John Oliver Points Out Painful Truths About Trump Budget

Trump’s proposed budget cuts would most hurt people who voted for him. Please try to contain your shock as John Oliver explains.

It turns out that keeping campaign promises are hard. A lot is said on the road to the presidency, and much of it is filled with idealism. Or baloney.

Really, it depends on who’s listening. Still, it seems as if Trump’s promises in particular are turning out to be just a massive dump truck filled with rotten baloney. One of the more recent rancid lunch meat deliveries was the American Health Care Act (ACHA), which threatens to leave 24 million uninsured.

Well, the President is back at it again with the new budget plan. It’s designed by Mick Mulvaney, the current Director of the Office of Management and Budget. How did Mulvaney design this budget? From Mulvaney himself:

"We wrote the budget by going through the president’s speeches…. We took those words, those policies, and turned them into numbers."

This is a feat that John Oliver acknowledged as a feat of sheer will and creativity. For, you see, the actual words that fell out of Donald Trump’s actual mouth on the campaign trail were hard to follow, to say the least. In Oliver’s words:

"…[T]ranslating the noises that come out of Trump’s face into hard policy prescriptions is almost impossible."

Now, some may argue that Trump is effectively running the United States as if it were a business. Yet, it currently seems as if his administration’s plan has leapt out of an absurdist nightmare.

At the very least, it appears in part to be based on a level of pettiness previously shown only by middle school children who are just getting a handle on this whole “interpersonal relationships” thing.

The budget includes a proposed 1.4 billion increase to National Nuclear Security Administration, along with a 1.7 billion cut to the Department of Energy.

It also calls for 31% cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, though the EPA currently accounts for 0.2% of federal spending. The National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are also at significant risk, though the CPB makes up about 0.02% of federal spending.

Non-defense discretionary spending is at historic lows already. Why cut it even further and risk such major upsets? When Mick Mulvaney claims that single mothers will gladly pay for increased military spending while after school programs wither, Oliver wonders – will they?

These cuts will disproportionately affect those who voted for Trump. They may soon find themselves in a difficult place, thanks to a president that they voted into office.

And now, to accompany all this depressing news…a dancing Zebra.

Next: Seth Meyers Takes On Trump’s Budget Cuts

Neither we nor John Oliver want to pretend as if vulnerable people deserve to lose important programming. Yet, the specter of this budget raises an interesting question. When, exactly, will people begin to catch on to Trump’s outright lies? Oliver predicts that it may be painfully soon.