House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi slammed Republicans, describing their budget as one to "suck up money from the middle class." | Getty Democrats rush to turn Trump's budget cuts against him

Democrats on Thursday savaged the steep cuts to health, education and environmental protection programs in President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, seizing on the spending blueprint as proof that Trump has abandoned the voters who put him in the White House.

Trump’s budget, like the fiscal frameworks of his predecessors, represents a message about his agenda more than a plan that might actually become law. Congress would have to go along with Trump’s painful cuts, and even Republicans were preemptively balking at some provisions.


But that won’t stop Democrats from hammering the GOP for Trump’s wish-list.

With an eye toward winning back Trump voters from Appalachia to the Midwest, Democrats slammed rank-and-file Republicans on the White House’s pitch to slash everything from Pell Grants to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Meals on Wheels program that’s a lifeline to homebound seniors. Democrats repeatedly cast Trump as gouging middle-class and lower-income voters with his budget, pairing it with similar arguments against the GOP’s troubled Obamacare repeal bill.

“The Republicans in Congress and this White House, as we’re seeing now just in a few weeks, never miss an opportunity to suck up money from the middle class,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. “We see that in the health care bill. We see that in how they establish their budget priorities.”

The House Budget Committee’s top Democrat, Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth, said in an interview that Republicans are “writing a lot of our campaign message.”

“The American people rely on government for some fundamental things, most of which are safety — clean air, clean water, education and medical research — and all of these things are going to be hit pretty hard.”

Trump’s budget would slash funding for the Education Department by 13 percent, including a nearly $4 billion cut to Pell Grants. The budget zeroes out the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which helps fund Meals on Wheels.

Also getting the axe was Environmental Protection Agency spending to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes, a potential pressure point for Republican lawmakers who represent those regions. Among the budget’s new funding is $120 million to reopen vetting of Nevada’s Yucca Mountain for future nuclear waste storage, a move that the state’s electorally imperiled GOP Sen. Dean Heller quickly panned.

“Once again the Trump administration is showing its true colors: talk like a populist but govern like a special interests zealot,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

Like Obamacare repeal, Trump's budget offered a unifying message for both ends of Democrats' ideological spectrum. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the party's liberal senior senator on budget issues, condemned the White House plan as "morally obscene," while the more moderate Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) lamented its "many short-sighted choices."

Senate Democratic leadership plans to build on Thursday's offensive by encouraging lawmakers to hold events in their home states that highlight how Trump's budget cuts would harm local communities, an aide told POLITICO.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who leads the moderate New Democrat Coalition, said the budget would cause "all kinds of pain that will be felt around the country," and that Trump’s proposed boost in Pentagon funding would mean little to most voters.

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“An increase in the military, that’s a pretty abstract idea if one of the programs that is important to you is gone," he added.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a noted budget wonk and chief of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, criticized Trump for seeking to cut the Transportation Department by 13 percent while touting a nonexistent infrastructure proposal.

Van Hollen stopped short of echoing this week's threat by Schumer to force a government shutdown showdown if Republicans include money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in a bill to keep the government open past April 28.

But he took a crack at the White House for requesting $4.1 billion in funding for the border wall through next year.

"I thought President Trump said Mexico is going to pay for this wall," Van Hollen said.

