President Trump’s “skinny budget” — which would shift $54 billion in non-defense discretionary spending over to defense — has been unfairly savaged for allegedly eviscerating the social safety net.
Headlines such as “How Trump’s Budget Cuts Could Hurt Low-Income Americans” (CNN) and “If You’re a Poor Person in America, Trump’s Budget is Not For You” (Washington Post) were accompanied by a New York Times editorial describing the budget as a sadistic attempt to “impose pain for pain’s sake.”
Such headlines may lead people to wonder just how deeply President Trump’s budget proposal would cut federal anti-poverty spending below current levels: Ten percent? Twenty percent? More?
The answer is: zero.
The federal government classifies programs by functional codes. Anti-poverty programs primarily consist of functions 604 (housing aid), 605 (food aid), 609 (cash and related aid) and the portion of function 551 (health care) that includes Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program and ObamaCare.
This limited definition surely undercounts anti-poverty spending by excluding education, job training and community development programs that target low-income families, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars spent by state and local governments to alleviate poverty.
Yet even under this strict definition, Washington will spend $783 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, and is scheduled to spend $804 billion next year.
In the (highly unlikely) event that every cut proposed by Trump is enacted, it would merely reduce next year’s spending level to approximately $798 billion. So instead of expanding 2.7 percent next year, the anti-poverty budget would expand by 1.9 percent.
Federal anti-poverty spending has rapidly escalated for 50 years, regardless of the party controlling Washington.
