U.S. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has vowed to fight against several of the cuts listed in President Donald Trump”™s outline for his Fiscal Year 2018 budget.
“President Trump”™s budget is an utter disaster for Connecticut,” said Murphy. “The good news is that it’s so terrible that it’s likely dead on arrival.”
Trump”™s budget outline includes a $54 billion increase in defense spending and a $54 billion cut for nondefense spending. Specifically, the proposal includes:
- $3 billion to fund border wall construction and increased deportation efforts;
- 30 percent cut for the Environmental Protection Agency;
- 29 percent cut to the State Department;
- 23 percent cut to Health and Human Services;
- 21 percent cut to the Labor Department;
- 20 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health;
- 17 percent cut to the Commerce Department;
- 15 percent cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development;
- 13 percent cut to Department of Transportation”™s discretionary spending, including Amtrak and TIGER grants;
- Elimination of federal funding for anti-poverty programs such as the Community Development Block Grant and Legal Services Corporation; and
- Elimination of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities
“A budget that devastates funding for medical research, transportation and the heroin crisis would be awful for our state, and as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I’m going to work with Republicans to make sure this right-wing budget never becomes law,” Murphy said.
“More money for defense is a positive, but if you pay for it by gutting funding for job training and education then we will have no way to fill the defense jobs and the work will go overseas,” the senator said. “It’s such a shortsighted approach and I am confident that it won’t survive scrutiny.”
