Today Trump announced that he’s calling on all of his cabinet secretaries to cut their budgets by five percent:
FOX NEWS – President Trump will ask all secretaries in his Cabinet on Wednesday to reduce their spending by five percent for fiscal year 2020, as the administration announced the federal budget deficit has surged to its highest level in six years.
“I have a Cabinet meeting in a little while and we are going to ask every secretary to cut five percent for next year,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office ahead of his full Cabinet meeting slated for Wednesday afternoon.
So far Trump hasn’t had a good record on cutting spending…
The president’s announcement comes days after the Treasury Department announced that the federal budget deficit rose to $779 billion in fiscal 2018—that’s $113 billion more than fiscal 2017. The deficit, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, was largely caused by growth in government spending.
The president mentioned the administration’s move to direct $716 billion for two years to “rebuild” the military. Trump signed the bill, named after late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in August, which boosted military pay by 2.6 percent—the largest hike in nine years.
“We have repurchased and purchased jets, missiles, rockets, all forms of military equipment—we are in the process of rebuilding,” Trump said.
Last month, Trump signed a $854 billion spending bill to keep the federal government open through Dec. 7, averting a government shutdown in the weeks leading up to the November midterm elections. But the president said he gave “waste money” to Democrats to get the plan approved by the House and Senate.
“I had to give Democrats what I call waste money—things I would have never approved, but we had to do that to get the votes, because we don’t have the votes to do it without them,” Trump said, adding that Republicans need to see success in the midterms next month.
But he can still have a good record if he takes it as seriously as he sounds. He told Stuart Varney today that there’s a lot of ‘fat’ in the budget that he intends to try and cut, which is why he’s pushing so hard for Republicans to win in November:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2018
I get Trump’s argument that the military needed bolstering and I’m good with that IF he starts cutting the budget. And I don’t just mean waste. He’s got to start tackling the big entitlements, from Obamacare to Social Security to Welfare, etc.
He should also reconsider downsizing the federal government by cutting out whole departments that simply are unnecessary. That would be a major political move that might be best in a second term, but we really need to cut, cut, cut.
Trump has some good accomplishments under this belt. But if he can make a significant dent in cutting spending, that would be huge.