Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy. The proposal takes directly from the Heritage Foundation’s FY 2017 budget blueprint and the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) FY 2017 Budget Proposal.
While the annual President’s Budget Request is important to set the Administration’s policies and agenda. Congress is ultimately responsible for approving a federal budget and appropriating funds.
The Trump budget, which will not likely be officially unveiled until mid-April, would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. The preliminary proposals from the White House budget office will be shared with federal departments and agencies soon after Trump takes the oath of office Friday. Also, Trump’s Cabinet picks have yet to be apprised of the reforms, which would reduce resources within their agencies.
The Commerce and Energy departments would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.
The Heritage FY 2017 blueprint, which is reportedly being used as a basis for Trump’s proposed cuts, calls for eliminating several “corporate welfare” programs including:
- the Minority Business Development Agency,
- the Economic Development Administration,
- the International Trade Administration, and
- the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
The total savings from cutting these four programs would amount to nearly $900 million in 2017.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions and eliminating:
- the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
- Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation.
At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, and would eliminate
- the Office of Electricity,
- the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and
- the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
At the State Department’s , funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.
Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative RSC, a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. It is notable, that the RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.
Trump vowed during the campaign not to cut Medicare and Social Security, a pledge that Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday has not changed.
That said, it could be very difficult to reduce U.S. debt without tackling the entitlement programs. Conservative House budgets have repeatedly included reforms to Medicare and Social Security, arguing they are necessary to save the programs.
This proposal is expected to be met with strong opposition by Democrats.
The Office of Federal Relations will continue to update on this issue.