Perez calls Trump ‘a president of the rich’ over budget blueprint

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez ripped President Trump’s first federal budget outline Thursday, saying it favors the wealthy over the working class.

“Donald Trump’s budget blueprint has one goal: to devastate hardworking families,” Perez said in a statement. “Now he’s cutting afterschool programs and college financial aid, gutting help for American manufacturing and slashing infrastructure investments that could create jobs in rural communities.”

“If there was any doubt left about where his true priorities lie, this budget this budget just made it crystal clear – not with working families,” Perez added. “Trump is a president of the rich, bought by the rich and working for the rich.”

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The White House released Trump’s federal budget blueprint on Thursday, calling for a plan to dramatically reduce the size of government and proposing deep reductions at various agencies and departments, including eliminating entire programs and slashing the size of the federal workforce.

Presidential budget requests like Trump’s for fiscal year 2018 are only a guidance for Congress, which controls the power of the purse. Lawmakers usually pass their own budget and have already announced opposition to Trump’s proposal.

Trump is demanding a 28 percent reduction in the State Department’s budget, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a 31 percent shrink. The blueprint also calls for significant reductions in funding for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

The proposal would ax programs aimed at helping the poor, funding research on climate change and science, and providing cultural services for the public. Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would disappear, along with funds for more than a dozen other agencies.

Perez, who served as Labor secretary under former President Barack Obama, was among Democrats slamming Trump’s proposal, arguing it could undermine U.S. economic growth.

“Thanks in large part to the policies of the Obama Administration, we’re in the middle of the largest private-sector job growth in our history,” Perez said.

“But Trump apparently didn’t learn any lessons from the end of the last Republican presidency, and now he’s intent on reversing course just so the wealthy can pocket new tax breaks – the consequences could be catastrophic for our economy.”