The Slatest

Trump’s Budget Proposal Guts Just About Everything but Defense and Border Spending

President Donald Trump at a news conference in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 16.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

President Trump released a $1.1 trillion dollar budget outline Thursday that cuts nondefense discretionary spending significantly while boosting defense spending by $52.3 billion. From CNN:

The blueprint features the broad strokes of Trump’s plan to dramatically remake the federal government, slashing EPA funds by 31%, State Department by 28% and HUD by 13.2%, while zeroing out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Institute of Peace, among others.

The proposal would also reduce funding for multinational organization like the World Bank by $650 million.

Presidential budget plans outline the administration’s priorities but must be approved by Congress and are always changed in the process. The Trump administration will release its full budget in May.

According to the New York Times, the cuts to the EPA include the elimination of 3,200 staff positions and the defunding of both climate change research and the Clean Power Plan, which regulates greenhouse gas emissions. At State, the Trump proposal would cut funding for United Nations initiatives, including climate change programs. And at the Department of Education, where the budget proposes cuts of $9.2 billion, funding for programs like the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant for low income college students will be eliminated, while funding for school choice programs will be boosted by $1.4 billion.

One paragraph in the proposal offers a look at some of the agencies Trump would like to see eliminated completely.

The budget cuts overall enable increases in funding for the president’s priorities, including nearly $3.8 billion for a border wall the administration has promised, without substantiation, that Mexico will pay for, $1.5 billion for the detention and removal of illegal immigrants, $314 million for the hiring of at least 1,500 Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, an added $4.4 billion for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and $52.3 billion more in defense spending for indeterminate purposes—perhaps to create more veterans in Syria, where the Pentagon is considering deploying 1,000 more ground troops against ISIS in the coming weeks.