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Trump budget: president to ask Congress for deep cuts to domestic programs Trump's budget overhaul: domestic programs slashed to fund military
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Donald Trump will ask Congress for dramatic cuts to many federal programs, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of State stand out as targets for the biggest spending reductions. Donald Trump unveiled a $1.15tn budget on Thursday, a far-reaching overhaul of federal government spending that would slash many domestic programs to finance a significant increase in the military and make a downpayment on a US-Mexico border wall.
Under his federal budget proposal, funding would disappear altogether for 19 independent bodies that count on federal money for public broadcasting, the arts and regional issues from Alaska to Appalachia. Meanwhile, he will seek to increase defense spending, start building a wall on the border with Mexico and spend more deporting undocumented immigrants. Trump’s proposal seeks to upend Washington with cuts to long-promised campaign targets like foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as strong congressional favorites such as medical research, help for homeless veterans and community development grants.
Trump’s budget outline is a bare-bones plan covering just “discretionary” spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting on 1 October. It is the first volley in what is expected to be an intense battle over spending in the coming months in Congress, which holds the federal purse strings and seldom approves presidents’ budget plans. “A budget that puts America first must make the safety of our people its number one priority because without safety, there can be no prosperity,” Trump said in a message accompanying his proposed budget, entitled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.
Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, may reject some or many of his proposed cuts. Some of the proposed changes, which Democrats will broadly oppose, have been targeted for decades by conservative Republicans. The $54bn boost for the military is the largest since Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon buildup in the 1980s, promising immediate money for troop readiness, the fight against Islamic State militants and procurement of new ships, fighter jets and other weapons. The 10% Pentagon boost is financed by $54bn in cuts to foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been protected by Barack Obama.
Moderate Republicans have already expressed unease with potential cuts to popular domestic programs such as home-heating subsidies, clean-water projects and job training. The budget goes after the frequent targets of the party’s staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low-income heating assistance and the AmeriCorps national service program established by Bill Clinton.
Trump is willing to discuss priorities, said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who made a name for himself as a spending hawk before Trump plucked him for his cabinet. “This is a hard power budget, not a soft power budget,” said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.
“The president wants to spend more money on defense, more money securing the border, more money enforcing the laws, and more money on school choice, without adding to the deficit,” Mulvaney told a small group of reporters during a preview on Wednesday. Such programs were the focus of lengthy battles dating to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1995 and have survived prior attempts to eliminate them.
“If they have a different way to accomplish that, we are more than interested in talking to them,” Mulvaney said. The defense increases are matched by cuts to other programs so as to not increase the $488bn federal deficit. Lawmakers will have the final say on Trump’s proposal in the arduous budget process, and many of the cuts will be deemed dead on arrival.
Mulvaney acknowledged the proposal would likely result in significant cuts to the federal workforce. “The administration’s budget isn’t going to be the budget,” said Senator Marco Rubio. “We do the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets.”
“You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said. Mulvaney acknowledged to reporters that passing the cuts could be an uphill struggle and said the administration would negotiate over replacement cuts.
In Trump’s budget proposal, the Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8% increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. He will also ask Congress for $54bn more to spend on defense – including $2bn for nuclear weapons. “This is not a take-it-or-leave-it budget,” Mulvaney said.
In addition, Trump is seeking $1.5bn for the border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year - enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it - and a further $2.6bn in fiscal 2018, Mulvaney said. Law enforcement agencies like the FBI would be spared, while the border wall would receive an immediate $1.4bn infusion in the ongoing fiscal year, with another $2.6bn planned for the 2018 budget year starting 1 October.
The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years. Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall when, in fact, US taxpayers are almost certain to foot the bill.
Trump has vowed Mexico will pay for the border wall, which the Mexican government has flatly said it will not do. The White House said recently that funding would be kick-started in the United States. Twelve of the government’s 15 Cabinet agencies would absorb cuts under the president’s proposal. The biggest losers are agriculture, labor, state and the cabinet-level EPA. The defense department, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Veterans Affairs are the winners.
