Rep. Deutch Statement on President Trump's FY18 Budget

Statement

Congressman Ted Deutch (FL-22) issued this statement in response to President Trump's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2018:

"The President's budget is morally bankrupt, cruelly demonizes the needy, and is premised on phony economic theories and farcical math.

"If a President's budget is meant to convey his values and priorities, then President Trump is making quite clear his contempt for working families and the most vulnerable Americans. In the President's ideal America, the extremely rich receive more from the government, and everyone else receives dramatically less.

"This callous budget would severely scale back healthcare for children of low-income families and nutritional assistance programs. Despite promises not to cut Medicaid, the President wants to cut $610 billion from the anti-poverty program, on top of the $839 billion Medicaid cuts that House Republicans cut in the dangerous healthcare bill they recently passed. The President's budget director claims that this plan will encourage more people to find jobs; yet, he proposes slashing already existing tax incentives for low-income Americans to enter the workforce.

"The budget would cut life-saving programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that lead our country's response to epidemics at home and abroad and our search for vaccines and cures to deadly diseases. The National Cancer Institute alone would lose $1 billion compared to last year's budget. And crucial funding for scientific and medical grants across the government would be drastically reduced.

"Despite the President's enormous defense budget increases, this budget will not make Americans safer. Ignoring scientific consensus, the President wants to eliminate important climate change programs that engage with the private sector and international partners to reduce emissions and respond to the impacts of climate change, impacts we are already facing in South Florida. And at a time when more Jewish students are reporting incidents of anti-Semitism on college campuses across the country, the President wants to weaken the Department of Education's Civil Rights division that oversees religious-based crimes in schools.

"For Floridians, this budget would be particularly painful. The President offers no funding for FEMA's flood hazard mapping program, a crucial service for South Floridians living in flood-prone areas. The President's budget cuts nearly $9 billion from our public education system, including teacher training programs and after school services for lower-income students. And an EPA program that helps monitor threatening levels of nutrients in the Everglades would be wiped out.

"And in a cold, brazen, and unprecedented move, the President explicitly calls out a single organization -- Planned Parenthood -- by name to restrict it from providing essential health programs for millions of women like cancer screenings and maternity check-ups.

"Just like so many of his other broken promises, the President's budget isn't a foundation for "American Greatness' but rather a recipe for weakness, destitution, and devastation."

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