Donald Trump · Axios
Between the lines: The administration is using a familiar argument to justify the cuts: fraud, waste and abuse
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What they're saying: "Savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized, and wasteful programs, and by returning state and local responsibilities to their respective governments," the White House said in a fact sheet.
Key facts
- Non-defense spending, which includes categories such as public health, scientific research, housing and education, would take a 10% cut, or $73 billion
- President Trump's new budget lays bare the transformation of his presidency, pairing a historic surge in military spending with historic cuts to domestic programs
- At a closed-door Easter lunch on Wednesday, accidentally live-streamed and then scrubbed from the White House YouTube page, Trump spelled out the trade-off in the bluntest of terms
- Trump's new budget, more a statement of the White House's goals than a legislative draft, would reorient the U.S. government around military power at the expense of virtually everything else
Summary
President Trump's new budget lays bare the transformation of his presidency, pairing a historic surge in military spending with historic cuts to domestic programs. The most powerful populist of this century is at risk of becoming what he ran against, a deficit-spending interventionist asking working-class Americans to shoulder the cost of war. The timing couldn't be worse: Trump is bleeding support over the Iran war, hitting the lowest approval ratings of his second term as rising gas prices erode his economic credibility. Even as Trump insists the conflict will end soon, his $1.5 trillion budget request for the Pentagon, plus an additional $200 billion ask for Iran costs, would lock in a wartime level of spending. At a closed-door Easter lunch on Wednesday, accidentally live-streamed and then scrubbed from the White House YouTube page, Trump spelled out the trade-off in the bluntest of terms.