I doubt any of the budget will fly, but this is disconcerting… 
Plus a few other ugly nuggets:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/11/trumps-budget-top-takeaways/
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All I got was a “pay wall” from the Washington Post website. I could not read the article without giving them my charge card. - No problem I searched and found the content somewhere else. Thanks for the heads up …
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You can get around those walls (as well as lots of other things) easily with an extension like noscript, maybe privacybadger too.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/11/trumps-budget-top-takeaways/
By Heather Long
March 11
President Trump unveiled his 2020 budget Monday that basically has no chance of getting enacted. Even Republicans balk at some of Trump’s proposed cuts.
But the 150-page budget reveals a lot about Trump’s top priorities as his reelection campaign gets into full swing, and he looks to make it clear there are big differences between his vision for America and that of his Democratic rivals. In short, Trump wants more spending on the military and veterans and less spending on education, housing, welfare, transportation and science.
Here are the top 10 takeaways from Trump’s “Better America” budget:
1. Big deficits are here to stay. Despite proposing the “most spending reductions ever sent to Congress,” as one of Trump’s top aides put it, the deficit is expected to hit $1.1 trillion this year and stay above the trillion mark every year through at least 2022. This is unprecedented in good economic times and is occurring because Trump and Congress are spending more at the same time the GOP tax cuts drive down government revenue. (Trump’s budget shows small increases the next few years in tax revenue, but that might be a stretch given what is occurring so far this fiscal year).
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2. Trump predicts no recession — for a decade. No president likes to predict a downturn, but Trump is being exceptionally rosy in his outlook. His budget predicts about 3 percent growth every year for a decade. In contrast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts growth of slightly below 2 percent a year. To achieve Trump’s projection, the economy would have to grow at A-plus potential for years with no recessions, something the United States has not achieved before.
Consider just this year and next: Trump’s budget forecasts 3.2 percent growth this year — almost a full percent above the Federal Reserve’s 2.3 percent prediction. In 2020, the vast majority of economists think growth will be around 2 percent (and some even say the United States will dip into a recession), but Trump’s budget predicts 3.1 percent growth.
[Workers suddenly have more power to demand higher pay and better jobs]
3. The biggest winners: military and veterans. Trump’s budget gives the Defense Department a nearly 5 percent raise and the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Homeland Security (which includes border policing) each get about a 7.5 percent hike. Trump asks for more funding than he did last year for NASA, although less than what Congress gave the space agency for 2019.
Trump’s 2020 budget hikes defense spending
President Trump on March 11 asked Congress in his fiscal 2020 budget to increase spending on the military while slashing non-defense spending by 5 percent. (Reuters)
4. The biggest losers: Under Trump’s budget proposal, 10 major departments and agencies would see their budgets slashed by 10 percent (or more) in the next year alone: Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, State, Transportation, Corps of Engineers, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Trump administration likes to refer to a 5 percent cut in nondefense spending, but some agencies get far bigger chops than others. The EPA and Corps of Engineers would lose almost a third of their current funding.
[What Trump’s budget REALLY means for 2020]
5. Hot button issues: Trump wants $8.6 billion for border wall and fewer people on “welfare.” As expected, the president requested a substantial amount of money for expanding the border wall between the United States and Mexico. In fact, he asks for even more money in this budget than the $5 billion he wanted in December and ended up partially shutting down the government for over a month to try to get.
Trump also wants to implement controversial policies to require more people receiving government benefits such as Medicaid, SNAP and housing vouchers to find work or actively search for jobs. Many advocates for the poor say stringent regulations are already in place, but the Trump administration wants to go further and it’s calculating it can save a lot of money by doing so (e.g., saving $220 billion over the next decade on SNAP and over $20 billion on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).
6. Cut Medicare by more than $500 billion. Trump promised on the campaign that he would not touch Social Security or Medicare, but he uses this budget to propose a sizable cut to Medicare (the budget has a $845 billion chop to Medicare, although some spending would be made up elsewhere, resulting in a cut of just over $500 billion in the next decade).
Trump wants to “reduce wasteful spending” on Medicare by expanding the list of treatments that require prior authorization before the procedure can be done and putting medical providers on notice who charge more than others. The administration argues these cost savings are bipartisan ideas that will help ensure Medicare can last for many years to come, but some argue it will result in people who need treatment having it delayed or not receiving it because of extra paperwork and hurdles.
[Trump proposes big cuts to health programs for poor, elderly and disabled]
7. Child care and paid parental leave. Trump touts his plans to help working parents by providing more money to make child care affordable and to start the first paid parental leave policy in the United States. He proposes a one-time $1 billion “competitive fund” to help underserved populations and spur more companies to launch child-care programs of their own.
As for paid parental leave, the budget includes no detail of this plan. A senior administration official told reporters that was deliberate to allow Congress to craft the best policy and send it to the president. The budget includes just $1 billion a year in federal dollars for paid parental leave, a fraction of what most say it would cost to launch a viable program.
8. States would have to take more responsibility (and pick up some costs). Under Trump’s plan, state governments would play a larger role in crafting policies. For example, much of Medicaid, the low-income health program, would become “block grants” so states get a lump sum amount from the government and then have to figure out how to spend it effectively. The net result would be a $241 billion reduction in Medicaid spending over the next decade for the federal government.
