Trump's Budget Blueprint Mirrors Reagan's From 1981 and More in Politics Today

It’s difficult to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in this country and to break through the clutter, so we’re here to make it easier. Here’s what we at Countable are reading today:

1. In Trump’s blueprint to reorder the federal government, echoes of Reagan ’81

President Trump’s governing blueprint represents the most ambitious effort to cut domestic spending and pare back the federal government since former president Ronald Reagan came to Washington in 1981. Whether it will come close to accomplishing the president’s ambitions is a far different question.

Many governors are anxiously watching the early moves of the Trump administration, wondering whether changes in programs, whether big-ticket ones like Medicaid or smaller programs targeted for elimination, will put greater burdens on the states unless there is significantly more flexibility built in.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Read more about the winners and losers in the budget at *Countable.*

2. Trump wants to cut the NEA and NEH. This is the worst-case scenario for arts groups

The budget plan, which calls for the elimination of four independent cultural agencies — the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...would radically reshape the nation’s cultural infrastructure.

...the United States has a unique arts funding system that has proved effective in the past 52 years at growing the larger arts economy. NEA funds, for example, are predicated on matching funds from state arts agencies, a powerful incentive to states to keep local arts funding alive. That has helped spur the creation of state arts councils in all 50 states, as well as about 5,000 funding groups at the local level."

Read more at The Washington Post.

3. House Republicans buck Trump, call for climate change solutions

Seventeen Republican members of Congress from diverse districts—including representatives from coastal Southeastern states, Nevada, Utah, upstate New York and Pennsylvania—submitted a resolution in the House Wednesday acknowledging that "human activities" have had an impact on global climate and resolving to create and support “economically viable” mitigation efforts.

One of the resolution’s signatories is Representative Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who represents a section of his state known as the Low Country. Sanford, who grew up on a farm in the area, says he has seen firsthand the effects of rising sea levels, in acreage lost to salt water.

"I just think there is inherent danger in the three-monkey routine—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil—related to climate change. To deny its existence is to deny what our country was founded on. The Founding Fathers designed a reason-based political system, and without reason the system doesn’t work."

Read more at Newsweek.

4. US tourism experiences a 'Trump slump'

Interest in travel to the US has "fallen off a cliff" since Donald Trump’s election, according to travel companies who have reported a significant drop in flight searches and bookings since his inauguration and controversial travel ban.

It is the latest in a string of reports from the travel industry that suggests a "Trump slump", with the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) estimating that since being elected President Trump has cost the US travel industry $185m in lost revenue.

Read more at the guardian.

5. Large sections of Australia’s Great Reef are now dead, scientists find

Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef’s most visited areas of color and life.

If most of the world’s coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with huge sums from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and the loss of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis.

Read more at The New York Times.

— Asha Sanaker

(Photo Credit: White House Photo Office / Public Domain)