Democrats call "cuts" in Trump budget cuts to safety net

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congressional Democrats have attacked US President Donald Trump's proposed amendments to the US Social Security Plan in his 2020 budget plan, and a top legislator said Tuesday that cuts to programs such as Medicaid 39, food aid were "intended to harm".

Trump's budget is widely perceived as a dead letter to Capitol Hill, where the Democratic-backed House of Representatives will kill him, but Trump's proposals will likely follow him in his 2020 presidential re-election campaign.

Some programs that he was committed to protecting when he was in office in 2016 are subject to cuts in his latest budget, including the Medicare Health Care Program for Seniors and the program. Medicaid health care for the poor and the disabled, said the Democrats.

Democrats also denounced Trump's proposed cuts in education, community development, student loans and free school meals for low-income students.

"These budget cuts in the Trump budget are not a tightening of the belt … They are of extreme malevolence, a level that is supposed to hurt," said the chairman of the House Budget Committee , John Yarmuth, at a hearing. budget plan.

Russell Vought, acting director of the White House's interim budget, defended Trump's plan, saying it represented an attempt at fiscal responsibility in the face of a $ 1 trillion budget deficit.

He said the president was asking for more cuts in spending than any other president in history, and he complained that Trump was "blatantly ignored" by Congress.

In 2017, when Republicans still controlled both Houses of Congress, as well as the White House, they imposed strong tax cuts, mostly for businesses, which were to add $ 1.5 trillion to the national debt of $ 20 trillion over 10 years.

Trump called on Monday to spend more US taxpayer money in the military and a wall at the US-Mexico border, while spending less on social protection programs.

Vought told the committee that the president's budget plan would save $ 517 billion over 10 years for Medicare, a program that many Democrats want to expand.

The president's proposal also includes working conditions for Medicaid beneficiaries and will convert Medicaid into a state-run program funded by global federal grants.

"Did President Trump acknowledge that he was not respecting a key campaign promise by accepting a budget that cuts Medicare?" Asked Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky.

"The president does not believe at all that he is violating his commitments to the American people," Vought said, noting that the proposed budget did not include cuts, but reforms that would help bring down the price of drugs, allowing Medicare to save money.

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar said that 29,000 children in his state of Minnesota would lose access to free lunches at school if the administration's plan to reduce those meals became law.

"This budget literally takes only food for the kids," while increasing defense spending, Omar said. "How does one assess what the child deserves to eat and which child does not?"