Fact Check: These Statements by Trump’s Cabinet Don’t Match Policy

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/us/politics/trump-cabinet-fact-check.html

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Members of the White House cabinet took turns praising President Trump at a gathering on Monday, adopting the commander in chief’s evaluations of himself. Their mimicry was not limited to a day of flattery; several have also adopted Mr. Trump’s rhetorical style of doubling down on false claims and pushing so-called alternative facts.

At least four Trump administration cabinet secretaries have defended austere budget cuts and policy shifts at their departments with misleading statements in congressional testimony and other official settings. Here’s an assessment.

Mr. Price previously made this assertion in May, but repetition doesn’t make it any more accurate.

“If the baseline is today’s amount of money being spent on Medicaid, the president’s budget provides for an increase,” Mr. Price said during a congressional hearing on Thursday. (Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, also made this argument).

While the dollar amount of Medicaid spending does increase year to year in the House version of the health care bill, the bottom line is actually a reduction when compared with funding levels under current law. Additionally, spending would decrease as a percentage of gross domestic product.

For example, the government would spend $390 billion on Medicaid in 2017 and $5 billion more the next year under the Republican proposal. But under current law, the government has budgeted $393 billion in 2017 and $415 billion in 2018, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Over all, the budget office estimates that the Republican plan — which would cap federal matches of state funds — would reduce Medicaid outlays by $883 billion over a decade and result in 14 million fewer enrollees. That’s clearly a cut, not an increase.

The budget requested $1.5 billion for the Census Bureau, which experts say is insufficient.

Required by law, the decennial census of every United States resident has occurred every decade since 1790 and serves as the basis for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. Funding typically begins to ramp up a few years before the count as the bureau begins to test methods, hire workers and start advertising campaigns.

Appropriations more than doubled from the 1986 fiscal year to 1988, and again from 1996 to 1998. They increased by 79 percent from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Trump’s budget would provide for a 9.5 percent increase from $1.37 billion in 2016.

Mr. Ross spoke of cost overruns for the 2020 count, which also concern Congress and its investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office. But somewhat counterintuitively, to keep costs down, the Census Bureau would need funding to test out new approaches and new technologies.

Working with the comparatively meager increase for the 2017 fiscal year, the agency has cut back on field tests for internet surveys that were intended to reduce personnel costs. Given that the agency operates on a strict timeline, “the train is out of the station” and heading toward a large undercount and “historically disastrous census,” said Phil Sparks, a director of the Census Project.

“At the current level of funding, we will miss more people,” said Kenneth Prewitt, who led the Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001. “I’m confident of that.”

Dr. Carson’s claim, made during a congressional hearing on Thursday, leaves out that his department provides public housing for about 5 million households, according to government and independent estimates. That leaves hundreds of thousands of households unaccounted.

Later in the hearing, Dr. Carson conceded that HUD would provide 250,000 fewer vouchers for public housing, which he said would be cut from people on waiting lists rather than people already sheltered.

This is also misleading and assumes a far higher national turnover rate than normal, said Douglas Rice, a senior analyst at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The nation is expected to shed about 100,000 vouchers this year, leaving a deep shortfall.

The budget cut would also add to a housing repair backlog that, in turn, accelerates decay and a loss of affordable units. HUD estimates that about 10,000 units are lost each year to disrepair at current funding levels.

Mr. Pruitt announced early last month that he would focus on cleaning up waste sites, and he introduced a task force addressing the issue later in the month. Earlier in the year, Mr. Pruitt said he would ask the president to consider preserving Superfund appropriations.

But Mr. Trump’s budget would gut Superfund, a federal cleanup program established in 1980, by 25 percent.

Superfund appropriations have averaged about $1.2 billion annually from 1981 to 2010, but they have generally declined since the 1998 fiscal year, according a 2012 Government Accountability Office report that said funding was insufficient. Mr. Trump’s 2018 budget plan provides $762 million for the program.

The number of cleanups completed each year has also declined in the last two decades. More than 1,300 sites remain on the list.