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President Donald Trump's Office of Direction and Upkeep (OMB) unveiled "America First — A Budget Pattern to Make America Swell Once again" on Thursday, noting that the president'southward bodily budget volition be released in May. President Trump and his OMB Manager Mick Mulvaney joined in outlining the "pattern" without disclosing difficult numbers, acquirement projections, or even an economic outlook to back it up. Information technology was, in other words, a policy statement, with details to follow.

Said Trump:

My Budget Blueprint for 2018:

• provides for i of the largest increases in defence spending without increasing the debt;

• significantly increases the upkeep for immigration enforcement….

• includes additional resource for a wall on the Southern border with Mexico….

• increases funding to address fierce crime….

• puts America first by keeping more of America'south hard-earned revenue enhancement dollars hither at home.

His plan is to fund the $54 billion increase in defense force spending in 2018 through "targeted reductions elsewhere." He didn't mention that "elsewhere" in the federal budget is severely express to about ane-6th of the total upkeep, thank you to mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and involvement payments on the national debt. He did not propose the size of the budget to be presented in May, nor did he refer to former President Obama's terminal budget, which spent $4.15 trillion while collecting far less than that, resulting in a deficit approaching $600 billion. The president didn't say anything near the national debt, now approaching $20 trillion and likely to hit $25 trillion during his administration.

Instead, he glossed over all those incidentals: "The defense and public condom spending increases in this Budget are offset and paid for past finding greater savings and efficiencies across the Federal Government. Our Pattern insists on $54 billion in reductions to non-Defence force spending programs. We are going to do more with less, and make the Government lean and accountable to the people."

He let his OMB director explain that this wasn't actually a budget afterward all, merely just a policy statement: "This Pattern is not the full Federal budget [but] it does provide lawmakers and the public with a view of the priorities of the President and his Administration." Added Mulvaney, "Our $xx trillion national debt is a crisis [but this 2018 Budget Blueprint] will non add to the deficit."

The "blueprint" highlighted just where those "reductions" would accept place by outlining an impressive listing of agencies whose budgets would be eliminated altogether:

The African Development Foundation; the Appalachian Regional Commission; the Chemical Safety Board; the Corporation for National and Customs Service; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the [Mississippi] Delta Regional Authority; the Denali [Alaska] Commission; the Constitute of Museum and Library Services; the Inter-American Foundation; the U.Southward. Trade and Evolution Agency; the Legal Services Corporation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation; the Northern Border Regional Commission; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; the United states Institute of Peace; the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness; and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

While constitutionalists would argue that each of these agencies, and their related funding, fall outside constitutional constraints, the question equally to whether cut off their funding would even come close to covering the $54 billion increase in defense spending Trump is proposing remains open. A look at just the four cuts nigh likely to be politically "toxic" — the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the two National Endowments (Arts and Humanities), and the Establish for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) — reveals the answer, and Trump and Mulvaney'south problem. Those four cuts — $445 meg for the CPB, $150 million each for the endowments, and $230 million for the IMLS — amount to less than one billion dollars out of a $4 trillion-plus upkeep. Or, put another way, Trump and Mulvaney would yet have $53 billion to go in keeping their hope not to add to the deficit.

And there'south still the wall to be built (the "blueprint" contains $ii.half dozen billion for that, with the residual of the estimated $20 billion to come from somewhere else), and the infrastructure-restoration program of another trillion.

There volition be much-needed and highly-laudable cuts to agencies such as the EPA, but there's going to exist a heavy dose of pixie dust applied between now and May when the real budget, with real numbers, is scheduled to exist released.

It is probable that Trump's "blueprint" is his effort to fix the boundaries of the conversation he wants to accept with Congress when his real budget is offered. Just that conversation won't take place for months later on, equally Congress is still battling over healthcare, to be followed by confirmation hearings for the residual of Trump'due south cabinet and his Supreme Court pick. And then at that place's tax reform.

Perhaps he's likewise setting up the American people for the shock that's likely to come in May, when taxpayers discover that his real budget will far exceed Obama's last year in part, with estimates ranging up of $4.5 trillion.

An Ivy League graduate and onetime investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs ofttimes at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He tin be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.