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President Donald Trump will ask the US Congress for dramatic cuts to many federal programmes as he seeks to bulk up defense spending, start building a wall on the border with Mexico and spend more money deporting illegal immigrants.
In a federal budget proposal with many losers, the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department stand out as targets for the biggest spending reductions. Funding would disappear altogether for 19 independent bodies that count on federal money for public broadcasting, the arts and regional issues from Alaska to Appalachia.
Trump's budget outline is a bare-bones plan covering just "discretionary" spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting on 1 October.
It is the first volley in what is expected to be an intense battle over spending in coming months in Congress, which holds the federal purse strings and seldom approves presidents' budget plans.
Congress, controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans, may reject some or many of his proposed cuts. Some of the proposed changes, which Democrats will broadly oppose, have been targeted for decades by conservative Republicans.
Moderate Republicans have already expressed unease with potential cuts to popular domestic programmes such as home-heating subsidies, clean – water projects and job training.
Trump is willing to discuss priorities, said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who made a name for himself as a spending hawk before Trump plucked him for his Cabinet.
“If they have a different way to accomplish that, we are more than interested in talking to them,” Mulvaney said.
Trump wants to spend $54 billion more on defense, put a down payment on his border wall, and breathe life into a few other campaign promises.
His initial budget outline does not incorporate his promise to pour $1 trillion into roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects. The White House has said the infrastructure plan is still to come.
"You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it," Mulvaney said.
White House officials looked at Trump's campaign speeches and "America First" pledges as they crunched the numbers, Mulvaney said.
"We turned those policies into numbers," he said, explaining how the document mirrored pledges to spend more on the US nuclear weapons arsenal, veterans' health care, the FBI, and Justice Department efforts to fight drug dealers and violent crime.
The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants.
The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years.
The voluminous budget document will include economic forecasts and Trump's views on "mandatory entitlements" – big-ticket programmes like Social Security and Medicare, which Trump vowed to protect on the campaign trail.
Trump asked Congress to slash the EPA by $2.6 billion or more than 31 percent, and the State Department by more than 28 percent or $10.9 billion.
Mulvaney said the "core functions" of those agencies would be preserved. Hit hard would be foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies like the World Bank and climate change programmes at the United Nations.
Regional programmes to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would be sent to the chopping block.
Community development grants at the Housing Department – around since 1974 – were cut in Trump's budget, along with more than 20 Education Department programmes, including some funding program for before – and after-school programmes.
Trump's rural base did not escape cuts. The White House proposed a 21 percent reduction to the Agriculture Department, cutting loans and grants for wastewater, reducing staff in county offices and ending a popular program that helps US farmers donate crops for overseas food aid.
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