The top Democratic appropriator on Monday denounced President Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget for slashing domestic spending and calling for $8.6 billion in border wall funding, and said it had no chance of passing.
“President Trump has somehow managed to produce a budget request even more untethered from reality than his past two,” said House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. “This irresponsible proposal slashes investments in America’s working families to unworkable budget cap levels, resulting in cuts of 9 percent to programs like early childhood education, job training, law enforcement, safe drinking water, and scientific and medical research.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., added that Trump’s budget proposal “puts our country at risk of a another costly shutdown in October by demanding nearly $9 billion for a border wall that the Congress has already rejected.”
[Related: Pelosi, Schumer warn of another government shutdown over Trump’s $8.6B wall proposal]
The Democratic opposition means Trump will have a difficult time winning much of his budget requests from the House, where Democrats control the majority and the purse strings.
The first hearing on the proposal will take place Tuesday in the House Budget Committee, where Democrats are likely to criticize it.
Lowey called Trump’s wall funding request “reckless” and accused him of using gimmickry to hide defense spending in a war funding account. Trump’s budget, Lowey said, “has no chance of garnering the necessary bipartisan support to become law. “
Republicans are offering tepid praise for the spending blueprint.
Rep. Steve Womack, of Arkansas, the top GOP lawmaker on the House Budget Committee, said Trump’s proposal “takes steps in the right direction, but there is still much work to do.” Womack and other fiscal hawks want reforms in mandatory spending, which they say is the true source of the skyrocketing deficit.
