letter to the editor

Trump’s budget

Tue, 03/21/2017 - 9:30am

Dear Editor:

The White House budget proposal now before Congress is an astonishingly bold document: While adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the national deficit, it reduces funding for the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency by almost one-third, the Justice Department by 20 percent, and the Education Department by 14 percent.

Offsetting these draconian cuts is a 52.3 billion-dollar increase for the Department of Defense, whose budget is already greater than that of the next nine, largest-spending militaries in the world, combined: China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, Japan, Germany and South Korea. Six of those nine are our allies.

I have let Senators King and Collins, as well as Representative Pingree, know what I think of this presidential audacity, and I invite you to do the same by calling the Congressional operator at (202) 225-3121.

Bill Hammond

Trevett