US President Donald Trump is reviving his border wall fight, preparing a new budget that would seek US$8.6 billion for his signature project, impose steep spending cuts to other domestic programs and set the stage for another fiscal battle.
Budget documents like the one Trump was releasing yesterday are often seen as just a starting point of negotiation.
Fresh off the longest government shutdown in history, Trump’s proposal shows he is eager to confront Congress again to boost defense spending and cut US$2.7 trillion in nondefense spending over a decade.
Titled “A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First,” Trump’s proposal “embodies fiscal responsibility,” Office of Management and Budget acting director Russ Vought said.
Vought said the administration has “prioritized reining in reckless Washington spending” and shows “we can return to fiscal sanity.”
Two administration officials confirmed that the border wall request was part of Trump’s spending blueprint for the 2020 budget year, which begins on Oct. 1.
It would pay for hundreds of kilometers of new barriers along the border.
It proposes increasing defense spending to US$750 billion — and setting up the new Space Force as a military branch — while reducing nondefense accounts by 5 percent, with cuts recommended to safety-net programs used by many Americans.
The plan sticks to budget caps that both parties have routinely broken in recent years and promises to come into balance in 15 years, relying in part on economic growth that may be uncertain.
The officials were not authorized to discuss budget details publicly before the release of the plan yesterday and spoke on condition of anonymity.
While pushing down spending in some areas, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the proposal will seek to increase funding in others to align with the Trump’s priorities, one official said.
The administration would invest more than US$80 billion for veterans services, a nearly 10 percent increase from current levels, including “significant” investments in rehabilitation, employment assistance and suicide prevention.
It would also increase resources to fight the opioid epidemic with money for prevention, treatment, research and recovery, and seeks to shift some federal student loan costs to colleges and universities, the administration said.
By adhering to strict budget caps, Trump is signaling a fight ahead. The president has resisted big, bipartisan budget deals that break the caps — threatening to veto one last year — but Congress will need to find agreement on spending levels to avoid another federal shutdown in fall.
To stay within the caps, the budget shifts a portion of the defense spending to an overseas contingency fund, which some fiscal hawks would view as an accounting gimmick.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Trump’s budget “points a steady glide path” toward lower spending and borrowing as a share of the nation’s economy.
He also told Fox News Sunday that there was no reason to “obsess” about deficits and expressed confidence that economic growth would top 3 percent this year and beyond.
However, the Democratic chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on the Budget John Yarmuth called the proposed cuts to essential services “dangerous.”
He said Trump added nearly US$2 trillion to deficits with the Republican’s “tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations, and now it appears his budget asks the American people to pay the price.”
The border wall, though, remains a signature issue for the president and is poised to stay at the forefront of his agenda, even though Congress has resisted giving him more money for it.
Leading Democrats immediately rejected the proposal.
“Congress refused to fund his wall and he was forced to admit defeat and reopen the government. The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again,” said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
They said the money “would be better spent on rebuilding America.”
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