STATE, EDUCATION HIT
The budget proposal calls for a US$50 billion cut at the State Department as it absorbs the US Agency for International Development.
The proposal calls for a US$2.49 billion cut to the IRS, which one White House budget official said would end former President Joe Biden’s “weaponisation of IRS enforcement”. Nonpartisan analysts say cuts to IRS can hurt tax collection and thus add to the deficit.
OMB also called for sharp cuts at NASA’s moon program and to federal law enforcement agencies including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as Reuters reported was expected.
The proposal furthers Trump’s promise to shutter or greatly diminish the Department of Education, slashing about 15 per cent of the department’s budget.
Funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees housing assistance programs, would be cut almost in half.
“Donald Trump’s days of pretending to be a populist are over,” said top US Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York in a statement. “His policies are nothing short of an all-out assault on hardworking Americans.”
The administration says the budget would boost discretionary defence spending by 13 per cent, but Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said defence spending would remain at levels set under Trump’s Democratic predecessor Biden, which amounts to a cut due to inflation.
Officials said the White House believes Republicans in Congress will add more defence spending as part of the process of passing Trump’s tax-cut bill on a party-line vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster.
“We think the Hill will be with us on this as we get to talk to more of them along the way,” Vought said in an interview with Fox Business.
