Trump’s Doomed Budget Helps Democrats by Hurting Republicans
Nobody likes the proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security
Nearly every analyst in Washington agrees that President Trump’s new budget blueprint—a grab-bag of fantastical growth projections and policy demands Congress will never meet—is dead on arrival. Every White House budget is, to some extent, a wish list that serves chiefly as a messaging vehicle. But even Trump’s allies find little to love in the 2020 White House budget plan. “It’s made them irrelevant for the most important issues up on Capitol Hill,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, budget chief for President George W. Bush, told Bloomberg Television.
Trump’s budget may not resonate with Congress, but as a new memo from the Democratic Super-PAC Priorities USA points out, it’s bound to resonate with voters in a way that could backfire on Republicans. Here’s why: The budget’s hallmark huge growth forecast, billions in border-wall funding, and deep cuts to entitlement spending are meant to play as muscular displays of commitment to two issues—border security and deficit reduction—that he’s failed to deliver on, while masking the cost of one he has, his tax cut.