His initial budget outline does not incorporate his promise to pour $1tn into roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects. The White House has said the infrastructure plan is still to come. More than 3,000 EPA workers would lose their jobs and programs such as Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would tighten regulations on emissions from power plants seen as contributing to global warming, would be eliminated. Popular EPA grants for state and local drinking and wastewater projects would be preserved, however, even as research into climate change would be eliminated.
The voluminous budget document will include Trump’s views on “mandatory entitlements”: big-ticket programs such as social security and Medicare, which Trump vowed to protect on the campaign trail. Trump’s proposal covers only roughly one-fourth of the approximately $4tn federal budget, the discretionary portion that Congress passes each year. It doesn’t address taxes, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, or make predictions about deficits and the economy. Those big-picture details are due in mid-May, and are sure to show large probably permanent budget deficits. Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security and Medicare and is dead set against raising taxes.
The EPA, however, would be slashed by $2.6bn, or more than 31%, under Trump’s budget, and the state department by more than 28% or $10.9bn. “The president’s going to keep his promises” to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney said the “core functions” of those agencies would be preserved. Also hit hard would be foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies like the World Bank and climate change programs at the United Nations. But the budget increases user fees, boosting the airline ticket tax by $1 per one-way trip. It would also slash subsidies for the federal flood insurance program that’s a linchpin for the real estate market, especially in coastal southern states and the Northeast.
Trump wants to get rid of more than 50 EPA programs, end funding for Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and cut renewable energy research programs at the energy department. The so-called “skinny budget” is indeed thin, glossing over cuts to many sensitive programs such as community health centers, national parks, and payments for rural schools, offering only a vague, two-page summary of most agencies, including the Pentagon, where allocating its additional billions is still a work in progress.
Regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would be sent to the chopping block. Trump’s proposal is sure to land with a thud on Capitol Hill, and not just with opposition Democrats outraged over cuts to pet programs such as renewable energy, climate change research and rehabilitation of housing projects.
Community development grants at the housing department – around since 1974 – would be cut under Trump’s budget, along with more than 20 education department programs, including some funding program for before and after- school programs. Republicans like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio are irate over planned elimination of a program to restore the Great Lakes. Top Republicans like majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate foreign relations committee chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee are opposed to drastic cuts to foreign aid. And even GOP defense hawks like armed services committee chairman Mac Thornberry of Texas aren’t satisfied with the $54bn increase for the military.
Anti-poverty grants and a program that helps poor people pay their energy bills would be slashed, as well as a labor department program that helps low-income seniors find work. Before the two sides go to war over Trump’s 2018 plan, they need to clean up more than $1.1tn in unfinished agency budgets for the current year. A temporary catchall spending bill expires 28 April; negotiations have barely started and could get hung up over Trump’s request for the wall and additional border patrol and immigration enforcement agents, just for starters.
Trump’s rural base did not escape cuts. The White House proposed a 21% reduction to the agriculture department, cutting loans and grants for wastewater, reducing staff in county offices and ending a popular program that helps farmers donate crops for overseas food aid. Some of the most politically sensitive domestic programs would be spared, including food aid for pregnant women and their children, housing vouchers for the poor, aid for special education and school districts for the poor and federal aid to historically black colleges and universities.
Some programs would tread water: WIC grants – money to states for healthcare and nutrition for low-income women, infants and children – are one example. Money for states grants for water infrastructure projects would be held level as well. But the National Institutes of Health would absorb a $5.8bn cut despite Trump’s talk in a recent address to Congress of finding “cures to the illnesses that have always plagued us”. Subsidies for airlines serving rural airports in Trump strongholds would be eliminated. It would also shut down Amtrak’s money-losing long-distance routes and kill off a popular $500m-per-year “TIGER Grant” program for highway projects created by Obama.
The Health and Human Services Department is facing the largest cut in dollar terms: $12.6bn, or 16.2%. The plan would cut $5.8bn from the nearly $32bn National Institutes of Health, the nation’s top medical research agency. It’s not clear what research on diseases or disorders would lose the most money, although the budget plan specifically calls for elimination of a division that focuses on global health.
School choice programs would get $1.4bn to expand, bringing spending in that area to $20bn, even as the education department’s overall budget would be cut by $9bn, or 13%.