Donald Trump unveils first budget with plans to slash funds for poor and sick

Budget: Donald Trump is to announce cuts to government programmes helping the poor and the sick
AP
David Gardner16 March 2017

President Donald Trump today unveiled his first budget with much deeper than expected cuts to government programmes helping the poor and the sick.

Twelve of the US government’s 15 key departments will be expected to absorb cutbacks of up to a more than quarter.

The announcement was scheduled to come just hours after his revised travel ban targetting six Muslim countries was blocked by a judge.

Mr Trump plans to slash spending on medical research, help for homeless veterans and community development grants, along with anticipated cuts to foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The severity of the proposed budget crackdown - announced in a document entitled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again - took Washington by surprise.

The huge rise in military spending - the budget’s £44 billion boost is the largest since President Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon build-up in the 1980s - is necessary to keep the country safe, the president was expected to argue.

The $1.15billion budget promises immediate money for troop readiness, the fight against Islamic State militants and procurement of new ships, fighter jets and other weapons.

“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,” Mr Trump said in a message accompanying his proposed budget.

The budget goes after the frequent targets of the Republican Party’s staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor and low-income heating assistance.

More than 3,000 Environmental Protection Agency workers would lose their jobs and programmes such as Mr Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would tighten regulations on emissions from power plants seen as contributing to global warming, would be eliminated.

The US State Department is cut deepest with a 28 per cent reduction to its foreign aid division and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the closest the US comes to an organisation like the BBC, which provides support to public stations NPR and PBS, will see its funding phased out.

The National Institutes of Health would be cut by about £5 billion, or one-fifth of its funding.

The dramatic cutbacks will help finance Mr Trump’s much-vaunted wall with Mexico, which will get an immediate £1.2 billion in the current fiscal year, with another £2.1 billion planned for the 2018 budget year starting on October 1.

Mr Trump repeatedly claimed during the election campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The president’s budget is not guaranteed. It may not make it past the House of Representatives and the Senate even though the Republicans holds majorities in both.

The cuts have already met with resistance from within Mr Trump’s party, with one top official saying it’s “dead on arrival”.

“Foreign Aid is not charity,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a tweet. “We must make sure it is well spent, but it is less than 1% of budget & critical to our national security.”

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