Gov. John Kasich says President Trump's budget "won't pass"
Ohio Gov. John Kasich says the budget proposed by the Trump administration would have a "significant" impact on his home state but that the package "isn't going to pass."
"Presidents send up budgets and the Congress fiddles around," Kasich, a Republican, said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning," seemingly undeterred by the massive cuts proposed by the Trump White House.
The plan, titled "The New Foundation for American Greatness," includes a total of $3.6 trillion in spending cuts to reach a balanced budget within 10 years, reducing the debt from its current 77 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 60 percent of GDP and wiping out deficit spending entirely in a decade. The budget book devotes two pages outlining the White House's assertion that the Obama administration caused massive inflation of the national debt and created economic stagnation.
President Trump's first major budget proposal, which assumes the Medicaid savings in the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) will be passed, would make $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
Programs like food stamps (SNAP), Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy families (TANF) will face sharp cuts.
"You can't just take stuff away when people need to be healthy they need to be fed," Kasich added. "It's not just a one way street. It has to be both ways."
The welfare portion of Mr. Trump's proposal would give states increased authority to impose work requirements and eligibility restrictions for welfare programs, and his budget would slash an estimated $274 billion from anti-poverty programs over 10 years.
"When you do budgets, it's a matter of creating priorities," Kasich said. "Reform is fine, privatization is fine, but you can't just move quickly," adding that "we have to get to the root of the problem."
"The changes, the reforms that can come from many of these programs are fine, but you just can't pull the rug out from under people," he said. "If they're not healthy, they're not going to work, and if they're hungry, they're not going to go to work."
While Kasich questioned Mr. Trump's budget proposals, he applauded the president's comments on the terrorist attack in Manchester, England.
"What I think is so important is, who helped this guy build this vest? We have to track this down, and it means good intelligence and it means cooperation worldwide and it also means -- and I give President Trump credit for this -- everyone in this world is civilized, whether you're Christian, Jew, Muslim, it doesn't matter," Kasich said. "We all have to stand up and make the argument that this culture of death, of destroying young people is not acceptable and we must stomp it out."