 President Trump, with Vice President Mike Pence. (Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) By Matt O'Brien President Trump ran as a different kind of Republican, but his preliminary budget would be right at home where the rest of the party is: the 1980s. The big picture: a $54 billion, or about 10 percent, increase in military spending and a cut to the rest of the discretionary budget by a near equal amount. That includes, among many, many other things, less money for before- and after-school programs, job training, affordable housing, public transit, scientific research, foreign aid and, yes, the Environmental Protection Agency. The bigger picture, though, is that this would confine nonmilitary spending to an even historically smaller share of the economy than it's already set to. Indeed, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that, as a result of the spending limits President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans agreed to in their debt-ceiling deal, non-defense discretionary spending will fall to a 56-year low of 3.09 percent of gross domestic product in 2018. Trump's cuts would probably push that below 3 percent. That joke that the government is just an insurance company with an army? This budget takes it almost literally. Read the rest on Wonkblog.
Chart of the day Trump's proposed increase in military spending would be adequate to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- a program he proposes eliminating -- until 2138. Christopher Ingraham has more.
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