March 16 – Trump’s Budget Bloats the Military and Starves Everything Else; Trump’s Contempt for the Poor; Diversity Wins Over Racism in the Dutch Election

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Trump’s budget proposal that increases spending on defense, homeland security, and veterans while cutting spending on diplomacy and the environment by one third, cutting Health, Agriculture and Labor by one fifth, followed by 10 to 15% cuts in Commerce, Education, Housing, Transportation and Interior down to smaller cuts in everything else. A former member of President Obama’s economic team who was the Chief Economic Advisor to Vice President Biden, Jared Bernstein, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, joins us. We will discuss a budget that Trump says is about keeping America safe even though the U.S. spends more than most of the rest of the world combined  on defense and faces no significant threats as China slows its military spending and Trump’s increase of $54 billion in defense is about the total of what Russia spends on defense per year.

Part 2

Then we examine the impact of the Trump budget on the poor and speak with David Bradley, the Executive Director of the National Community Action Foundation who has been one of Washington’s leading advocates on behalf of low income programs. He joins us to discuss how the eroding support for Trump’s replacement for Obamacare makes this budget dead on arrival with Democrats appalled by the harshness of the cuts while some Republicans are unhappy with a budget that does not go far enough in cutting the growth of entitlements.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a former U.S. Ambassador to The Netherlands, Cynthia Schneider, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University who is also a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. She joins us to discuss the victory of the Dutch center right party meaning that Geert Wilders, the racist friend of Stephen Bannon and Nigel Farage, who came in a distant second will not form a government. We also look into the surprise victory of the youthful GreenLeft Party which made the most gains that is led by 30 year-old Jesse Klaver who is half Moroccan and half Indonesian.