President Trump needs to use his speech before Congress Tuesday to build bridges with the people who didn’t vote for him during the election, Sen. Angus King said Tuesday.
The independent Maine senator said on CNN that Trump needs to realize there are a lot of people in the country who didn’t vote for him. While he’s spoken about unifying the country after a rough campaign, Trump needs to follow through with action, King said.
“I would like to see the president acknowledge there’s a whole half of the country that didn’t vote for him,” King said. “There’s a lot of anxiety, there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of people who are really worried about the direction of the administration. I’d like to see a little bridge building tonight, I think it’s a great opportunity for him to do that.”
Trump is likely to detail more of his budget plan during his first speech before a joint session of Congress, and King said he better get ready to be disappointed that most of his proposals won’t be taken up by lawmakers.
King said he’s worried about a $54 billion increase in military spending with no real plan for cuts coming from elsewhere. So far, decreases in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and ending foreign aid have been discussed, but those wouldn’t fully cover the increase.
King said ending foreign aid would be a mistake.
“It’s about 1 percent of the budget,” he said. “It’s a relatively small number, and as [Secretary of Defense] James Mattis said, if you don’t do foreign aid, you’ve gotta buy me more ammunition.”
King added that decreasing EPA spending would really just be forcing states to increase their spending because a lot of EPA money is sent to state environmental regulators.
Trump’s plan, which the president says is reliant on increases in economic growth, just isn’t feasible right now, King said.
“There’s no causal connection between what he’s proposing to do and increases in the GDP,” he said. “Increasing defense spending isn’t going to increase GDP.”
