The president’s problem is that a shift in priorities of that magnitude requires legislation that alters spending caps that Congressional Republicans and Democrats agreed to during President Barack Obama’s second term. That legislation is subject to filibuster. Amassing the 60 votes needed to overcome that hurdle requires acquiescence by at least eight Senate Democrats — and more if some Republican senators refuse to go along.
Republican resistance to Trump’s request is highly likely. In 2013, after the so-called “sequester” cuts took effect, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee called for those caps to be lifted because a spending bill was too austere to attract sufficient Republican support.
The Senate’s third-ranking Republican, John Thune, told me last fall “we’ve done as much as we can” to cut domestic spending, and that Congress now needs to turn toward curbing the massive entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. But President Trump has promised not to touch those programs, and Budget Director Mulvaney said the administration will keep that promise.
As a result, the president’s budget submission represents a fresh volley in the ongoing political argument on the size and role of government. The proposed EPA cuts, Mulvaney said, reflect the president’s views on climate change, which Obama considered a threat to the planet but which Trump has previously labeled a hoax. The cuts in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he added, reflect the president’s belief that many anti-poverty programs have failed to produce results.
