The Budget Plan of a Charlatan
WASHINGTON -- In this depressingly unserious campaign season, it's time -- past time -- to take Donald Trump seriously. In particular, to take seriously what passes for Trump's domestic policy, aside from that wall.
Trump purports to care about the national debt. "We can't keep doing this," he said of the debt at MSNBC's town hall Wednesday. "We've got to start balancing budgets."
Except, Trump -- alone among Republican candidates -- insists that he will leave entitlement spending untouched, although it consumes more than two-thirds of the federal budget.
On Social Security, for instance, Trump rejects raising the retirement age (a move he once endorsed), increasing payroll taxes, reducing cost of living adjustments and trimming benefits.
In Trump world, the solution to controlling entitlement spending is that refuge of lazy and dishonest politicians everywhere: waste, fraud and abuse. "It's tremendous," Trump said at the recent CBS News debate, citing "thousands and thousands of people that are over 106 years old" and collecting Social Security.
Reality check: A 2013 audit found 1,546 people who had received Social Security benefits, despite being dead. Total cost? $31 million. Cost of Social Security that year? $823 billion.
Another Trump favorite -- empowering Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices -- produces claimed savings, $300 billion annually, that are mathematically impossible. Medicare spending on prescription drugs was $78 billion in 2014. Total nationalspending on prescription drugs, not just by the federal government, was $300 billion in 2014, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Stick with Trump! He'll get the drug companies to pay us to take their meds!
Push Trump on cuts elsewhere in the budget, and you get suggestions that are paltry and unrealistic.
"I'm going to cut spending big league," Trump pronounced at the MSNBC town hall. His sole example, when pressed by Joe Scarborough, was the Department of Education.
Which part, please? The $28 billion to fund Pell Grants for low-income college students? The $16 billion to local school districts with large numbers of low-income elementary and secondary students? The $13 billion to states for special education? The entire $78 billion federal education budget?
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