By Susan Crabtree -- Washington Examiner
Senate Democrats are pronouncing President Trumps budget blueprint dead on arrival arguing that its $54 million increase in defense spending with corresponding cuts to domestic programs in the same amount would never pass muster with their colleagues when it comes time to pass spending bills in Congress.
Presidents budgets have long been an exercise in setting spending priorities but have no enforcement mechanism when Congress passes appropriations measures. Republicans have enough votes in the House and Senate to pass Trumps budget but no power to impose those spending increases and reductions on the Senate where it will take eight Democrats to get past the chambers procedural hurdles on spending bills.
Theres no way hes going to get that blueprint through Congress when it comes to the tough task of passing appropriations bills in the Senate Sen. Chris Van Hollen D-Md. told the Washington Examiner Monday night. I can support increases in defense but Im not going to stand by while he guts our investments in education innovation and infrastructure.
We need to have a balance between those requests for defense increases and for these important domestic economic investments he added.
The Trump administration outlined the broad terms of its budget Monday but only said spending reductions in non-defense spending would offset the increases without specifying exactly where the funds would come from.
In 2011 Van Hollen the former top Democrat on the House Budget Committee who now serves on the Senate Budget panel was one of the key lawmakers who helped negotiate the Budget Control Act to try to bring about the conclusion to that years debt-ceiling crisis. The law also known as sequestration imposed spending caps that both parties have complained about.
Any efforts to bust budget caps imposed in 2011 would lead to demands by Democrats to increase domestic spending as well.
Van Hollen said the Congress had a balance over the last couple of years between defense spending increases and boosts to domestic funding while trying to work around the spending limits.
Many of us worked to try to remove sequestration we thought it was counterproductive … but when you do it you want to do it in equal parts he said.
