Trump budget boosts military, slashes agencies

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s new $1.15 trillion budget would reshape America’s government with the broad, conservative strokes he promised as a candidate, ordering generous increases for the military, slashing domestic programs and riling both fellow Republicans and Democrats by going after favored programs.

The president’s initial budget proposal, submitted to Congress on Thursday, would boost defense spending by $54 billion — including $5.1 billion to fund combat operations overseas — the largest increase since Ronald Reagan’s military buildup of the 1980s. That means deep cuts elsewhere — the environment, agriculture, the arts, the State Department — but Mr. Trump said that’s imperative to take on the Islamic State group and others in a dangerous world.

No president in recent memory has proposed such austerity to non-defense programs — with cuts averaging more than 10 percent before inflation.

“To keep Americans safe, we have made the tough choices that have been put off for too long,” he declared in a statement titled “America First” that accompanied the budget.

Or, as Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “This is a hard power budget, not a soft power budget.”

The budget — more of a blueprint than a binding document — is Mr. Trump’s first major attempt to dismantle what his aides

dismissively call the “administrative state.”

It is not entirely in line with his campaign pledges.

It would make a big down payment on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, which Mr. Trump repeatedly promised the Mexicans would pay for. American taxpayers will, at least for now. Thursday’s proposal calls for an immediate $1.4 billion infusion with an additional $2.6 billion planned for the 2018 budget year starting Oct. 1, even though the president boasted that the border with Mexico is already “getting extremely strong.”

Even as he plans to cut the Justice Department’s budget by more than $1 billion, Mr. Trump is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire 60 federal prosecutors and 40 deputy U.S. Marshals to focus on border cases.

Also, it calls for privatizing the nation’s air traffic control operations, a top priority of the airline industry, and raising passenger security fees.

Law enforcement agencies would be spared.

Israel would be the only country to escape the deep cuts in foreign aid.

Some politically sensitive domestic programs would be spared, including food aid for pregnant women and their children, housing vouchers for the poor, aid for special ed and school districts for the poor, and federal aid to historically black colleges and universities.

The real power of the purse rests with Congress. Historically lawmakers don’t pass presidential budgets introduced to much fanfare.

Parts of Mr. Trump’s spending plan for the next fiscal year angered both congressional Democrats and Republicans who will have the final say on it.

While it targets Democratic priorities like housing, after-school programs, small-business funding, community development and the environment, it also would slash GOP sacred cows like aid to rural schools and subsidized airline service to Trump strongholds, and it would raise fees on participants in the federal flood insurance program. In 19 cases, funding will be eliminated, including for the Appalachian Regional Commission and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Mr. Mulvaney argued that many of those programs had become deeply flawed and wasteful.

The proposal raised the prospect of massive layoffs across the federal government.

The budget pursues frequent targets of the GOP’s staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low-income heating assistance and the AmeriCorps national service program.

But Midwestern Republicans including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio were upset by cuts to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

One target of the budget is the Appalachian Regional Commission, which helps communities in the region.

Critics seized on difficultto-defend cuts to programs such as Meals on Wheels, which delivers food to elderly shut-ins.

The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund — which has helped protect Civil War battlefield sites, national parks and local recreation areas — would suffer a deep cut.

Mr. Trump’s proposal does not make predictions about deficits and the economy. Those big-picture details are due in May.

Republicans praised the president for beefing up the Pentagon, but they were far less enthusiastic about accepting Mr. Trump’s recipe for doing so without adding to the nation’s $20 trillion debt, which came back into force Thursday. Indeed, this budget is not designed to reduce the deficit at all, just shift money around.

Mr. Mulvaney said the administration would negotiate.

Many of Mr. Trump’s GOP allies gave it only grudging praise, if any.

“I look forward to reviewing this,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.