US President Donald Trump's proposed $US4.1 trillion budget slashes safety net programs for the poor, targeting food stamps and Medicaid, while relying on rosy projections about the nation's economic growth to balance the budget within 10 years.
The cuts are part of a budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year that amount to a dramatic restructuring of the government, with protection for retirement programs for the elderly, billions of dollars more for the military and the rest of the government bearing the bulk of the reductions.
The plan's been outlined in White House summary documents and will be officially released on Tuesday.
The politically perilous cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health care for the poor and disabled; college loans, food stamps and federal employee pension benefits guarantee Trump's budget won't go far in Congress, even though Republicans control both the House and Senate. Those cuts follow a partial plan from March that targeted domestic agency operations and foreign aid that were quickly dismissed by lawmakers.
"I just think it's the prerogative of Congress to make those decisions in consultation with the president," Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, said as he predicted the Medicaid cuts wouldn't survive the Senate.
"But almost every president's budget proposal that I know of is basically dead on arrival."
The plan cuts almost $US3.6 trillion from benefit programs and domestic agencies over the coming decade. It assumes Republicans will repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law, known as "Obamacare," while reducing Medicaid, eliminating student loan subsidies, sharply slashing food stamps and cutting $US95 billion in the program for highway funds for the states.
"We need people to go to work," White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former tea party congressman, told reporters Monday.
"If you are on food stamps, we need you to go to work. If you are on disability and you should not be, we need you to go back to work."
The budget plan is being released while Trump is on his first overseas trip.
Among the cuts:
-Medicaid reduced by more than $US600 billion over 10 years by capping payments to states and giving governors more flexibility to manage their rosters of Medicaid recipients. The cuts are paired with the repeal of Obamacare's expansion of the program to 14 million people and in ten years will amount to an almost 25 per cent cut from present projections.
-A 10-year $US191 billion reduction - or 30 per cent - in food stamps.The program serves about 42 million people.
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