This week, President Trump released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2018. It “proposes steep cuts in basic health, nutrition, and other important assistance for tens of millions of struggling, low- and modest-income Americans, even as it calls for extremely large tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest people and profitable corporations… In fact, this stands as the most radical, Robin-Hood-in-reverse budget that any modern President has ever proposed” said Bob Greenstein at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in this statement.

The President’s budget was met with hesitation and hostility from Congressional Republicans. The budget assumes the $839 billion in Medicaid cuts in the American Health Care Act (AHCA) become law, and then calls for an additional $627 billion in cuts to the program. In addition to Medicaid, Trump’s budget cuts financial assistance, nutritional assistance, disability benefits, and other welfare programs that low-income communities rely on for economic security and access to health. The budget specifically targets women and children by cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) respectively. It also targets undocumented immigrants working in the US by barring them from collecting Child or Earned Income Tax Credits.

These savings are paired with a 10% increase in military spending and several billion towards a border security wall. Trump assumes that huge tax cuts (which particularly benefit the wealthiest Americans) will result in 3% economic growth, however budget experts from both parties have disputed this. Trump is relying on the economic growth in order to balance the budget.