WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s proposed 2019 budget (all times local):
11:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump is sending Congress a $4.4 trillion spending plan that provides a huge increase in defense spending while cutting taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The result is soaring budget deficits.
Trump’s first budget last year projected that the government would achieve a small surplus by 2027. But the new budget never gets to balance. It proposes $7.1 trillion in red ink over the next decade, basically doubling last year’s forecast.
The new plan, for the 2019 budget year, seeks increases in such areas as building the border wall and fighting the opioid epidemic. Complicating matters, Trump last week signed a $300 billion measure to boost defense and domestic spending, negating many of the cuts in his new budget plan.
__
1:23 a.m.
President Donald Trump is proposing a $4 trillion-plus budget that projects a $1 trillion or so federal deficit.
Unlike the plan Trump released last year, the 2019 budget never comes close to promising a balanced federal ledger even after 10 years.
And that’s before last week’s agreement for $300 billion is added this year and next, a deal that showers both the Pentagon and domestic agencies with big budget increases.
The spending spree, along with last year’s tax cuts, has the deficit moving sharply higher with Republicans in control of Washington.
The original plan was for Trump’s new budget to slash domestic agencies even further than last year’s proposal, but instead it will land in Congress three days after he signed a two-year spending agreement that wholly rewrites both.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.