Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer vow to 'fight every penny' of Trump's 'heartless' budget

Democratic leaders say they will ignore president's spending plan and adhere to existing agreement with White House

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to write her own federal spending plan, rejecting Donald Trump's latest budget proposal as "heartless."

The Democratic leader, echoed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, used a midday press conference to slam the president's fiscal 2021 spending blueprint over its proposed cuts to social safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

"If there is a senior in your family on Medicaid, you are getting cut. ... Two thirds of long term care is paid for by Medicaid. This is a middle-class benefit," Ms Pelosi told reporters, saying Mr Trump's proposed spending reductions would hurt rural hospitals and curb federal opioid abuse treatment programs.

Mr Trump's popularity is strongest in rural areas.

Mr Schumer, who vowed Democrats will "fight every penny" of the funding amounts proposed by the White House, said the president's election-year spending plan does little to help "average Americans [who are] struggling to keep up."

"Trump likes to talk about the 'forgotten man and women,'" Mr Schumer said, contending Mr Trump's policies do little to help that segment of the country.

The Senate Democratic leader, citing a staff analysis of the spending plan, contended it "slashes both" Medicare and Medicaid, including calling for $1 trillion in funding reductions to the former and "hundreds of billions" for the latter.

Mr Schumer's claim comes one day after Mr Trump said the opposite during an event at the White House with GOP governors.

"So we're putting out a plan today that, over a period of not that long a period of time, brings our budget and our deficit down to what it should be, which is close to zero. And I think people are going to be very impressed by it," Mr Trump said.

Democrats are far more disgusted than anything close to "impressed."

Mr Trump added: "We're not touching Medicare. We want to keep Medicare. We're not touching Social Security. We're making our country stronger again. We're not decreasing Medicaid. But we're doing a lot of things that are very good, including ... tremendous waste and tremendous fraud."

But Mr Schumer told reporters the president "just lies" about such things.

On climate policy, Mr Schumer said the White House's spending plan would "make it worse" with cuts to programs that foster solar and wind energy programs. He also noted Antarctica recently had a record high of 64 degrees, but Mr Trump's budget would "douse" the "fire" and then "fire the fire department."

Notably, however, when the president on Monday was asked about Medicare and Medicaid, he pivoted in his answer to making threats about America's nuclear arms arsenal.

"We're taking good care of our military. We're increasing spending on our nuclear program because we have no choice because of what China is doing, what Russia is doing, in particular. And so we have a very big number in for that," Mr Trump said of his spending plan's proposed $46 billion hike for atomic weapons programs.

"Now, at the same time, Russia and China both want to negotiate with us to stop this craziness of spending billions and billions of dollars on nuclear weapons," he said, flashing his dovish side. "But the only way, until we have that agreement, the only thing I can do is create, by far, the strongest nuclear force anywhere in the world," Mr Trump told the state chiefs executive, who were doing the questioning while reporters looked on in the White House's State Dining Room.

But Ms Pelosi did not change the subject the next day.

"The budget is the heart of the matter, it's where it all begins," she said of lawmakers' work to write yearly agency spending bills. "And this is a heartless budget."

Notably, the Democratic leaders noted Mr Trump's plan violates a budget agreement reached last year for fiscal 2021.

"We're going to write our bills according to the agreement that we have with the administration," Ms Pelloi said, noting that is what House Democrats did last year. "That's what we will do again."