{"id":19452,"date":"2020-01-19T07:25:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T12:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=19452"},"modified":"2020-01-19T07:26:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T12:26:28","slug":"usa-why-is-trump-the-only-candidate-with-a-budget-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=19452","title":{"rendered":"USA: Why Is Trump the Only Candidate With a Budget Proposal?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .<\/p>\n

An article by David Swanson<\/a><\/p>\n

An important job of any U.S. president is to propose an annual budget to Congress. Shouldn\u2019t it be a basic job of every presidential candidate to propose one to the public? Isn\u2019t a budget a critical moral and political document outlining what chunk of our public treasury should go to education or environmental protection or war?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The basic outline of such a budget could consist of a list or a pie chart communicating \u2014 in dollar amounts and\/or percentages \u2014 how much government spending ought to go where. It\u2019s shocking to me that presidential candidates do not produce these.<\/p>\n

As far as I have been able to determine, though it\u2019s so absurd as to seem improbable, no non-incumbent candidate for U.S. president has ever produced even the roughest outline of a proposed budget, and no debate moderator or major media outlet has ever publicly asked for one.<\/p>\n

There are candidates right now who propose major changes to education, healthcare, environmental, and military spending. The numbers, however, remain vague and disconnected. How much, or what percentage, do they want to spend where?<\/p>\n

(Article continued on the right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question for this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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Does military spending lead to economic decline and collapse?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Article continued from the left column)<\/p>\n

Some candidates might like to produce a revenue \/ taxation plan as well. \u201cWhere will you raise money?\u201d is as important a question as \u201cWhere will you spend money?\u201d But \u201cWhere will you spend money?\u201d seems like a basic question that any candidate should be asked.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Treasury distinguishes three types of U.S. government spending. The largest is mandatory spending. This is made up largely of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but also Veterans\u2019 care and other items. The smallest of the three types is interest on debt. In between is the category called discretionary spending. This is the spending that the Congress decides how to spend each year.<\/p>\n

What every presidential candidate ought to produce, at a minimum, is a basic outline of a federal discretionary budget. This would serve as a preview of what each candidate would ask the Congress for as president. If candidates feel they need to produce larger budgets outlining changes to mandatory spending as well, so much the better.<\/p>\n

President Trump is the one candidate for president in 2020 who has produced a budget proposal (one for each year he\u2019s been in office). As analyzed by the National Priorities Project, Trump\u2019s latest budget proposal devoted 57% of discretionary spending to militarism (wars and war preparations). This is despite the fact that this analysis treated Homeland Security, Energy (the Energy Department is largely nuclear weapons), and Veterans Affairs each as separate categories not included under the category of militarism.<\/p>\n

The U.S. public, in polling over the years, has tended to have no idea what the budget looks like, and \u2014 once informed \u2014 to favor a very different budget from the actual one at the time. I\u2019m curious what each person campaigning for the presidency wants the federal budget to look like. Will they put their money (well, our money) where their mouths are? They say they care about many good things, but will they show us how much they care about each of them?<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect that most people would recognize the significant differences, and have strong opinions about them, if we were shown a basic pie-chart of spending priorities from each candidate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY . An article by David Swanson An important job of any U.S. president is to propose an annual budget to Congress. Shouldn\u2019t it be a basic job of every presidential candidate to propose one to the public? Isn\u2019t a budget a critical moral and political document outlining what chunk of our public … Continue reading USA: Why Is Trump the Only Candidate With a Budget Proposal?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,91],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-19452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disarmament","category-north-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}