Trump ‘Campaigned Like a Populist. He’s Governing Like a Plutocrat’ says WaPo Reporter
James Hohmann talks about what Trump’s budget proposal says about his values and the GOP.
President Trump unveiled a budget on Monday that would make big cuts to social, environmental, and other domestic programs, including a 90 percent cut to Great Lakes restoration funding.
But those cuts wouldn’t offset the president’s plan to blow up the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade.
For a guy who ran as a populist voice for the working class, how are his budget priorities squaring with those values?
Washington Post National Political Correspondent James Hohmann recently wrote an article about the budget, titled, “Trump budget highlights disconnect between populist rhetoric and plutocrat reality.”
Hohmann joins Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson to discuss the budget and the reaction in Washington.
“The president, he campaigned like a populist, he’s governing like a plutocrat,” says Hohmann.
“It’s unlikely that a lot of these things will actually make it through,” he says. But, “You have to take them seriously because this is an official proposal by the president and you have to mobilize about programs you care about.”
Hohmann notes the budget proposal is largely symbolic, especially considering Congress and Trump recently approved a long-term spending plan.
“It’s sort of weird for Trump to put out this budget because just last Friday he signed a two-year, basically, budget — the closest thing that we’re going to get to a budget — that increases spending by $500 billion and goes against a lot of the things that he calls for in this official budget proposal.”
Click on the audio player above to hear the full conversation.
