President Donald Trump took a "meat-axe" approach to slashing the federal budget on the advice of his White House inner circle – an error he must correct by making more precise, surgical cuts, says Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.
And that means stepping away from the budget-slicing agendas of his White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and his senior advisor Stephen Miller, Morici said Friday on Newsmax TV's "America Talks Live."
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"What's happened here is he took the meat axe to the budget and didn't do the surgical things he needs to do," Morici said.
"It's another example that Donald Trump doesn't have the expertise inside this White House [with] Steve Bannon screaming, the world is unfair to white guys. [It] doesn't slice the bread when it comes to winning in Washington.
"Until they stop listening to Miller, Bannon [and trade adviser Peter] Navarro, etc., if you listen to the rhetoric of those guys, they're simply not going to be winners."
Morici doesn’t buy the budget proposal’s cutting of programs that contribute to Meals on Wheels, the non-profit group that delivers prepared food to millions of housebound seniors and disabled people. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has said "Meals on Wheels" is among programs that don’t work, a claim hotly contested by various social service groups.
"Maybe Meals on Wheels needs to be carved out and saved and put someplace else. But to say it doesn't work, I think, is silly," Morici said. "So, I think that they were very tone deaf politically when they did this. And by the way, a lot of their cuts go after the very people that voted for them."
Still, Morici said, "There's an awful lot of fat in the federal budget that really just comes down to pork."
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