(Quin Hillyer, Liberty Headlines) President Trump’s new ten-year budget plan, released this week in unusual fashion while he is abroad and without official comment, is being generally considered a starting point for negotiations rather than a firm, hard target.

“The president’s budget is a suggestion,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming.

The proposal projects a balanced annual budget at the end of the ten years – while calling for tax cuts – so outside conservative-libertarian groups are praising it. (More on those high points, momentarily.) But on Capitol Hill, even longtime budget hawks like U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina are calling it unrealistic, even if aspirationally praiseworthy.

“The proposed three percent economic growth assumes a Goldilocks scenario regarding several major economic indicators, such as a sustained unemployment rate of 4.8 percent – when the last 10 years have averaged at 7 percent,” Sanford said. “It assumes another 10 years of continuous economic expansion, which would be unprecedented because we are already in our country’s third-longest period of economic expansion. And it ignores significant demographic and financial headwinds, such as the continuing retirement of the baby boomer generation and slowed private investment due to an increased public sphere in the economy.”

Conservative Senate Budget Committee member Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania sounded similar: “I support the broad goals of the Trump budget, but there are particulars with which I disagree.”

They were matched by the editors of National Review, who wrote that “Trump’s budget is ill-advised in many of its particulars and incompetent in others, but as a statement of priorities, it is very much what one would expect from a conventional Republican …..”

[Later in the roundup]….

But those were the naysayers. Plenty of conservatives were thrilled with Trump’s handiwork. Indeed, Jim Antle at the Washington Examiner compiled a large roundup of outside conservatives likening Trump’s approach to that of former president and conservative hero Ronald Reagan…..

[The full news story is here.]

 

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