Maureen Groppe

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Trump is proposing major cuts to health care, food assistance and other safety-net programs for the poor to balance the budget in 10 years while increasing spending for the military and other priorities.

But even if Congress goes along with the budget the president will send to Capitol Hill on Tuesday — which is unlikely — it requires rosy economic assumptions to work.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Trump’s first full budget proposal was written from the perspective of the taxpayer, specifically whether the administration could justify each line item to a family in Grand Rapids, Mich., or to a schoolteacher in Kenosha, Wis.

That means, he said, measuring success not by how many people are being helped by a federal program, but by how many people “we help get off of those programs and help them get back in charge of their own lives again.”

“If you’re on food stamps and you’re able bodied, we need you to go to work,” Mulvaney said. “If you’re on disability insurance … and you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work.”

Mulvaney said that will help grow the economy faster than experts predict it will under current policies.

But critics, such as Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, argues not only will that not happen, but vulnerable Americans will be hurt.

Trump’s proposed cuts to safety-net programs, Greenstein said, should “lay to rest the notion that the president intends to look out for struggling families left behind by the economy.”

The budget proposal assumes passage of the House Obamacare repeal bill, which cuts spending on Medicaid and insurance subsidies for low- and moderate-income families while repealing taxes imposed to pay for the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of insurance coverage to millions more Americans.

In addition to those health care cuts, Trump’s budget would reduce projected Medicaid spending further and change other assistance programs.

Food aid, in particular, would be scaled back. For food stamps, the administration proposes requiring able-bodied recipients without dependent children to work, and would phase in a requirement for states to pay a portion of the benefits. States, Mulvaney said, need “skin in the game,” to help make the program work better.

Seven of the 10 states receiving the most food stamp assistance are states Trump carried in November.

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Other major sources of savings — in a budget the White House boasts includes the most cuts ever proposed by a president —include student loan programs, federal retiree benefits, crop subsidies, disability payments and tax credits for the working poor and families with children. The administration says those credits should be given only to families who are in the country legally, even if the children — but not the parents — are American citizens.

The budget proposes double-digit percentage cuts next year for many Cabinet departments and major agencies, including 31% at the Environmental Protection Agency, 29% at State, and around 20% at the Agriculture and Labor departments.

By contrast, the Defense and Homeland Security departments, along with Veterans Affairs, would enjoy increases of 5% or more next year.

Trump also wants to increase spending for school voucher programs and infrastructure projects and to offer, for the first time, six weeks of paid family leave to new mothers and fathers.

Those priorities follow the promises the president made during the campaign, Mulvaney said, while upholding Trump’s pledge not to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Those programs — along with Medicaid — are the largest drivers of federal spending growth.

Trump also said he would not cut Medicaid. But Mulvaney acknowledged the House health care bill, which the president supports, would do that.

“He has clearly walked away from that promise,” said Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The budget also proposes cuts to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which pays monthly benefits to those too injured to work who aren’t old enough to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits. But Mulvaney said the vast majority of people would not consider disability payments to be part of Social Security.

“It’s old age retirement that they think of when they think of Social Security,” he said.

Trump’s proposal, an expanded version of the “skinny” budget he outlined in March, is likely to face a tough reception on Capitol Hill.

“The president told the American people he would help create jobs and provide greater economic security for families. This budget does exactly the opposite,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s a budget that takes a meat cleaver to the middle class by gutting the programs that help them the most.”

And it’s not just Democrats who have spoken out. Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who heads the House Agriculture Committee, has called the proposed cuts to farm programs “wrongheaded.” And Senate Republicans are taking their own approach to overhauling the Affordable Care Act, which could significantly alter the budget impact.

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States are also likely to object.

Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — the three traditionally Democratic states that flipped for Trump, giving him the election — would be among the hardest hit by state grant programs Trump wants to eliminate.

And during a news conference Monday, Gov. Chris Christie said he even without knowing the specifics of Trump's proposal, it was clear the proposed cuts to Medicaid could have a large impact in New Jersey, where Christie expanded the program.

"Does a proposed $800 billion cut to Medicaid concern me? Yes it does," said Christie, who supported Trump’s campaign and briefly served as his transition coordinator.

To increase defense spending as much as Trump wants, Congress would have to change a bipartisan budget law passed in 2011.

Mulvaney will begin selling his plan to lawmakers in appearances before the House and Senate Budget panels Wednesday and Thursday.

He’ll likely to be asked to defend the administration’s projection that the economy can grow 3% a year, the foundation of what Mulvaney called “Trumponomics.”

While that’s the historic average, experts say 3% growth will be difficult to achieve now because of a slowdown in the growth of labor, capital and productivity. The main reason for that is the country's aging population — which is also driving the projected increases in spending for Social Security and Medicare.

"While we appreciate the administration's focus on reducing the debt, when using more realistic assumptions, the president’s budget does not add up," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. "If the administration is serious about meeting the nation’s fiscal challenges, it will need to focus on structural reforms to our nation’s largest spending programs along with new revenue to finance them."

Mulvaney said the administration doesn’t expect Congress to adopt everything in the proposal.

“If Congress has a different way to get to that endpoint, God bless them. That’s great,” he said. But, he added, “It would be nice to minimize the daylight between us and them on these things.”

Contributing: Dustin Racioppi, The Record, (Bergen County, N.J.)