TRUMP’S budget said to increase defense funding.
Other agencies would see cuts
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will instruct federal agencies today to assemble a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes sharp increases in Defense Department spending and enough cuts to domestic agencies that he can keep his promise to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, according to four senior administration officials.
A day before delivering an address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Trump will request a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, according to the four officials with direct knowledge of the plan. Social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees, would also be affected.
Preliminary budget outlines are the first step in negotiations between the White House and federal agencies, and 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, Steve Bannon — is intended to reinforce Trump’s pledge to carry out his campaign promises.
“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 top communications strategist on the Trump campaign who remains close to the White House.
“He’s doing something first, and there’s time for talk later,” Miller said. “This is ultimately how he’s going to get people who didn’t vote, or people who didn’t vote for him, into the fold. Inside the Beltway and with the media, there’s this focus on the palace intrigue. Out in the rest of the country, they are seeing a guy who is focused on jobs and the economy.”
The budget plan will be Trump’s first big step into legislation. So far, he has focused on executive orders on immigration and deregulation written by Bannon’s West Wing team.
To meet Trump’s defense request, lawmakers will need to agree to raise or end statutory spending caps on defense and domestic programs that were imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
Trump has assumed office at a time when the United States has a low unemployment rate and a lack of international crises requiring immediate attention.
By contrast, when President Barack Obama took office the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month and had tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Obama delivered his first joint congressional address on Feb. 24, 2009, he vowed, “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
Both Trump and Obama took office with their parties holding majorities in both houses of Congress.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who was Obama’s first chief of staff, said in an interview Sunday night that Trump was trying to create a “sense of urgency, which most people aren’t feeling right now, which was a reality to us,” part of a strategy for Trump to generate support for his economic agenda, which includes an infrastructure bill and a tax overhaul.
“When it comes to all of these executive orders, the question is, does the public view what he’s doing as action or motion?” Emanuel added. “If you don’t have real action, you create a sense of motion so the public views it as progress.”
White House officials are putting together their budget plans under the assumption that the rate of the United States’ economic growth this year will be 2.4 percent, according to one person who has been briefed on the matter. That number is slightly ahead of current projections.
“During his first month in office, President Trump has done exactly what he said he was going to do,” said Thomas Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of Trump’s who ran his inaugural committee.
“No president has worked harder or accomplished as much, even with tremendous political resistance forcing him to operate with a small team of outsiders possessing little government experience.”
The budget outline will give Trump an opportunity to add some specifics to an agenda that has been defined by tweets and broad policy changes.
Aides said Trump did not plan to change his style for Tuesday’s address. They said the speech will have, in terms of style, a lot in common with his inaugural address.
At the start of an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor, called him “President Action, President Impact, Donald J. Trump.”
In a series of Sunday news show interviews, Stephen Miller, Trump’s policy adviser, said the president had accomplished more in his first month than most of his predecessors had in their entire administrations.
One West Wing official who requested anonymity said the administration craved the split-screen television images of Trump at roundtables with business executives every few days on one side, and the protesters of his administration on the other.
But his critics are not convinced.
“This man is not a doer,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, who will host a “pre-buttal” today for Trump’s speech. “Oh, please. He has nothing to show for what he’s been doing in office for 40 days. It’s all been squandered.”