US President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday proposed a $163 billion cut to the federal budget that would sharply reduce spending in areas including education and housing next year, while increasing outlays for defense and border security.
The administration said the proposed budget would raise homeland security spending by nearly 65% from 2025 enacted levels.
Non-defense discretionary spending — a slice of the budget that excludes the massive Social Security and Medicare programs as well as the rising cost of interest payments on the nation’s debt — would be cut by 23% to the lowest level since 2017, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
The proposed budget would cleave more than $2 billion from the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service.
Trump’s first budget since reclaiming office seeks to make good on his promises to boost spending on border security while slashing the federal bureaucracy. Congressional Democrats blasted the cuts in domestic spending as too severe, and some Republicans called for boosting spending on defense and other areas.
The federal government has a growing $36 trillion debt pile, and some fiscal conservatives and budget experts worry Trump’s proposal to extend his 2017 tax cuts will add to it.
The budget proposal calls for a $50 billion cut at the State Department as it absorbs the US Agency for International Development.
The proposal calls for a $2.49 billion cut to the IRS, which one White House budget official said would end former President Joe Biden’s “weaponisation of IRS enforcement.” Nonpartisan analysts say cuts to the IRS can hurt tax collection and thus contribute to the nation’s deficit.
