The Miami Herald sums it up nicely:
Trump not only loves the uneducated, as he crowed to a cheering crowd after winning the Nevada caucuses a year ago, he seems to have a warm spot in his heart for the unfed, the uncultured, the unhealthy, the unsheltered and the unprotected. He must because his vision creates so many of them.The Charlotte Observer notes the cruel zeroing out of the "Meals on Wheels" program and contrasts it with another ongoing expense:
... As Trump’s budget chief Mick Mulvaney asked skeptically Thursday: “Can we ask the taxpayer to pay for this?”
Actually, yes. Studies show Meals on Wheels helps lower Medicaid costs by keeping the elderly out of more expensive nursing homes. But Mulvaney’s question is a good one. We should ask it more.
How about this: Should we ask the taxpayer to pay for our president leaving the White House most weekends to enjoy his Florida resort, Mar-A-Lago? Those visits, which cost taxpayers an estimated $3 million a pop, have already accounted for a fifth of the tax dollars Barack Obama spent on such travel throughout his whole presidency.
By the way, that $3 million for one Trump getaway? That would pay for almost a decade’s worth of Meals on Wheels in a city the size of Charlotte.Let's not forget the cost of Rump's yuuuge, beautiful wall, either.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch runs through the proposal and sees soullessness at its core:
Any budget is about priorities. It’s about ranking the spending that the budget-maker thinks is important. A budget defines a household, a business, a charity, a nation. A budget, as they’re fond of saying in Washington, is a moral document. Not this one.
The budget outline that President Donald Trump unveiled Thursday is profoundly disturbing. For the first time, the president has put dollar signs on his dystopian priorities. “If he said it in the campaign, it’s in the budget,” White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday. [snip]
This is the blueprint for Trump’s America. It is repellent and immoral. It cannot stand.The New York Times calls it a "full tear- down" budget:
This is, of course, very much a political document, full of bluster and preposterous cuts that Mr. Trump must know that Congress, including many Republicans, will not accept. But the spirit behind the “budget blueprint” is clear enough: With a few big exceptions, Mr. Trump is in full tear-down mode. [snip]
One possible, even plausible, reason for the substance-lite nature of the document, which makes meaningful debate about it impossible, is incompetence. Or the administration could be deploying a piecemeal strategy to make it harder for the public to follow its thinking. [snip]
This document is at once scary and uninformative. Taken at face value, it would impose pain for pain’s sake. Looked at more broadly, it tees up spending cuts that will be needlessly deep in order to accommodate tax cuts.Again, this is useful only as a demonstration of the id of the Republican Party. It's the same "afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable" philosophy that's been animating these sociopaths for half a century. As far as wondering why this proposal is "substance-lite," we'll opt for the incompetence rationale.
BONUS: For a more expansive, eclectic reading list, look no further than Infidel's link round-up. Highly recommended.
