This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 26, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Every President's budget is essentially dead on arrival, but President Trump's proposal that he's sent to Congress for consideration at least does one thing.

It's a budget that would eventually balance something not seen in many years.

And it does so largely on the basis of spending cuts that for the most part don't actually

cut spending.

Gato Institute Senior Fellow Michael Tanner comments.

Well we should always be careful when Washington starts talking about the vicious cuts that are coming.

In many cases these are not cuts at all, but simply reductions are slowing the growth and spending.

For example, the six or or $800 billion cuts in Medicaid actually would still increase Medicaid

spending over the next 10 years.

They simply would reduce it from the previous projected baseline.

So they're not cuts in any way that you or I would think of them in terms of a family

budget.

Certainly not when it comes to Medicaid.

If you were planning to spend $100 next week and you only

spent 60 you wouldn't talk about how you cut back your spending, you still spend

$60 more particularly bad if you don't have the $60 which is the case we find ourselves in with the federal budget.

Now some of the other cuts are actual cuts.

For example, in food stamps, the cuts are real, but they're only cutting back the spending and food stamps to say about the level we spent in 2009

Before the Great Recession they're simply saying that since the recession's in the rearview mirror

and unemployment is back down to traditional levels, we don't need the massive increase of

counter-cyclical spending that went on during the recession.

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