The Trump administration is preparing to release its budget for the 2018 fiscal year and, if it passes as proposed, the Environmental Protection Agency will see a significant budget decrease.
The AP reports that Trump plans to inflate defense spending by implementing severe cuts to the EPA and to the State Department — tens of billions of dollars, to be precise. According to an unnamed administration official no “significant changes” will be made to either Social Security or Medicare. However, the New York Times notes that various other “social safety net programs” will suffer.
Drawn up by Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, the budget proposal is intended to mitigate accusations of chaos and incoherence within the executive branch.
“They might not agree with everything you do, but people will respect you for doing what you said you were going to do,” Jason Miller, Trump campaign communications strategist, tells the Times.
He continues, “He’s doing something first, and there’s time for talk later...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 with the palace intrigue. Out in the rest of the country, they are seeing a guy who is focused on jobs and the economy.”
Of course, the budget requires approval from Congress, and the Democrats are unlikely to give it their support. And before that, the federal agencies will have a chance to review the proposal and contest slated cuts — or at least their severity.
Nonetheless, even the scarcest details indicate that when the budget proposal is released this week, yet another bitter fight will begin.