CommentsSPECIAL REPORT--Copies of President Trump's FY2021 budget are shown after being delivered to the House Budget Committee on February 10, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday condemned President Donald Trump's newly released $4.8 trillion budget blueprint as a "shameful" proposal that would strip nutrition assistance and healthcare from needy families while rewarding the wealthy and large corporations with more handouts.
"The Trump budget is an immoral document. It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
"The Trump budget for 2021 is a budget of, by, and for the one percent," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. "It reflects profoundly unethical priorities and shows that the president is—and it gives me no great pleasure to say this—a liar."
Contrary to Trump's campaign promise to shield Medicare, Medicare, and Social Security, the FY2021 budget blueprint calls for more than a trillion in combined cuts to the three programs over the next decade—around $920 billion to Medicaid alone.
The proposal would also slash by billions of dollars the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and federal student loan assistance.
Meanwhile, the plan would boost military spending to over $740 billion in fiscal year 2021, extend Trump's tax cuts for the rich, and provide $2 billion for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"The old cliché is that a budget is a moral document," Sanders said. "What kind of unbelievable moral framework allowed this White House to propose $182 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance from needy families, when nearly one in seven households with children are food insecure? The Trump budget, outrageously, even cuts billions from a program that provides nutrition assistance for pregnant women, new moms, and their babies."
Sanders vowed to do everything in his power to ensure Trump's plan doesn't make it through Congress.
"The Trump budget is an immoral document," said Sanders. "It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us. It is proof that this president did not care about the 'forgotten men and women' he said he would help—it appears he is too busy enriching his billionaire friends."
(Jake Johnson writes for CommonDreams.org … where this report was first posted.)
-cw
