Priorities Tested President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, approached the proposed 2018 federal budget with a simple question: Would taxpayers want their money spent on this? The result is a budget with trillions of dollars in tax cuts with the largest cuts going to the top 1%. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “In the years following the financial crisis, the top 1% of Americans pocketed 85% of total income growth.