“This is ultimately how he’s going to get people who didn’t vote, or people who didn’t vote for him, into the fold”.
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JOHN YANG: The president wants to hike defense spending 10 percent, to $603 billion, for the budget year beginning October 1.
The Trump administration has said the budget figures sent to agency heads is not the full budget.
However, the budget would call for cuts to governmental departments across the board. Agencies can appeal the decisions to the OMB.
“The President will lay out the concrete steps he has already taken to make the American Dream possible for all of our people”, the document continues. The ceiling for nondefense discretionary spending is $515 billion. But by cutting nondefense by the same amount, the budget would shrink domestic spending even below current levels.
Democrats immediately vowed to resist such cuts.
Throughout his campaign, Trump criticized bloated weapons contracts and the overall cost of wars in the Middle East.
“This is a landmark event and message to the world in these unsafe times, of American strength, security and resolve”, he said.
“This is not a full-blown budget”. For example, the president spoke regularly about spending more money on taking care of veterans, more money on immigration enforcement. “I mean, we saved a lot of money”.
Mulvaney said the budget outline will not add to the “currently projected [fiscal] 2018 deficit”. The cuts to offset that massive increase would be just as massive and the victims would range from the State Department, to the EPA, to all the safety net programs that aren’t Social Security and Medicare (at least so far-they could still be coming). “And it eliminates programs that simply do not work”. “Perhaps”, Trump said during his toast. The official echoed Trump’s promise that the new budget would be implemented simultaneously with cuts across other government agencies, as well as to foreign aid.
Mulvaney was asked whether this budget would include funding for the president’s vaunted border wall, which Trump has promised that Mexico would pay for; Mexico, however, has continued to insist it will not.
Here is a rundown of the past few days in the White House. Trump called for the new blueprint to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq a month ago, and the document details possible military, diplomatic and financial measures to increase U.S. engagement in the campaign, a United States official said.
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“This budget will be a public safety and national security budget”, Trump said during a bipartisan gathering of United States governors at the White House on Monday 27 February.
