Reality Check: Trump on spending cuts
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump has said the country can afford his tax cuts, which will add trillions to the nation's deficit, because he will cut waste, fraud and abuse. Asked on Thursday for specifics, he cited cutting down the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as squeezing better discounts out of drug companies.
"Department of Education. We're cutting Common Core. We're getting rid of Common Core. We're bringing education locally. Department of Environmental Protection. We are going to get rid of it in almost every form ... Because of the fact that the pharmaceutical companies are not mandated to bid properly, they have hundreds of billions of dollars in waste," Trump said.
CNNMoney looked at this in January. It found that even if Trump cut the EPA and Education Department entirely, it would save less than 3% of the $3.7 trillion the federal government spent in the past year. The nation spent $90 billion on education and $7 billion on the EPA.
As for saving hundreds of billions from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, that would be hard to do since Medicare is estimated to have spent $77 billion on drugs in 2015, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total spending on drugs, which includes outlays by private insurers, was just under $300 billion in total in 2014, federal National Health Expenditures data.
Can Trump make up for his tax cuts by cutting two federal agencies and negotiating with drug companies? Our verdict: false.
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