Bad Budget

Hearing the OMB Director talk about the new budget proposal is an insight into the minds of this Administration.

On 28% cut to State Dept. and most of it are supposed to go to the foreign aid budget.

Q    James Bays from Al Jazeera.  The United Nations said the world is currently facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II – 20 million people in just four countries facing starvation or famine.  And yet you’re cutting funding to the U.N., cutting funding to the foreign aid budget.  Are you worried that some of the most vulnerable people on Earth will suffer as a result? DIRECTOR MULVANEY:  We’re absolutely reducing funding to the U.N. and to the various foreign aid programs, including those run by the U.N. and other agencies.  That should come as a surprise to no one who watched the campaign.  The President said specifically hundreds of time – you covered him – I’m going to spend less money on people overseas and more money on people back home.  And that’s exactly what we’re doing with this budget.

US to the rest of the world: “Not our problem!” While this matches Trump’s campaign rhetorics, it shows a malevolent side of wanting to be the greatest country on earth but not the responsibility. Helping other countries, US’ openness to immigrants of all races and religion has long been a important aspect of the “soft powers” of US.

This continues that theme of US ceding international control to other powers (mostly China).

So if we are not spending money on foreign needs, we are doing it for ourselves. Bettering ourselves, right?

Q    The President has called for eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcast and the National Endowment for the Arts.  If the Republican Congress sent the President appropriate bills that fund CPB and NEA, will he veto those bills and tell the Republican leadership to send bill that defunds those things? DIRECTOR MULVANEY:  The message the President sent right now is that we want to defund those.  And there’s completely defensible reasons for doing that.  It’s a simple message, by the way.  I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio, the coal-mining family in West Virginia, the mother of two in Detroit, and I’m saying, okay, I have to go ask these folks for money and I have to tell them where I’m going to spend it.  Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye and say, look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting?  That is a really hard sell, in fact, some of you don’t think we can defend anymore.

Right. I guess that’s right out.

On cutting Community Development Block Grant

MULVANEY: We can’t do that anymore.  We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good.  And Meals on Wheels sounds great – again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion to.  But to take the federal money and give it to the states and say, look, we want to give you money for programs that don’t work – I can’t defend that anymore.  We cannot defend that anymore.  We’re $20 trillion in debt.

Are home bound seniors getting fed? That’s good enough result for me.

On after school programs (specifically about after school meal)

MULVANEY: So let’s talk about after-school programs, generally.  They’re supposed to be educational programs, right?  That’s what they’re supposed to do.  They’re supposed to help kids who don’t get fed at home get fed so they do better in school.  Guess what?  There’s no demonstrable evidence they’re actually doing that.  There’s no demonstrable evidence of actually helping results, helping kids do better in school, which is what – when we took your money from you to say, look, we’re going to go spend it on an after-school program.  The way we justified it was these programs are going to help these kids do better in school and get better jobs.  And we can’t –

Are kids getting fed? That’s good enough result for me.

Q    Just to follow up on that, you were talking about the steelworker in Ohio and the coalminer in Pennsylvania and so on. But those workers may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program, who may have kids in Head Start.  And yesterday or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget, but is it also a hard-hearted measure? DIRECTOR MULVANEY:  No, I don’t think so.  In fact, I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do to actually be –

What kind of person chooses to describe this as “compassionate”?

Finally, let’s just ruin the earth.

MULVANEY: Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the President was fairly straightforward – we’re not spending money on that anymore; we consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.  So that is a specific tie to his campaign.

Salt the earth!

I feel empty inside about what’s to come.