Schumer: Trump budget would benefit wealthy over middle class

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday blasted President Trump’s coming budget plan, saying that it will benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

“This budget proposal is a reflection of exactly who this President is and what today’s Republican Party believes in: helping the wealthy and special interests while putting further burdens on the middle class and those struggling to get there,” Schumer said in a statement.

An Office of Management and Budget official on Monday said that Trump will be a proposing a $54 billion increase in defense spending for the next fiscal year, with an equal cut from non-defense discretionary spending. 

{mosads}“It is clear from this budget blueprint that President Trump fully intends to break his promises to working families by taking a meat ax to programs that benefit the middle-class,” Schumer said. “A cut this steep almost certainly means cuts to agencies that protect consumers from Wall Street excess and protect clean air and water.

“Most Americans didn’t vote to ease up on polluters, or to give Wall Street the green light to rip them off. They certainly didn’t vote to make all these cuts so that President Trump can hand out a tax break to the wealthiest Americans.”

The White House is sending a topline budget proposal to federal agencies Monday afternoon, and the budget is expected to be released in the middle of March.

Trump will discuss his agenda further in a joint address to Congress Tuesday. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are slated to give a “prebuttal” to the speech Monday afternoon at the National Press Club.