The White House has a new mentality when it comes to spending and safety net programs.

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

In the budget proposal presented by the White House Tuesday, Medicaid is cut by $610 billion in the next decade.

That does not include an $839 billion reduction included in the House health care bill passed last month.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, will suffer an almost $6 billion cut.

Funding to the food stamp program, SNAP, will be reduced by $193 billion over 10 years.

The administration says there are people using programs like SNAP who shouldn’t be doing so.

“If you’re paying for it, isn’t it reasonable for you to at least ask the question: ‘are there people in that program who shouldn’t be on there?’” said Mulvaney.

Democrats in Congress are blasting the budget proposal.

“I can’t believe that someone could conceivably could come up with something that was so devastating to the American people generally, the vast majority of Americans,” Rep. Brian Higgins (D-Buffalo) said.

“My reaction is that a great nation does not abandon its elderly, its disabled and its poor. I think that this is a harsh budget in that regard,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-Albany) said.

“The Trump budget takes a sledgehammer to the middle class and the working poor, lavishes tax breaks on the wealthy and imagines all of the deficit problems away with fantasy math,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D) said.

Schumer is talking about the White House goal of growing the economy at a 3 percent rate to justify some of the items in the budget.

But while Democrats are showing their outrage, some Republicans say that opposition is ironic.

“Rather than railing against the president's budget, which he knows will not be passed into law because no president’s budget ever becomes law. It’s a proposal of the president’s priorities,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R) said.

With Democrats against it and some Republicans concerned about some of the cuts, Congress will write its own budget so the White House plan is, at this point, just aspirational.