WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump sends Congress a proposed budget this week that will sharply test Republicans’ ability to keep long-standing promises to bolster the military, making politically painful cuts to a lengthy list of popular domestic programs.
The Republican president will ask his adopted political party, which runs Capitol Hill, to cut domestic agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, along with grants to state and local governments and community development projects. The spending plan, set for release Thursday, would make the Pentagon the big winner with a $54 billion boost to defense spending.
Trump has promised to “do a lot more with less,” but his blueprint faces a reality test with Republicans, many of whom are already protesting.
Republicans have groused about some of the preliminary plans, including elimination of the $3 billion community development block grant program that’s popular among local GOP officials, a 25 percent cut to the EPA and elimination of 3,000 jobs, and essentially scuttling a $300 million per-year program to clean up the Great Lakes.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, is joining with Democrats to push back on that last proposed reduction. Cuts to the Coast Guard are meeting Republican resistance. Trump’s plan to eliminate community development block grants was dismissed on Capitol Hill by those who remember how a modest cut to the program sank a spending bill not long ago.
“Unfortunately, we have no alternative but to reinvest in our military and make ourselves a military power once again,” White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The United States, however, already spends more than half trillion dollars on defense, more than the next seven countries combined.
Cohn defended the spending cuts elsewhere as necessary to balance the budget. “These are tough decisions, but the president has shown he is ready, willing and able to make these tough decisions,” he said Sunday.
Democrats are unlikely to support the cuts, and Republican defections raise the possibility of a congressional train wreck and a potential government shutdown when the 2018 budget year begins Oct. 1.
Preliminary reports on the budget show some domestic Cabinet agencies, such as the departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, would see increases, including $3 billion for Trump’s promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump said repeatedly during the campaign that Mexico would pay for that project, but Mexico has said no.
Those intended spending increases, however, would mean deeper cuts elsewhere.
People familiar with the budget who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the public release say the White House is seeking a 30 percent cut from an Energy Department office that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy. The office has funded research on projects such as LED light bulbs, electric trucks, advanced batteries and biofuels.
