Trump Budget Proposal Shows Corrupt Priorities
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump administration today released the president’s FY 26 “skinny budget” proposal, which calls for a 23% cut in non-defense spending and an unprecedented trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, released the following statement:
“This is a cruel and heartless budget proposal, designed by small-minded and morally compromised people. It would make America weaker, sicker, dirtier, poorer, less safe, less fair, and less just.
“By what tormented logic does this administration propose to end federal support for people to heat their homes, while spending more than $1 trillion on the Pentagon and weaponry? How is it sound policy to slash spending at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention? Did they actually read the name of the agency they propose to gut?
“In what way does a 37% cut to the National Institutes of Health – or reducing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by more than half – make America more healthy? In what universe can you square a purported concern with government deficits with slashes to the agency that collects taxes, when you know the cuts will induce fraud by rich and corporate taxpayers and reduce revenues?
“The same administration that proclaims its concern for efficiency and reducing government spending wants to spend vastly more on building a surveillance and police state – and proposes a wasteful, fraud-inducing, dangerous, and immoral trillion-dollar military budget.
“Trump is trying to add $113 billion to a $895 billion-dollar agency rife with fraud, failed audit reports, and weapons that don’t work to satiate his war-hungry profiteer buddies. Juxtapose that gift to the military-industrial complex with more than $20 billion in cuts to foreign assistance – a Trump commitment for more people worldwide to go hungry, die from preventable disease, and suffer from war and its aftermath.
“This budget gives ‘moral disgrace’ a bad name.”