News •
May 25th, 2017
Trump's 1st Budget Announced
Mick Mulvaney, the White House Budget Director, revealed President Trump's budget for 2018 titled A New Foundation for American Greatness. As expected, the response has been mixed. Many people on the Left decry the cuts to social programs, while those on the Right who believe our government spending is out of control support the cuts.
Trump's international visits were also big news this week. See Trump's speech on Islam for a particularly good example of how the press coverage varied from Left, who refers to him as the Muslim ban president, to Right, who emphasized that Trump is working to reset America's relationship with Saudi Arabia and focus more on combating violent extremists.
We wrote a short blog this week on John Oliver's argument for preserving net neutrality and Reason's argument against it. We also included a 2 question survey that we'd love for you to take so we can understand where our audience stands on the issue.
Snippets from the Right
Fox News
"White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney slammed what he says is not mere fear-mongering but outright lies by Democrats about President Trump's federal budget proposal.
This is 'demagoguery at the very highest level,' Mulvaney told 'Fox & Friends' on Thursday, singling out New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said 'children will die' if this budget is enacted.
Mulvaney said that comment in particular shows why politicians are losing credibility with the American people.
'Republicans care about poor people. Republicans care about kids. Republicans care about the elderly,' the founding member of the House Freedom Caucus emphasized.
He said on the other hand, despite what critics say, Democrats truly care about national defense and the rhetoric from either side is unhelpful to the national debate.”
Snippets from the Center
Lifehacker
"President Trump released a new draft budget yesterday—which means that your federal tax dollars may be going to different places. Let’s take a look at what happens to the money we pay the IRS, and how much we each personally spend.
About half of the federal government’s money comes from income taxes. You also probably pay state and local taxes of various kinds, but we’re not calculating those today. Another 33 percent comes from payroll taxes... The rest comes from corporate income tax (11 percent) and excise, estate, and miscellaneous other taxes (9 percent). Most (99.5 percent) of us will never pay estate tax...
...
You’ll find that a lot of programs don’t cost as much as you thought: the military is huge, but you pay way more to social security than to defense. And the National Endowment for the Arts, a constant political football, is literally pocket change for most of us. Oh, and don’t forget $574 to pay down interest on the national debt ($283 billion)."
Snippets from the Left
Salon
"Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney tried to spin these cuts as a form of compassion, arguing that people need to look 'at the budget through the eyes of the taxpayer' and that they measure compassion 'by the number of people we help get off of those [social] programs.'
The problem is that these cuts don’t just hurt people in immediate need of government assistance to survive. Conservatives spin this story about an unfair system where a bunch of lazy welfare cheats live off government largesse while hard-working Americans are forced to foot the bill. But the reality is that drastic cuts to social spending will do serious damage to the prospects of working people and to the economy at large. If the goal is to help working people do better — as opposed to helping rich people buy diamond-encrusted water bowls for their dogs — then it’s critical to keep fully funding programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps."
