Remember the sequester? In 2013 there were deep cuts in federal Indian programs from the Indian Health Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Native Americans felt the immediate impact in schools and in clinics. And if the Trump Administration budget is enacted … those might be the good old days.
This is Trahant Reports.
The White House budget is short on details, but clear on direction.
We do know two things.
First: If enacted, this budget would shrink the federal government to a much smaller size. (Except for the military and the Veterans Administration.) And, second, this budget guarantees chaos ahead.
The “skinny budget” is a document that outlines the president’s financial goals for the year but gives few details.
This budget is more of an agenda, a plan to create a very different kind of federal government. There will be money available to approve (and pretend to regulate) energy projects, but nothing, really nothing, for public broadcasting, the arts, and the humanities. All told some nineteen federal agencies would be eliminated.
This is where I should add: Hold on! Every one of these agencies has a constituency in Congress. So you’ll see 535 budget revisions coming soon with members working to restore funding, and in some cases, even increasing the total amount of an agency appropriation.
This is also where chaos kicks in. The tensions that surfaced in Congress over the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act are magnified by this budget debate. And before this budget becomes law, Republican leaders will need votes from Democrats. And if there is no agreement, well, then there could a shutdown of the government that could last much longer than previous episodes. The best case scenario is a continuing resolution that results in cuts, but not as dramatic as the ones proposed by the White House.
Remember Congress, not the president, decides how much money is to be spent every year.
Right now the actual numbers in this budget mean little. They will go up and down. Some of the proposals, such as the elimination of public broadcasting, will not happen.
But it’s important to remember that this budget is the president’s agenda. This administration is hostile to every program that’s identified. So even if those programs are funded, the agencies will have a difficult task going forward.
OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said this budget was written using the president’s own words. Quote: “We went through his speeches, we went through articles that have been written about his policies, we talked to him, and we wanted to know what his policies were, and we turned those policies into numbers.”
And those numbers represent means significantly fewer dollars for Native American programs. I am Mark Trahant.