9. Lots of higher fees. Trump would like to double the H-1B visa fee (among other immigration fees), increase customs fees, create a “spectrum license user fee,” create a new e-cigarette user fee, create and increase various USDA inspection fees, etc. Many of these revenue streams go to support other programs Trump wants or to update computer systems.
10. Major changes to student loans. Trump wants to do away with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that pays off student loans for people who enter various government jobs. His budget calls for streamlining the student loan repayment system and having colleges and universities “share a portion of the financial responsibility associated with student loans.” The details are thin on how all of that would work, but Trump banks on his various changes to student loans saving the federal government $207 billion over the next decade.
This article has been updated to clarify NASA funding.
Related:
Workers suddenly have more power to demand higher pay and better jobs
Trump proposes $4.7 trillion budget with domestic cuts, $8.6 billion in new funding for border wall
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laughs merrily in DIY-Ejuice Land
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OK wait, so HOW much NIC do I need to load into my stash ??
Gubment intervention always puts me into a buying panic.
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Yes, right you are ! I have run / (uBlock Origin) for years but I guess I missed the exact setting to take care of that… That’s one of the issues with uBlock Origin you have to stay on top of its configurations…
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For those of you that are paywall blocked here is the text:
Trump wants the e-cigarette industry to pay $100 million a year in user fees
The fees, if approved by Congress, would pay for federal oversight.
A customer exhales vapor from an electronic cigarette. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
March 11 at 4:38 PM
The e-cigarette industry would pay $100 million a year in user fees under the Trump administration budget proposal released Monday. The funds would go to beefed-up regulatory oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.
E-cigarettes are not subject to such fees now, but several other types of tobacco products are, including cigarettes, cigars and snuff. The agency is expected to collect an estimated $712 million in user fees in the current fiscal year, with cigarettes accounting for more than 86 percent of the amount.
[FDA chief calls youth e-cigarettes an ‘epidemic’]
President Trump’s budget plan said the user-fee proposal for the e-cigarette industry “would ensure that FDA has the resources to address today’s alarming rise in youth e-cigarette use as well as new public health threats of tomorrow."
Overall, the administration is asking for $6.1 billion in FDA funding, a $418.5 million boost over current law. A big chunk, $2.8 billion, involves user fees from the drug, device and other industries, as well as the proposed e-cigarette fee. The budget request includes increases to promote medical-product innovation, food safety and blood-supply safety.
The FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products is funded entirely by user fees. Extending the requirement to e-cigarettes would provide more resources as the agency tries to combat youth vaping and assesses the risks and benefits of e-cigarettes for adults.
[FDA unveils sweeping anti-tobacco effort to reduce underage vaping and smoking]
The proposed fees on the e-cigarette industry would be imposed on manufacturers and importers of vaping devices and e-liquids. The change would have to be approved by Congress, administration officials said.
Liz Mair, a strategist for Vapers United, criticized the user-fee proposal. “This is a tax, not a ‘user fee,’" she said. "‘User fee’ is lingo that Republicans and conservative Democrats use when they’re about to hike taxes but don’t want to admit that’s what they’re doing.” She added that the government should pursue policies to keep vaping taxes low to encourage adult smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb acknowledged e-cigarettes may be useful tool for adult smokers wanting to quit regular cigarettes, but said they must be put through “regulatory gates” to assess their risks and benefits. However, “no child should be using an e-cigarette,” he said, because researchers still are investigating the long-term effects of e-cigarette use, such as whether vaping ingredients can harm the lungs.
Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, was cautious, noting that details on the proposal were sparse. “This is a potentially positive development," he said, "but it doesn’t detract from the need for the FDA to take strong mandatory action to rein in the behavior and products that have caused the youth epidemic.” He said the FDA should ban all flavored e-cigarettes and require the companies to curb their marketing.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H) welcomed the proposal, noting it was similar to legislation she recently introduced. “I hope to work with the administration as I rally bipartisan support for my legislation in Congress,” she said.
Concerns at the FDA about youth vaping skyrocketed after federal data showed that e-cigarette use among high school students rose 78 percent between 2017 and 2018. Officials say they want to prevent a new generation of children from becoming addicted to nicotine, which they say raises the risk they will eventually smoke regular cigarettes.
Under the administration proposal, the Center for Tobacco Products would receive $812 million in user fees for the next fiscal year.
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The armsdeal with Saudi Arabia, i.e. the slaughter of the Yemeni people, is going to get the US 4000, 45000, more than 500.000, nee 600.000 even more than 1 million jobs 
That has basically already been done. In 2017 from the almost 30.000 people who applied for that, only 0.3% actually got it.
The rest just has to keep coughing up the money despite the fact that they met all the requirements.
Betsy is not interested in enforcing rules that are already, (still) in place.
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So banning ecigs is good ??
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01169-7/fulltext
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@Letitia That has been a concern of mine with all of the changes. Make it harder to vape, harder to ship gear, juice and other supplies (mixing stuff) and some folks will go back to smoking. They can always run down to the corner store, gas station or 7-11 and buy a pack of smokes. I am on board with age restrictions, but the current restrictions affect EVERYONE, including us vape folks who are over 21. And I NEVER want to go back to smoking. NEVER.
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ban worked as intended. vape led to a decrease in big tobaccos $$$$ . now with the ban it leds to a 30% increase in teens getting hooked on cigs …
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