Trump revives border wall fight, seeking $8.6bn
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is reviving his border wall fight, preparing a new budget that will seek $8.6bn (£6.6bn) for his signature project.
The new budget will also impose steep spending cuts to other domestic programmes and set the stage for another fiscal battle.
Budget documents like the one Mr Trump is releasing are often seen as just a starting point of negotiations.
Fresh off the longest government shutdown in history, Mr Trump’s 2020 proposal shows he is eager to confront Congress again to boost defence spending and cut $2.7 trillion in non-defence spending over a decade.
Mr Trump’s proposal “embodies fiscal responsibility”, said Russ Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Mr Vought said the administration has “prioritised reining in reckless Washington spending” and shows “we can return to fiscal sanity”. He confirmed that the $8.6bn border request was part of Mr Trump’s spending blueprint for the 2020 budget year, which begins on October 1. It would pay for hundreds of miles of new barriers along the US-Mexico border.
Mr Vought said “the border situation is deteriorating by the day”, adding there had been “record numbers of apprehensions”.
An administration official said Mr Trump’s budget proposes increasing defence spending to $750bn (£576bn) – and standing up the new Space Force as a military branch – while reducing nondefence accounts by five per cent, with cuts recommended to safety-net programmes 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.
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 president’s priorities, according to one official.