WASHINGTON, D.C. – After President Trump unveiled his outline for the Fiscal Year 2018 (FY18) budget, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, vowed to fight against the harmful proposed cuts. 

“President Trump’s budget is an utter disaster for Connecticut” said Murphy. “The good news is that it's so terrible that it's likely dead on arrival."  

"A budget that devastates funding for medical research, transportation, and the heroin crisis would be awful for our state, and as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I'm going to work with Republicans to make sure this right-wing budget never becomes law,” Murphy continued.

"More money for defense is a positive, but if you pay for it by gutting funding for job training and education then we will have no way to fill the defense jobs and the work will go overseas,” Murphy concluded. “It's such a shortsighted approach and I am confident that it won't survive scrutiny."

President Trump’s budget outline includes a $54 billion increase in defense spending and a $54 billion cut for non-defense spending. Specifically, the proposal includes:

  • $3 billion to fund border wall construction and increased deportation efforts
  • 30% cut for the Environmental Protection Agency
  • 29% cut to the State Department
  • 23% cut to Health and Human services
  • 21% cut to the Labor Department
  • 20% cut to the National Institutes of Health
  • 17% cut to the Commerce Department
  • 15% cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • 13% cut to Department of Transportation’s discretionary spending, including Amtrak and TIGER grants
  • Eliminates federal funding for anti-poverty programs like the Community Development Block Grant and Legal Services Corporation
  • Eliminates federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities

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