Trump’s budget needs a new direction

Trumps budget needs a new direction

Colton Hurley, Webpage Editor

Many other topics have been overshadowing the new presidency of Donald Trump. However, some very big topics are not receiving the attention they deserve.

A prime example is the president’s new budget plan, which is proposing severe cuts to many large agencies and a big boost to some such as the military budget.

Obviously Americans should have seen an increase in military spending due to Trump’s tough talk throughout the campaign about strengthening the military, but adding over $50 billion is very extreme, especially since the military budget is already topping out at over $500 billion.

This military budget is incredible considering that China, the next-highest military spender, only budgets a little over $200 billion.

This increase in military budget has to come from somewhere, but cutting the funding for some other programs by more than 30 percent is just ridiculous. The EPA is having funding cut by 31 percent. This makes no sense when we live in a world constantly dealing with issues created by our effect on the environment.

Trump also wants to cut funding for Health and Human Services by $12.6 billion, which is a 16 percent cut. Consider this at a time when there are places in America that do not have clean drinking water. That just doesn’t seem logical.

America needs to focus on fixing the areas where America is broken. There has been a lot of overspending on things that shouldn’t receive massive amounts of money, so some programs do need funding lowered. However, to cut more than 15 percent on agencies such as the EPA, Health and Human Services, and Justice is just unintelligent.

At a time when many are calling for increased training for police to lower the disconnect between police and citizens, cutting funding is a mistake.

Overall, Congressional Republicans need to steer the budget in a different direction. Yes America does have to maintain a strong military, but maybe it is time we scale back the overarching defense network throughout the world, and focus more on Americas own lands instead of having branches throughout the globe. This consolidation would save American’s vast amounts of money.