A big target for President Trump’s budget cutting turns out to be foreign aid:
The Trump administration is proposing to cut spending by 37% for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budget, according to a person familiar with the budget deliberations….One U.S. official said that the State Department is looking at development assistance to other countries as a significant source for the cuts.
….“That is definitely dead on arrival,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told reporters Tuesday, saying the proposed State Department budget “puts our diplomats at risk.”
This is the perfect Trump budget cut. Congress will turn down these cuts almost instantly, and anyway, there’s not even much money there (foreign aid accounts for about 1 percent of federal spending). However, the American public has long been convinced that foreign aid is a huge part of the budget, so Trump’s base will view this as a bold action to rein in our spiraling federal debt. It’s cynical, ignorant, futile, and makes for brilliant PR. What could possibly be more Trumpian?
