The Hill: Trump, GOP Set to Battle on Spending Cuts

By Alexander Bolton:

One likely target is the Legal Services Corporation, a federal agency providing financial support for civil legal aid to low-income people.

Conservatives have long sought its elimination, arguing it has become beholden to liberal causes and noting the Congressional Budget Office has included its defunding as an option to the Senate and House. Eliminating it would save nearly $400 million next year.

But Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, this week warned that it’s not a battle worth fighting.

“I think that would be hard thing to do. Even if you wanted to do that, you couldn’t get it through the Senate,” he said.

President Reagan tried to abolish the agency shortly after taking office in 1981 but ran into a wall in Congress.

“It’s been repeatedly tried, but the reality is it’s the only way that a lot of poor folks, especially rural poor, get any kind of legal help,” said Jim Dyer, who served for 13 years as the Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.

“It’s almost like they sat down over there and dragged out all of their old wish list, most of which of has been discarded, and said to themselves, 'Let’s put it on the table and see who salutes,'” he added.

Another proposal embraced by Heritage and the RSC budget plans is the elimination of the essential air service program, a program that subsidizes rural airports serving sparsely populated communities.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she would pull out all the stops to fight for it.

The Hill: Trump's Growth Projections Leave Economists in Disbelief

By Peter Schroeder:

Trump’s bold claims are eliciting scoffs from economists, who argue that such numbers are difficult if not outright impossible to meet.

“His growth expectations are not realistic. The economy's potential growth is 2 percent, and to get stronger growth will require immigration reform that provides a path to legalization for the undocumented and a significant increase in skilled legal immigration. He is strongly opposed to this,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“Even then, [immigration reform] will increase potential growth to closer to 2.5 percent. We may be surprised and get stronger growth, but it wouldn't be prudent to count on it.”

Conservative economists are equally skeptical.

Stan Veuger, resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Trump is setting a “ridiculous expectation” for growth.

“He doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, and his policy platform is so incoherent that he has to make claims like that,” Veuger said.

The Full Story (October 23, 2016)

The Hill: Trump Fumes Over Dem Convention Speakers

By Harper Neidig:

Donald Trump fumed over the lineup of attacks from speakers at the Democratic National Convention at his own campaign event Thursday.

“I was gonna hit a number of those speakers so hard their heads would spin. They’d never recover,” he said at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, suggesting that he did exactly that with a number of his former GOP primary rivals.

“I was gonna say [Bill] de Blasio is the worst mayor in the history of the city,” he added of the New York City mayor who said in his scathing speech that Trump had made a “career out of ripping people off.”

The Full Story (July 28, 2016)