Military spared in Trump plan to slash budget

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will instruct federal agencies Monday to assemble a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes sharp increases in Defense Department spending and drastic enough cuts to domestic agencies that he can keep his promise to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, according to senior administration officials.

The budget outline will be the first move in a campaign this week to reset the narrative of Trump’s turmoil-tossed White House.

A day before delivering an address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Trump will demand a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, according to four senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plan. Social safety net programs like food stamps would also be hit hard.

Preliminary budget outlines are usually littlenoticed administrative exercises, the first step in negotiations between the White House and federal agencies that usually shave the sharpest edges off the initial request.

But this plan — a product of a collaboration between the Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney; the National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn; and the White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon — is intended to make a big splash.

Trump’s top advisers huddled in the White House this weekend to work on his Tuesday night address. They focused on a single message amid the chaos of his first weeks in the White House: the assertion that the reality-show candidate is now a president determined to keep campaign promises on immigration, the economy and the budget.

“They might not agree with everything you do, but people will respect you for doing what you said you were going to do,” said Jason Miller, a communications strategist on the campaign who remains close to the White House.

The budget plan is a numerical sketch that will probably be substantially altered by House and Senate Republicans — and vociferously opposed by congressional Democrats.

Resistance from federal agencies could ease some of the deepest cuts in the initial plan before a final budget request is even sent to Congress.

To meet Trump’s defense request, lawmakers in both parties would have to agree to raise or end statutory spending caps on defense and domestic programs that were imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.