New York Times reporter Michael Shear lead off Friday’s paper with the usual liberal horror show on President Trump’s proposed budget. You didn’t hard to read far to get the loaded liberal language, where taxpayer- and deficit-funded spending on all but the military is sacrosanct: “Trump Gambles in Cutting Services That Aid His Base – Budget Billed as Necessary, but Opponents Label it ‘Draconian’ and ‘Shameful.’”
President Trump’s proposal on Thursday for deep cuts to the budgets of a broad part of the federal bureaucracy was billed as a tough-minded and necessary corrective to the growth of the government’s power. But even members of his own party questioned some of the cuts -- and what was not being cut.
The harshest criticism of Mr. Trump’s budget came from Democrats and liberal organizations. But in a city where many federal programs enjoy longstanding bipartisan support, some Republicans also assailed the president’s judgment.
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The spending plan’s bottom line is roughly the same as in President Barack Obama’s last budget request, but it marks Mr. Trump’s first major attempt to dismantle what his aides dismissively call the “administrative state.” The $1.1 trillion spending plan envisions deep cuts to many government programs while leaving entitlement programs like Social Security untouched. It increases spending on the military and border security.
Mr. Trump was elected on a promise to wage war against what he has frequently mocked as a bloated and ineffective federal work force, and he is betting that his first budget will help consolidate support by calling for a significant shift of resources away from established programs that aid the poor, the environment, foreigners and the arts.
To those who object to deep cuts in those programs, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, had a blunt message on Thursday: What did you expect?
The approach is a risky gamble for Mr. Trump, whose victory in November came in part by assembling a coalition that included low-income workers who rely on many of the programs that he now proposes to slash. For now, the president and his advisers appear willing to take that risk by casting the administration as better caretakers of taxpayers’ money. “We are trying to focus on both recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place,” Mr. Mulvaney said.
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Conservatives hailed his vision as an antidote to decades of bureaucratic growth even as they predicted fierce resistance from the interest groups and lawmakers with deep links to the affected agencies and the beneficiaries of the programs that will see their budgets slashed.
Some labeling slant: While David McIntosh is “the president of the Club for Growth, a conservative free-market advocacy group,” Christine Owens is merely “the executive director of the National Employment Law Project, called the proposed cuts to the Labor Department a “draconian” budget that “is virtually a complete breach of faith with America’s workers.”
More unlabeled liberal groups that were quoted in baleful terms: Amnesty International, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The American Library Association, and the American Federation of Teachers.
Also underlining the “hard line” were reporters Matt Flegenheimer and Alan Rappeport with hostile labeling of Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney in Friday's “A Longtime Fiscal Hawk Now Has to Sell Spending – Budget Chief Presides Over a Plan He Once Might Have Opposed.”
Making the rounds at the Capitol on a recent evening, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget director, decided to add an unscheduled stop: a meeting of the House Freedom Caucus, the group of hard-line conservatives that once counted Mr. Mulvaney as a founding member....Those who knew Mr. Mulvaney before he was the nation’s budget guru say that such gestures are typical of a man whose hard-line leanings in Congress belied a collegial style.
