President Trump on March 11 submitted his 2020 budget, which proposes a 15 percent cut in funding for the USDA and a 31 percent cut in EPA funding. The $4.7 trillion budget targets “overly generous” crop support payments under USDA, while boosting defense spending by $34 billion and adding $8.6 billion for border wall funding.
The budget proposal, which Bloomberg said is nearly certain to be ignored by Congress and may trigger another government shutdown in the fall, calls for reducing regular non-defense discretionary spending by 9 percent, from $597 billion to $543 billion. Funding cuts are also proposed for the departments of State, Energy, and Transportation, while the departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs would get increases larger than expected inflation.
“President Trump has somehow managed to produce a budget request even more untethered from reality than his past two,” said Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “The Trump budget has no chance of garnering the necessary bipartisan support to become law.”
The budget proposes to reduce the average premium subsidy for crop insurance to 48 percent from 62 percent, and limit subsidies to producers that posted an adjusted gross income of half-a-million dollars or less. The proposal also requests tightening commodity payment limits and limiting eligibility for commodity subsidies to one manager per farm.
“The President’s budget request is a road map for how to make things worse for farmers, ranchers, and those who live in rural communities,” said Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Democratic Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Peterson said in a statement that the cuts to crop insurance in the proposal total $26 billion.
Funding proposed for the border wall construction would come from $5 billion in the Homeland Security budget and $3.6 billion from military construction funds, Bloomberg reported. President Trump is requesting an additional $3.6 billion for military construction to replace money he intends to shift this year to border wall construction. The budget also proposes $200 billion for infrastructure improvements.
Bloomberg reported that even with the cuts and an assumption that the economy would grow at an average 3 percent for a decade, the budget does not balance in 10 years and shows a $202 billion deficit in 2029. The deficit is projected to exceed $1 trillion through 2022. The budget calls for no net tax increases, Bloomberg reported, although some user fees would increase.