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IPFS News Link • Trump Administration

Trump budget cuts bankroll new waste

• https://www.libertarianinstitute.org

Trump proposes to devote almost all of the savings from cutting domestic programs into the Pentagon.

President Trump's proposed budget takes a big step towards draining the swamp in Washington. This is the first time since the Reagan era that a president has sought a wholesale demolition of boondoggles. On the other hand, Trump's defense and homeland security spending increases will squander bounties that should be reserved for taxpayers, not bureaucrats and bombs.

Regardless of whether Trump can cajole Congress into imposing the cuts, Americans should welcome candor on an array of federal programs that should have been decimated or abolished long ago:

The Housing and Urban Development budget takes one of the biggest hits — down $6 billion or 13%. The administration aims to sharply cut spending on Section 8 rental vouchers, which are notorious for redistributing violent crime from public housing projects to previously safe urban and suburban neighborhoods. HUD's flagship HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which provides grants to states and localities, is also in the budget crosshairs. That program is such a fiasco that HUD was not even aware that hundreds of projects it was bankrolling had not been built until a Washington Post investigation compiled hundreds of aerial photos of empty lots.

Trump calls for abolishing both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The vast majority of spending for the arts comes from private pockets. America does not need a culture commissariat to give federal seals of approval to efforts that please Washington bureaucrats. There is no justice in taxing dishwashers in Arkansas to subsidize programs such as Synetic Theater's Silent Shakespeare — in which actors gyrate and grope in lieu of delivering the richest bounty of the English language.

Trump recommends abolishing federal subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. When federally-financed television and radio began, there were vastly fewer options on the television and radio dial. Considering the bounty that technology is delivering, there is no excuse for spending $445 million a year for news and cultural programming that is consistently biased in favor of Big Government.

Trump proposes a 17% cut for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service — which nowadays prefers to play therapist instead of giving taxpayers the best information available. Last Monday, the Weather Service realized that it had greatly exaggerated likely snowfalls from winter storm Stella but refused to correct itself because it feared "confusing" folks. A headline from The Gothamist website summarized that debacle: "National Weather Service: Sorry, You're Too Stupid To Trust With The REAL Forecast."

Trump calls for sharply slashing the $1.5 billion budget for Food for Peace, America's most destructive foreign aid program. For decades, foreign farmers have been bankrupted when U.S. government agencies dump crops in their nations at harvest time. But the program works out well for the farm lobby, the merchant marine and nonprofit groups, and its foreign victims have no lobby in Washington.


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