Power Up: Trump Budget Guts White House Drug Control Office-- Again

President Donald Trump's budget role declined comment before it releases the total budget today. | AP Photo

White House dials back cuts to drug control office

The White House has backed downwards from its controversial proposal to nigh eliminate funding for the federal drug control part amid a nationwide opioid epidemic.

The administration was originally eyeing a 95 percent cut to the Part of National Drug Control Policy, Politician first reported earlier this calendar month. The cut would have essentially halved the staff at the function overseeing the nation's response to the opioid epidemic while slashing two major grant programs.

Merely later on facing pressure from Republican and Autonomous lawmakers — peculiarly those in states ravaged by the opioid epidemic — the White House is proposing $369 million for the function in 2018, amounting to a v percent cutting.

The White House proposal would give the role'due south drug-free communities program $92 million, down from $95 million this year. The high-intensity drug trafficking program volition become $246.5 1000000, down from $250 million.

However, the role would be in line for a staffing cut. The upkeep proposal calls for 66 full-fourth dimension equivalents, down from 75 this year, a spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO.

Amid the initial outrage over the proposed 95 percent cut earlier this month, the White Firm stressed that information technology was nevertheless reviewing the budget and that no concluding decisions on funding had been made. However, budget officials at the time suggested that the drug control office was duplicative of other efforts in the federal government.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) were among those expressing outrage over the original proposal. In a bipartisan letter they led earlier this month, they urged the assistants "to protect ONDCP and maintain the long-continuing and constructive programs that forestall and fight confronting the scourge of drug abuse."

POLITICO first reported the Trump administration's decision to contrary the funding cut on Tuesday morning before the release of the 2018 budget.

Ultimately, the administration scrapped a proposal that many critics believed would hamstring the fight confronting an epidemic killing 33,000 Americans in 2015. Many of the communities hardest hit past the epidemic overwhelmingly voted for Trump, who campaigned on catastrophe the crunch.

"I'm happy to see [the Office of Management and Budget] reversed class and included funding for the office in its budget," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a argument. Capito was among the lawmakers pressuring Trump to fund the office, noting that West Virginia has the highest drug overdose rate in the nation.

"Nosotros still have a long way to go when it comes to the drug epidemic, and it is essential that we remain fully committed to fighting it. We need to be doing more — not less," she added.

The Trump administration says the budget shows its commitment to solving the opioids crisis, touting a proposed "total federal drug budget" of $27.75 billion for next twelvemonth. That'southward upwards from $27.48 billion, when bookkeeping for all drug control-related activities across different departments, according to the document.

But public wellness advocates say that figure is misleading, given that many of those funds go toward law enforcement and not treatment of opioid addiction. For instance, the upkeep calls for $103 one thousand thousand in new funds for the Justice Section to ramp up prosecution of drug-related crimes.

The administration also assumes a cutting of more than $i.4 trillion to Medicaid over the side by side decade — between Republicans' wellness neb and further changes to cap the entitlement program — and includes $400 one thousand thousand in cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Those changes could shred the prophylactic cyberspace and arrive harder for people to access treatment for addiction.

Advocates also say that the White Business firm shouldn't get plaudits for keeping drug function funding.

"The administration was ultimately pressured into doing the right thing, just it remains disturbing that they ever considered walking abroad from responding to the opioid epidemic," said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who advised the previous two administrations on drug issues.

vernerlectong00.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/23/trump-budget-drug-control-office-cuts-238720

Bagikan Artikel ini