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resident Trump’s 2018 budget proposal is unabashed in its goal: slashing or eradicating a number of social and research programs to offset new spending on defense and homeland security. That emphasis quickly met with broad criticism, including from some who pointed out an apparent contradiction. Trump places a heavy emphasis on cutting waste and targets for elimination programs that, in some cases, cost the government only a few million dollars a year. That is a lot of money in the context of the amount of money you or I spend in a year, but in the context of the government, spending a million dollars is like someone with a $50,000-a-year salary spending one penny.
What really jumped out at some people, though, was that Trump was proposing cuts to some relatively low-cost programs shortly before he prepared to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. According to an analysis from Politico, that’s a trip that costs about $3 million each time — and it’s a trip that he’s made four times this year.
If that $3 million estimate is true, he could have funded the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — budgeted at $4 million in 2016 — for nearly four years if he’d just stayed in the White House.
Others noted the cost of protecting first lady Melania Trump and the Trumps’ young son, Barron, at Trump Tower. Shortly after the election, a CNN Money report indicated that protecting Trump’s family in New York cost $1 million a day. If they instead joined him at the White House, of course, that cost would essentially be eliminated.
Combined, these costs could make Trump’s presidency awfully expensive, particularly in light of that proposed budget.
But that’s only if those estimates are correct.
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