Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney debuted what he called the "blueprint" for the Trump administration's fiscal 2018 budget on Thursday, outlining a heady mix of new initiatives and spending cuts.
"There is no question that this is a hard power budget," Mulvaney said in a March 15 call with reporters. "The president very clearly wants to send a message to our allies and our potential adversaries that this is a strong power administration."
But the March 16 document offers a bare-bones, high-level view of the White House's fiscal picture, with a deeper, agency-level budget expected in May.
That being said, here's what the blueprint does show:
Budget bumps for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security
As anticipated, the Trump budget will include increases for defense spending and border protection. Mulvaney said that DoD would see a 10 percent budget increase — worth $54 billion — while DHS will see a 6 percent rise.
Mulvaney noted that while the 2018 budget won't be balanced, it doesn't add to the federal deficit, meaning any increases in spending will come from cuts elsewhere.
State Department will see a 28 percent cut, coming largely from foreign aid
One agency projected to take a big hit is the State Department, but Mulvaney was quick to clarify that the 28 percent cut was largely coming from a reduction in the aid provided to foreign governments.
"That is not a commentary on the president’s policies toward the State Department," he said. "The foreign aid line items in the budget, many of them just happen to fall within the State Department’s functions.
"The president ran saying he would spend less money overseas and more money back home, so when you go to implement that policy, you go to things like foreign aid and those get reduced."
The wall will get $1.5 billion in 2017
Mulvaney said that alongside the 2018 blueprint, OMB will also roll out a 2017 supplemental budget that requests an additional $30 billion for DoD and DHS, including $1.5 billion in funding for Trump’s proposed border wall.
But don’t expect the wall to go up next year, as the OMB director stressed that the new funding represented only the earliest stages of planning.
"We haven’t settled on construction types. We haven’t settled on where we are going to start," he said. "I think the funding provides for a couple of different pilot cases — different kinds of barriers in different kinds of places as we try and find the most cost-efficient, the safest and most effective border protections."
Mulvaney said OMB looked for "the most inefficient, the most wasteful, the most indefensible programs in other areas" to fund the wall through cost offsets.
When asked whether anticipated cuts to the Coast Guard — which are rumored to be used to pay for the wall — would impact border security, Mulvaney reiterated that parent agency DHS would be getting a 6 percent increase and that reports claiming the administration would be axing a Coast Guard cutter were "not accurate."
HUD, EPA and PBS take a hit
Mulvaney made clear that other agencies would be pruning "wasteful programs" off the books. Of those, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency are two entities likely to get a shave.
When asked how the cuts to HUD squared with Trump’s promise to fix inner cities, Mulvaney said that several of the agency's programs weren’t bearing fruit, which justified their elimination, and that other initiative in education and other programs would deliver on the administration’s promise.
"One of the other things the president said was that he was going to go after wasteful programs, duplicative programs and programs that simply don’t work and a lot of those are in HUD," he said.
"We’ve spent a lot of money on housing and urban development over the last decade without a lot to show for it. There a lot of programs that can’t justify their existence and that’s where we zeroed in."
The OMB director said that the EPA — which is rumored to see a 25 percent cut — will be able to "satisfy ... beyond its core functions" with the budget.
The Trump administration will also begin to unwind total funding for the Public Broadcasting Service in the 2018 budget.
The president’s budget will still have a tough hill to climb as it begins the long haul through Congress.
