Washington (AFP)
The Trump administration's budget, nine months before the presidential election, has everything of the campaign program, based on excessively optimistic revenue forecasts and giving pride of place to the military, when the poorest people see aid programs to shrink like skin of sorrow.
In the midst of his campaign for re-election in November, Donald Trump did not bother with realistic forecasts to build his draft federal budget 2021.
The expected growth of the United States should be less than 2% in the coming years? The budget is based on growth of 3% per year for 15 years.
Which has never been the case in recent US history. Even the lavish 1960s did not experience such a long period of growth above 3%.
"Hypotheses are formulated in this budget (...) but we think that 3% (of growth) is entirely achievable in the next ten years", defended the director of the budget at the White House, Russell Vought, questioned Monday on CNBC.
However, this budget is very unlikely to be voted on by the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Democrats.
As for the budgetary austerity that has been the mantra of the Republican Party for decades, the Republican President is no longer embarrassed, and pushes the balance to 2035, instead of 2030.
Russell Vought hailed a "balanced 15 year budget".
"President Trump's budget offers more spending cuts than any other administration in history," he said in a press release.
This budget is "destructive and irrational," lambasted Democrat John Yarmuth, chairman of the House of Representatives' budget committee, in a press release.
Denouncing cuts in the budgets of health systems, medical assistance for the most deprived, the environmental protection agency, education, he evokes "a abandonment by the federal government of all responsibility for the well-being of the American people and our nation. "
- Moon objective 2024 -
Taking the lion's share, military spending, which has been rising since the start of Donald Trump's mandate, has increased less this year. The draft budget projects an increase of 0.3% to reach $ 740.5 billion.
The increase will be 20% for the only "modernization of our nuclear arsenal", detailed Russell Vought during a press point.
Two billion dollars must also be allocated to the further construction of an anti-immigration wall on the border with Mexico.
Nasa's budget also jumped 12%, so it can send astronauts to the moon again in 2024, as the president wants.
In contrast, to cut spending to the tune of $ 4.6 trillion over the next ten years, the White House plans to cut drug reimbursements, aid for the disabled, or cut food aid programs.
International aid will be reduced by 21%.
Donald Trump "has been very clear and his budget fully protects social security (which manages pensions in the United States) and Medicare beneficiaries," health coverage for the elderly, said Russell Vought.
"We have given priority to the defense of this country which the president, the commander-in-chief, considers absolutely vital," he continued. On the other hand, "we think that the era is over to spend money on a statue of Bob Dylan in Mozambique or for a professional cricket league in Afghanistan".
The world's largest economy has entered its eleventh year of expansion in a row, a record. From 1.5% in 2016, the last year of the Obama era, it reached 2.3% in 2017, before rising to 2.9% in 2018.
But it slowed to 2.3% last year due in particular to the trade war with China, which discouraged business investment.
The deficit, widened by measures to stimulate growth such as cuts in corporate taxes and a reduction in the tax burden for the better-off, should reach $ 1.015 billion at the end of September 2020. The fiscal year American starts October 1st.
© 2020 AFP