You have to hand it to President Trump. He has delivered a federal budget proposal true to much of his campaign rhetoric and to the ideals voiced by the Republican Party for years.

It would dramatically boost military spending, increase funding for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, largely for border protection and Trump’s wall. It would leave Medicare and Social Security pension benefits alone.

It cuts much of everything else. As noted by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “these cuts fall disproportionately on programs that benefit children, low-income individuals, and promote investment (by the private sector).”

And, concludes the CRFB, it doesn’t address deficit spending or the nation’s growing debt. If you factor in the administration’s massive tax cuts, skewed toward corporations and the wealthy — calculus not factored into the budget proposal — it would drive the nation much deeper into debt.

Republicans may successfully campaign against the slackers on welfare and the community development funding that flows to cities, but they have had the political shrewdness not to actually cut too deep in these areas, knowing much of the funding goes to truly needy people and the development funds flow to cities they represent.

Then along came the Republican Congress produced by the tea party movement and now arrives Trump.

So the nation gets a House health care bill that would leave 23 million more Americans without insurance and would cut Medicaid, which provides coverage to the poor and disabled, by $834 billion over 10 years.

And the nation gets this Trump budget.

The budget would eliminate the Home Energy Assistance Program intended to keep the poor in northern states from freezing in winter. Gone too would be the Community Development Block Grant program and the National Housing Trust Fund, which works with the private sector in providing housing for the poor. The food stamp program would face big cutbacks as well.

The list goes on. If the intent of a program is to help someone down on his or her luck, Trump cuts it.

“We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off those programs,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, by way of explanation.

“Helping” them get off those programs apparently means providing an incentive — find a job, or a second job, or perhaps a third job, or starve (or maybe freeze).

What Washington should be debating, and what Trump should be offering, said the CRFB, are reforms to control the sharply rising costs of Social Security and Medicare, the primary drivers of the federal deficit.

At least all that pain the Trump administration proposes inflicting on the needy — not to mention the deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, global health programs, the State Department — will drive down the deficit, right?

Well, no.

The administration claims its spending plan would balance the budget by 2027 (down from the current deficit of $603 billion, 3.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product) and reduce the federal debt from 77 percent of GDP to 60 percent ($18.6 trillion) by 2027.

It’s a lie.

“The estimates in the President’s budget are based on overly optimistic economic projections … extremely unlikely to materialize in reality,” writes the budget watchdog group. “(It) also relies on a number of unrealistic policy assumptions by assumed deep, unspecified non-defense discretionary spending cuts and omitting any details on the President’s potentially costly tax plan … that could end up adding trillions of dollars to the overall debt."

“These policies are not enough to truly repair our nation’s unsustainable fiscal situation and the budget does a huge disservice by relying on unrealistic assumptions,” it concludes.

We are far from the proposed “Grand Bargain,” the last serious bipartisan attempt to curb the nation’s growing deficit. In 2011 President Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner negotiated a plan for $1.2 trillion in agency cuts and steps to curb Medicare and Social Security costs, along with $800 billion in new taxes.

Boehner could not sell the deal to his caucus, which later drove him from the Speaker’s position and office. Obama gave up trying to find common ground.

Now we have a president elected on the promise of easy fixes who has presented his fellow Republicans with a budget proposal that damages much, but repairs nothing.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.