#Trump's FY 2021 budget cuts in major agencies: Commerce Department: 37%; Environmental Protection Agency: 26%; Department of Health and Human Services: 15%; State Department and foreign aid: 21%; Labor Department: 11%; Agriculture Department: 8%; and Energy Department: 8%. Student loan programs will be slashed, and tax breaks are included for private school tuition. Federal retirement programs will be cut.
Although the Pentagon will receive only a $2 billion increase, that is largely due to the fact that it has received two very large increases since Trump took office. Nuclear weapons programs are, however, budgeted at almost $46 billion.
#Bryce Covert, Trump's Bad Budget," The Nation, March 16/23, 2020.
Covert writes: "The real intent of work requirements is to cut people off from benefits in order to dramatically shrink social programs. Trump's proposed FY 2021 budget is no different. It calls for instituting or beefing up work requirements in federally funded public assistance programs. The budget, therefore, seeks to trim spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade."
#Looking at the Trump FY 2021 budget from a Discretionary Budget Request perspective: 57% is allocated to Defense, 7% to the Veterans Administration, and 4% to Homeland Security, for a combined 68% of the pie. The Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, and Agriculture departments combined share a total of 15% of the pie. Broadly speaking, about two-thirds of spending goes to the category of national security, and about one-seventh goes to the category of the domestic economy.
#According to Chad Boin of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the average tariff on imported goods from China will be 19.3%,up from 3% when Trump took office. The first-phase agreement between the two nations said nothing about government subsidies to Chinese firms, and the operation of state-owned enterprises.
#Nathan Heller, "Big Spenders," The New Yorker, January 27, 2020.
"They [venture capitalists] , too, make predominantly bad bets: about eighty per cent of venture investments don't pay off." "But the bulk of Venture World's offerings are online,where they are hawked on bright,uncluttered sites that scroll down, down and down again with charming animations, offering moving stories about one big idea that will change the industry
"A chastening study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2012 found that the average venture capital fund in the previous two decade,far from delivering its promised returns, had scarcely broken even."
#Amelia Pang, "Field Schemes." Mother Jones, March/April 2020.
"Lax federal controls mean that the USDA can hire organic certifiers that will help them boost profits by looking the other way." "We import 70 percent of our organic soybeans and 40 percent of our organic corn, which are fed to livestock." "The Cornveopia Institute, an industry watchdog group, suspects that the USDA, which is supposed to regulate but also promote US agriculture, is not strictly monitoring these imports -- because if it did, it could undercut the entire organic food chain." "But American officials are taking a less stringent approach. They still do not require rigorous pesticide tests for organic imports from high-risk countries. Although the USDA suspended [a license] to certify products from Turkey, the department still allows the company to accredit organic products from Russia,Ukraine, and Bulgaria."
#Klaus Schwab, "The World We Leave Them," TIME, February 3, 2020.
"Millennials, though not yet 35, accounted for only 3% of U.S wealth by 2018. Until the early 1930s, U.S. national debt exceeded 40% of GDP, and at times stood as low as 30%. Then it exploded. By the end of 2019, U.S. federal debt stood at over 100% of GDP."
"If the U.S. Social Security system is no longer funded beyond the next 15 years, as is currently the projected case, all societal partners should make a pact to ensure the future funding." "It would redirect government resources, for example, from deficit spending on current accounts to investments in green infrastructure that will last for generations."
ADDENDUMS:
*The EU rejects the Trump administration's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, as it "departs" from internationally agreed parameters, It had been ejected by the Palestinians.
*Scotland may end up back in the EU, as the Scottish National Party (SNP) wants to secede from the U.K., and then rejoin the EU. Currently, it must get permission from the U.K. parliament.
*Angela Doyinsola Aina, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"African Americans are three to four times more likely than their white counterparts to suffer pregnancy-related deaths."
*Kimberly Teehee, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
Over half of American Indian/Native Alaska women have experienced sexual violence."
*The Human Rights Campaign figures that at least 26 trans- or gendered-nonconforming people, over 90% of whom were trans women, were killed by violence in 2019.
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