Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote a column for USA Today titled "Trump's Morally Repugnant Budget Must be Defeated."  All the usual cries and demands and exaggerations are there:

[T]his budget would slash Pell grants and eliminate the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, putting education further out of reach for at least 1.5 million students.

The budget could cut as much as $1 billion from Head Start which means some 95,000 children will be thrown out of early education and child-care programs, among them, this mother’s younger child.   Moreover, according to Mulvaney, under the Trump budget, nutrition assistance for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) would be cut by $100 million, enough to eliminate nutrition assistance for nearly 150,000 people.

This single mother’s parents would likewise suffer under this “compassionate” budget, as their weekly visits from Meals on Wheels could be eliminated, due to cuts to the Community Development Block Grant along with other programs. Next winter their house could have no heat because the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program has been abolished. As a result, they can no longer live independently. If Republicans eventually succeed with their plans for health care, nursing home care is out of the question, because of $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the largest source of funding for nursing home care.

No one can be sure if Sanders's claims are true, but let's say they are.  In budget cuts, like border disputes, someone will always get hurt.  But the cuts must come.  The Cato Institute says there are 126 anti-poverty federal government programs.  Has anyone noticed that we still have poor people even after the trillions spent since LBJ's War on Poverty and the Great Society?

It is baffling that the left can claim the moral high ground when our national debt under Obamacare is $19.8 trillion.  In 2009, with control over the White House and Congress, the Dems passed a budget with $1.4-trillion deficit.  The GOP, taking control over the House but not the Senate, could not get a budget passed, so they had to sign on to the continuing resolution that kept in place the deficit for each budget season. (Then John Boehner did some maneuvering without the vote and got the deficits reduced to a half-trillion per budget year.)

In the bigger picture and for the sake of the country, we need another way.

Here's one that worked in the past. During the presidential election campaign in 1996, Newt Gingrich finally managed to talk Bill Clinton into signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.  Millions got off welfare, while they were trained to find a job over two years.  Stealing a conservative issue, President Clinton said at the time, "The era of big government is over."  (Not quite under Obama.) 

In any case, back then, the GOP and Dems worked together to get things done.  They also cut tax rates.  Then the economy really did heat up.  Hmmm.  Cutting taxes and government – two conservative principles Trump is following.  Count on the economy to heat up again.  Then count on Trump's re-election in 2020 (if he wants it). But in the meantime, count on the debt to become manageable.

James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has posted The Biblical Way to Care for the Poor.