The Obama administration managed to increase the national debt from $10.6 trillion in 2009 to nearly $20 trillion in 2016, meaning the cost of serving that debt has doubled and will rise as interest rates rise.
But when President Trump proposes a budget that would cut spending by $4.23 trillion over the next decade there is wailing and gnashing of teeth — including from the majority of Nevada politicians.
Much of the lamenting is over the budget’s proposal to carry out the House-passed modest rollback of Obamacare, specifically rolling back Medicaid eligibility. Previously, Medicaid covered low-income children, pregnant women and disabled, but largely excluded other low-income adults. Obamacare allowed just about anyone earning below 138 percent of the poverty level to become eligible.
Nevada was one of the 31 states to expand Medicaid eligibility since the federal government promised to initially pick up 100 percent of the increased cost and 90 percent in later years.
Gov. Brian Sandoval has said he intends to protect Medicaid funding “at all cost” — meaning your cost. The expansion has added 220,000 Nevadans to Medicaid.
U.S. Sen. Dean Heller also said he is concerned about the budget’s cuts to Medicaid and its affect on Nevadans now covered by it.
Freshman Nevada U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto joined other senators in signing a letter to Trump bemoaning the proposed Medicaid cuts. She noted that more than 18,000 veterans in Nevada are covered by Medicaid. How many were previously covered or still would be after a rollback was not stated.
“Your proposed cuts to Medicaid and your efforts to take away people’s health coverage are inconsistent with the promises you made to America’s veterans. They deserve better,” the letter states.
Spending as well as cuts are drawing fire.
There is that $120 million in Trump’s budget to restart the licensing process for Yucca Mountain to become a nuclear waste storage site, a measure apparently opposed by a majority of state politicians.
This prompted Heller to say, “From slashing funding for important public lands programs to its renewed effort to revive the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the President’s budget request contains several anti-Nevada provisions. While Congress ultimately has the power of the purse, I will continue to stand up for Nevada’s priorities by defending our important public lands programs and fighting any effort to turn Nevada into the nation’s nuclear waste dump. Yucca Mountain is dead …”
Rep. Dina Titus of Clark County fired off this missive: “President Trump wants to fund a revival of the failed Yucca Mountain boondoggle that will ultimately cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Just as his budget overlooks the needs of the America people, Trump’s Yucca Mountain line item ignores the majority of Nevadans who don’t want this dangerous project rammed down their throats.”
On the other hand, Nye County Commission Chairman Dan Schinhofen sent out a statement saying, “I am pleased that the just published fiscal 2018 budget submitted by President Donald Trump includes funding that will continue the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository in Nye County. The promise of a safe and secure site for nuclear waste has been promised to the nation for more than three decades.”
Time to negotiate for benefits?
Then there is the plan in the budget to save $10 million a year by finally following the provisions of the original 1970s act to protect wild horses by allowing excess animals to be sold for slaughter instead of being warehoused at taxpayer expense.
The wild horse management budget has doubled under Obama to more than $80 million a year. The usual suspects decry this trim.
Few seem willing to throttle back on the government largesse, even though the economy has picked up a bit since the depths of the recession and unemployment has fallen from October 2009’s 10 percent peak to 4.7 percent.
Trump’s budget proposes to cut more than $800 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, and trim $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion over all from welfare programs — all of which have increased in recent years.
Medicaid enrollment has grown by 47 percent since 2006 and spending by 75 percent — to $554 billion in 2015. Food stamp recipients have increased by 11 million.
Trump’s budget is 55 percent larger than 2007’s, though inflation has been 20 percent.
As Ronald Reagan once remarked, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”
A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.
Yucca Mountain (CBS pix)
4TH ST8 
I have said this before and will say it again. We at the Children’s Heart Center Nevada extend an open invitation to you to come and visit to see what we do and who we care for to help you better understand some of the issues you are addressing in this and other commentaries with regard to healthcare delivery and healthcare financing for some of the most vulnerable of your fellow Nevada citizens. Our invitation remains open as always.
Dr Bill Evans
childrensheartcenter.com
While I don’t speak for Nevada politicians, my objections to Trump’s proposed budget arise not from the amount of the cuts, but from how he proposes to do it.
The majority of the federal deficit stems from the big three entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. His solution is to do nothing with SS and Medicare and to merely cut funding for Medicaid – as if the medical care needs of the recipients will just magically diminish by his Fiat. Their medical needs will not change nor will the cost of caring for them diminish. It’s a shell game.
Now that he’s shown he will do nothing to contain the total cost of the big three, he’ll greatly increase the defense budget, so we can go fight more of other peoples’ wars. We fight too many wars already. As Mattis said, ““If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately,” We don’t believe him? But Trump is perfectly willing to eviscerate all kinds of badly needed government functions along with the few unneeded ones, while maintaining lavish tax deductions for the rich.
BTW, for you medical pseudocapitalism boosters, from Consumer’s Reports: On average, anesthesiologists charge out of network patients six times the charges submitted to Medicare. (5/17, p. 56) Only in America is it considered kosher to charge one sick person six times that for another. Isn’t supply and demand supposed to prevent that sort of thing in a capitalistic system? News flash: This isn’t capitalism.
Meanwhile, while the largest air ambulance service charged $13,198 per flight in 2007, it charged $50,199 in 2016. My goodness, the price of fuel must have risen! But these guys adhere to the pseudocapitalism mantra: Never give a sucker an even break.
A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money right Thomas?
So while the richest of the rich (God Bless the elite anyhow!) GOT PAID, the rest of us got the shaft.
The real hard thing to understand though is how it is that intelligent people still support the guys that do all they can to help the richest of the rich, and screw everyone else.
“The deficit is expected to top $1 trillion in 2020 as a slowing global economy and festering trade tensions weigh on economic growth in the United States. Mr. Trump, who promised to eliminate deficits by cutting spending and growing the economy, has allowed them to swell under his watch by enacting sweeping tax cuts and boosting government spending.
Corporate tax revenues for the government’s 2018 and 2019 fiscal years have come in well below what the Congressional Budget Office forecast they would be before the 2017 tax cuts passed.”