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Donald Trump has called for $163bn in cuts to federal spending in a sweeping budget proposal that guts programmes his administration deems “woke”, “wasteful” or “weaponised against ordinary working Americans”.
In a budget blueprint submitted to Congress on Friday, the US president pressed for non-defence spending to be slashed by 22.6 per cent to the lowest level since 2017 alongside a sharp increase in the defence budget.
Trump’s plan would slash billions of dollars previously spent on foreign aid, healthcare, education and the environment, codifying many of the cuts being implemented by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Russ Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, said current expenditure was “contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organisations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life”.
Trump’s budget wishlist comes as he intensifies his assault on the administrative state. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Doge are leading the radical effort to shrink the size of the federal government.
The proposal outlines the president’s priorities for so-called discretionary spending, the portion of the federal budget set by appropriations bills in Congress each year. It does not include longer-term ‘mandatory’ spending such as Social Security, Medicare, and interest paid on the federal debt.
Foreign aid would be hit particularly hard under Trump’s proposal, with a $49bn cut in spending and the shuttering of USAID, which Doge has reduced to a skeleton operation.
The budget takes aim at what the administration dubbed the “globalist climate agenda”, cutting grants for renewable energy and electric vehicles.
It also slashes spending on the education department, which Trump has vowed to close. The plan takes an axe to funding for agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Internal Revenue Service, all of which he said have been “weaponised”.
Contrasting the spending cuts, the plan calls for an increase in government outlay on the military and border security as part of Trump’s pledge to clamp down on illegal immigration. The defence budget would rise 13 per cent, while homeland security would be allocated another 65 per cent.
Chuck Schumer, the leading Senate Democrat, described the budget as “heartless” and said his party would fight efforts by Republican lawmakers to embed it in legislation.
“As [Trump] guts healthcare, slashes education, and hollows out programmes families rely on — he’s bankrolling tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations,” Schumer wrote on X. “It’s not just fiscally irresponsible, it’s a betrayal of working people from a morally bankrupt president.”
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