Trump's Proposed Budget Cuts Funds From Nearly Every Agency

President Trump revealed his $1.15 trillion budget proposal on Thursday, with a $54 billion boost to defense and law enforcement spending that is bigger than anything we’ve seen since the 1980s. 

Virtually every federal agency would see some sort of cut, with some of the most severe cuts affecting the State Department and the EPA. The proposal spares the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Veterans Affairs and the FBI and pours $1.4 billion into the border wall project. 

Here’s how much funding these agencies would lose if Trump’s proposal goes through:

• Health and Human Services: 16.2% ($12.6 billion)

• Environmental Protection Agency: 31.4% ($2.6 billion)

• State Department: 28.7% ($11 billion)

• Labor Department: 20.7% ($2.5 billion)

• Agriculture Department: 20.7% ($5 billion)

• US Army Corps of Engineers: 16.3% ($1 billion)

• National Institutes of Health: 20% ($5.8 billion) 

Other agencies that would suffer double digit cuts include Commerce, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Interior. 

Program cuts seem to be focused mainly on funding that goes towards energy research, reducing pollution, and fighting global warming – or as the Huffington Post puts it, the budget “essentially kneecaps US participation” in the COP21 Paris climate change agreement. 

The cuts would also remove or restrict 20 programs within the Department of Education as well as reduce FEMA state and local grant funding by over $600 million.  

“A budget that puts America first must make the safety of our people its number one priority – because without safety, there can be no prosperity,” said President Trump.

Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy calls the budget “an all out assault on clean air, water and land” and argues that you “can’t put ‘America First’ when you put the health of its people and its country last.” 

The budget threatens to wipe out many smaller agencies, and the following would receive no funding whatsoever: 

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (think PBS and NPR)

• Global Climate Change Initiative 

• National Endowment for the Arts 

• National Endowment for the Humanities 

• Institute of Museum and Library Services 

• Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy 

In eliminating these and many other long-standing programs, Trump seeks to “to move the nation toward fiscal responsibility” and to “redefine the proper role of the federal government.” 

Trump ally and New York Rep. Chris Collins says the president is gutting “agencies we think have gone rogue” and “the massive government bureaucracy that never seems to shrink.” 

The “skinny budget” only covers about one-fourth of the actual budget, and does not address Social Security, taxes, Medicare, or Medicaid. 

White House budget director Mike Mulvaney assures us that “the president’s going to keep his promises” to leave Medicare and Social Security alone.

Congres will make the ultimate decision, and it is extremely unlikely that Trump’s budget will pass unscathed. “This is not a take-it-or-leave-it budget,” says Mulvaney.