Trump, in an interview Wednesday
with Fox News, predicted there would be
“some very interesting items coming to the
forefront over the next two weeks.”
Trump’s allegations have put him in a
potentially perilous position as congres-
sional investigations into Russia’s involve-
ment in the 2016 election — and possible
Russian contacts with Trump associates
— ramp up. The FBI is also investigating.
If no evidence of wiretapping at Trump
Tower emerges, his credibility would
be newly damaged. If there is proof that
the Obama administration approved
monitoring of Trump or his associates,
that would suggest the government had
reason to be suspicious of their contacts
with Russia and a judge had approved the
surveillance.
The president, who appears to have
made his allegation in a burst of anger, has
asked lawmakers to investigate the claim.
Lawmakers have since turned the question
back toward the administration, asking the
Justice Department to provide evidence of
wiretapping activity.
The Justice Department missed a
Monday deadline for providing the
information to the House and was given a
one-week extension.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who
heads the Judiciary Committee’s crime
and terrorism subcommittee, said the
FBI will provide a classified briefing on
the matter “at some time in the future.”
block grants was dismissed
on Capitol Hill by those who
remember how a modest
cut to the program sank a
spending bill not long ago.
The United States spends
more than half a trillion
dollars on defense, more
than the next seven countries
combined. But Trump has
signaled he would make the
Pentagon the big winner with
a $54 billion boost to defense
spending.
The State Department and
the U.S. Agency for Inter-
national Development faced
a budget cut of about 31
percent, according to several
officials.
Democrats are unlikely to
support the cuts, and Repub-
lican defections raise the
possibility of a congressional
train wreck and a potential
government shutdown when
the 2018 budget year begins
Oct. 1.
The budget, known as
a “skinny budget,” was
unlikely to have many of the
details expected on Capitol
Hill. It will be limited to the
discretionary, $1 trillion-plus
portion of the $4 trillion
annual federal budget that
pays for Cabinet agencies
and departments.
The remainder of Trump’s
budget — proposals on taxes,
mandatory spending and
deficits and projections on
the economy — won’t come
out until May.
Preliminary reports on the
budget show some domestic
Cabinet agencies, such as
the departments of Home-
land Security and Veterans
Affairs, would see increases,
including $3 billion for
Trump’s promised wall on
the U.S.-Mexico border.
People familiar with
the budget who spoke on
condition of anonymity
in advance of the public
release say the White House
is seeking a 30 percent cut
from an Energy Department
office that promotes energy
efficiency and renewable
energy. The office has funded
research on projects such
as LED light bulbs, electric
trucks, advanced batteries
and biofuels.
The Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable
Energy is targeted for at least
$700 million in cuts from its
current $2.1 billion budget,
said Scott Sklar, chairman
of the steering committee
of the Sustainable Energy
Coalition.
The Energy Department
could see steep cuts for its
17 national laboratories,
which conduct cutting-edge
research on topics from
nuclear power to advanced
materials for energy genera-
tion, storage and use.
Trump’s
preliminary
budget, delivered in secret
to agencies last month, had
proposed a 37 percent cut
to the State Department and
foreign aid budgets. Those
cuts and others were subject
to revision in the back-and-
forth the White House had
with agencies leading up to
the release, and the pain was
eased for the State Depart-
ment.
GOP leaders acknowledge health bill changes, may delay vote
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Their health care overhaul
imperiled from all sides, the
White House and top House
Republicans acknowledged
Wednesday they would make
changes to the legislation in
hopes of nailing down votes
and pushing the party’s show-
piece legislation through the
chamber soon.
House Speaker Paul Ryan,
R-Wis., declined to commit
to bringing the measure to
the House floor next week, a
fresh indication of uncertainty.
Republican leaders have
repeatedly said that was their
schedule, but opposition
mushroomed after a congres-
sional report concluded this
week that the measure would
strip 24 million people of
coverage in a decade.
Ryan told reporters that
GOP leaders could now make
“some necessary improve-
ments and refinements” to
the legislation, reflecting an
urgency to buttress support.
The measure would strike
down much of former
President Barack Obama’s
2010 overhaul and reduce
the federal role, including
financing, for health care
consumers and is opposed
uniformly by Democrats.
“We’re going to arbitrate,
we’re all going to get together,
we’re going to get something
done,” President Donald
Trump promised a crowd at a
rally in Nashville.
At an all-hands meeting
Wednesday
evening
of
House GOP lawmakers, Vice
President Mike Pence and
party leaders urged their rank-
and-file to unite behind the
legislation.
“‘It’s our job to get it out of
here and get it to the Senate,’”
Pence told the Republicans,
according to Rep. Dennis
Ross, R-Fla. That would let
Trump pressure “Democrats
in these red states to come on
board,’” Ross said, referring
to Republican-leaning states
where Democratic senators
face re-election next year.
Health secretary Tom Price
was using phone calls to lobby
Republican governors, some
of whom — with home-state
GOP members of Congress
— oppose the bill’s phase
out of Obama’s expansion
of Medicaid to 11 million
additional
lower-income
Americans.
Amid the maneuvering, a
government report said more
than 12 million people have
signed up for coverage this
year under the very statute that
President Donald Trump and
congressional Republicans
want to repeal. That figure
underscored the potential
political impact of the GOP’s
next move.
Pence met repeatedly with
House Republicans but rebels
still abounded. Conservatives
were unhappy the measure
doesn’t erase enough of
Obama’s law while at the
other end of the party’s spec-
trum, moderates were upset
the bill would strip millions of
health coverage.
“Oh heck, yes,” said one
conservative leader, Rep.
Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked if
the GOP legislation needed
changes to win his support.
Conservatives want to
end Obama’s expansion
of Medicaid to 11 million
additional low-income people
next year, not 2020 as the bill
proposes. They say a GOP
proposed tax credit to help
people pay medical costs is
too generous, and they want
to terminate all of Obama’s
insurance
requirements,
including mandatory coverage
of specified services like drug
counseling.
Underscoring the push-pull
problem GOP leaders face in
winning votes, moderates feel
the tax credits are too stingy,
especially for low earners and
older people. They oppose
accelerating the phaseout of
the Medicaid expansion and
are unhappy with long-term
cuts the measure would inflict
on the entire program.
L i t t le
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