$10 trillion slash due for gov’t

Arts among big hits

The Trump administration is looking to cut $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, an enormous sum that would drastically reduce the size of government, according to a new report.

Details of the plan are still being hammered out by the new White House staff, The Hill newspaper reported Thursday.

The plan calls for the shuttering of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized.

The Commerce and Energy departments would see sharply reduced budgets.

Modeling for the spending plan comes from the conservative Washington think tank The Heritage Foundation, The Hill said.

The DC publication identified two members of Trump’s transition team who are discussing the cuts at the White House budget office: Russ Vought, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence and former executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee, and John Gray, who previously worked for Pence, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House Budget Committee.

Vought and Gray have both previously worked for the Heritage Foundation.

Meanwhile, the transition team is already claiming some fiscal success.

In a surprise appearance at a press briefing Thursday, then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence said the transition team, which he led, spent less than planned.

“Wrapping up this transition on schedule and under budget,” Pence bragged, stating the transition team would return 20 percent of its taxpayer-funded budget to the federal government.

Pence claimed the transition had made great strides and would be ready to govern on Day 1.

The urgency to reduce federal spending comes after eight years of massive debt increases under President Obama.

Under Obama’s watch, the federal debt nearly doubled — increasing by more than $9 trillion during his two terms.

Currently, the national debt is $19.9 trillion.

Donald Trump’s spending plan would be certain to have backers in Congress, which is controlled by Republicans who have made fiscal soundness a political issue for years.

Yet the new president is soon to run into obstacles, as he frequently pledged on the campaign trail that he would not cut Medicare and Social Security entitlements, the biggest drivers of the national debt.

Talk of the new plan shows a seriousness to tackling spending the likes of which has not been seen in Washington in recent years.

“The Trump administration needs to reform and cut spending dramatically,” former Capitol Hill staffer Brian Darling told The Hill.

“And targeting waste like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be a good first step in showing that the Trump administration is serious about radically reforming the federal budget.”