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Sixty-six programs slated for elimination in Trump budget

The Trump budget followed through in one area very clearly: It proposes to completely eliminate sixty-six government programs.

The programs eliminated would only save $26.7 billion, which in terms of the deficit is chicken-feed. Still it would be a step in the right direction.

The pigs are squealing however, including one recent failed presidential candidate:
Clinton: Trump Budget Shows ‘Unimaginable Level of Cruelty’

Based on past experience, expect the Republican leadership in Congress to gut most of these cuts. The budget will grow. The deficit will grow. The federal debt will grow. The power of the people in Washington will grow. And we will be one step closer to bankruptcy and collapse.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • Cotour

    “The budget will grow. The deficit will grow. The federal debt will grow. The power of the people in Washington will grow. And we will be one step closer to bankruptcy and collapse.”

    And We The People will the obligated and yoked to pay. The redistribution of wealth is well under way and there will be no turning away those now eternal dependents, I mean hopefully Democrat voters. The people not having a reasonable escape a reasonable escape must be invented. Reasonable.

  • Edward

    From the Clinton article: “Hillary Clinton castigated President Trump’s federal budget proposal during a keynote address on Tuesday, calling it an attack on the needy that showed an ‘unimaginable level of cruelty.’

    Wouldn’t it be less cruel to get the needy to be less needy and more productive? Wouldn’t it be less cruel if most of them were able to become independent of the state, taking care of themselves and their families?

    Or is it a kindness to keep the needy as they are: wards of the state?

    Are women really as incompetent at taking care of themselves and their families as Clinton says that they are? Does Clinton think that women need men in their lives to care for them, or lacking men in their lives they need a government in their lives to care for them?

    Aren’t able bodied people who are on the government dole, rather than working at a productive job, just being greedy?

    It is people who think like Clinton does that keeps the budget growing faster than our national productivity is able to fund it.

    Meanwhile, we have 66 programs taken down. At this rate we still need to get rid of a good 6,000 more in order to get down to an almost reasonable $1,500 billion budget.

    As Reagan once said, government is not the solution; it is the problem. Every time government helps one person or one group, it hurts many others — now that is cruel. One problem solved, but at the expense of many more problems generated for others. Did that person or group really need help, or were they merely petitioning government for a leg up over the others? And isn’t that what wealth redistribution is all about, favoring the unproductive at the expense of the those who produce?

    Governments and their bureaucrats tend to reward their friends and punish their enemies, and the larger and more bureaucratic the government the easier it is to accomplish this and the easier it is for corruption among the bureaucracy to go undetected, uncorrected, and unpunished.

    Then again, Clinton has an interest in corruption going unpunished.

  • F-16 Bill

    How fitting if the number had been 666 !!

    Sadly, most of these cuts will never see the light of day.

  • PeterF

    It would seem that the only control over the budget that the president has from this point is the veto. I doubt that will happen.
    I’m wondering if executive orders could be used to either end these programs outright or to roll them into another agency where a Trump appointee could strangle them?

  • Edward

    PeterF,
    There is a law that requires the president to spend the money as directed by the budget, as passed and signed. The concept of the line-item veto has also been permanently shot down, so the president must accept or reject each budget bill in its entirety. This means that a president who gets what he wants in the budget must spend a lot of time negotiating the bill that comes to his desk for signature.

    What we tend to consider as a president’s budget is actually the president communicating with Congress that he would sign a budget that looked close to what he has presented to them. Congress may or may not take this “president’s budget” into consideration as they work out the real budget.

  • ken anthony

    The Trump budget focuses on the needs of the taxpayer. Any person that doesn’t support this perspective is a liar if they call themselves a conservative. With control of all three branches, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting this done.

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