Senator Rob Portman expects President Donald Trump’s budget will go through big changes in Congress, though perhaps not quite as big as in the past.
President Trump’s 2018 budget includes major cuts in social welfare, research and environmental programs, builds a wall along the southern border, and presumes a rate of growth based on tax cuts that will balance the budget in 10 years.
As director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, Portman constructed such spending blueprints. He says back then, Congress had greater power because there were separate appropriations for 12 different areas of government that Congress scrutinized closely.
Now they’ve been consolidated.
“So I think probably budgets have a little more sway than they used to just because Congress isn’t going through the normal process. But in general, this is a suggestion," Portman says. "The president, his people, have given their recommendations. And now it’s our job through the appropriations process to go through this line-by-line line and come up with our own proposals.”
Portman was among the Republicans who objected to similar cuts to Medicaid, Great Lakes Restoration and other spending in President Trump’s 2017 proposal.
