by Frank Holmes, reporter
President Donald Trump promised if Americans elected him president, “you’ll be sick and tired of winning, but we’re gonna keep on winning.” Trump unveiled the next step to keep America great this week—and political leaders in both parties have already said it’s dead on arrival.
The document proves that Trump is serious about keeping his campaign promises—if the rest of D.C. will let him.
The White House released Trump’s budget for 2021, which would eliminate the deficit and put more money in people’s pockets, while valuing U.S. citizens ahead of foreign aid recipients, sealing the border, building U.S. infrastructure, and landing an American back on the moon.
The president’s budget lays down a blueprint for rapid economic growth 15 years into the future.
While it would spend $4.8 trillion, it also lays out the goal to end the era of deep deficits that have topped $1 trillion annually.
The president looks to balance the budget completely in 2035. That’s not fast enough, but it’s more discipline than anyone has seen from a president in years.
Trump’s budget would let Americans keep more money by making his historic tax cuts, which would expire in 2025, permanent. His tax-cutting and deregulation policies have led America to record low unemployment and higher levels of growth.
The policies Trump would fund can be summed up in two words: America First.
Trump fulfills his campaign-defining promise to “build the wall” by requesting $2 billion for new border construction. That’s only enough for about 82 more miles of heavy, reinforced barriers—but the Trump administration has a history of finding other sources of federal funding.
The president says he already has $18 billion set aside for controlling the border—enough to complete the wall even if House Democrats say no.
The America First agenda demands that U.S. taxpayers stop paying for nation-building in other countries while Americans are suffering—and Trump’s budget would put some muscle behind this.
Trump’s 2021 budget gets foreign hands out of U.S. wallets by slashing foreign aid by 21 percent.
“We need to move beyond the reality of spending money for the Bob Dylan statue in Mozambique, or the NASA space camp in Pakistan, or the professional cricket league in Afghanistan,” said White House Budget Director Russ Vought. “We have to make choices when we have the level of deficits now we are experiencing.”
Trump also says the years of America being the world’s policeman are over. He keeps military spending growing—but practically flat—because he’s demanding U.S. allies pay for their own defense. He’s telling foreign countries they’ll have to pay their fair share of fighting diseases and health crises that break out in their countries.
“We were taken advantage of by a lot of countries,” Trump told a meeting of the nation’s governors last Friday, “by a lot of allies.”
Those days are gone, the president said.
Instead, the money will go to nation-building at home.
Instead of protecting foreign countries, he’d increase spending on veterans programs.
The budget would spend almost half-a-trillion dollars on infrastructure to rebuild America’s pothole-pocked roads and bridges.
He plans to extend America’s reach deep into space by putting an American on the moon by 2024—52 years after the last moon landing. Lunar bases would be used to reach Mars. And a new “Space Force” would proactively protect U.S. interests from Chinese satellite warfare and other futuristic threats.
Trump has moved millions of Americans off welfare rolls, and his budget would keep Americans looking for a hand-up instead of a hand-out.
Barack Obama wiped out a legal requirement that Americans on welfare work in order to get benefits during the Great Recession. Trump would bring back work requirements, saying that any able-bodied welfare recipient has to work in order to get Medicaid or food stamps.
And Trump is putting the states, and the people, back in the driver’s seat by cutting the budgets of federal bureaucrats in the EPA and other federal rulemaking agencies.
These policies would go a long way toward protecting American taxpayers from being fleeced by corrupt dictators, socialists, and people who refuse to work.
Unfortunately, there’s no way this budget will pass.
Even some Republicans in Congress say the budget should never come to the floor for debate, because the chances of passing the Democrat-controlled House is zero.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-W.Y., said he won’t schedule a hearing on Trump’s budget, “because it turns into a diatribe against the president.”
“I did not hold a hearing on President Obama’s last budget, and for that same reason, I’m not going to hold a hearing on this president’s budget,” he said.
The only reason to watch a congressional hearing on Trump’s budget is to “get your dose of animosity,” Sen. Enzi said.
Senate Democrats said it bluntly: “The Trump budget is dead on arrival.”
But Americans should know their president wants to put America First in defense, in welfare, at the border, and in space.
And he would, if he had enough partners on Capitol Hill.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”