Trump budget seeks sharp spending cuts
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House released President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal Friday, hoping to slash, if not zero out, spending on many government programs. It seeks a sweeping restructuring of the nation’s domestic priorities reflective of the president’s first 100 days in office and sudden firing of federal workers.
Trump’s plan aims for steep cuts to child care, disease research, renewable energy and peacekeeping abroad, many already underway through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, while pumping up billions for the administration’s mass deportations agenda.
The budget drafters echo Trump’s promises to end “woke programs,” including preschool grants to states with diversity programs. And they reflect his vow to stop the “weaponization of government” by slashing the Internal Revenue Service, even as critics accuse him of using the levers of power to punish people and institutions he disfavors
Overall, it’s a sizable reduction in domestic accounts of nearly 23%, the White House said.
At the same time, the White House said it is relying on Congress to unleash $375 billion in new money for the Homeland Security and Defense departments as part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax cuts and spending reductions. His goal is to repel when he calls a “foreign invasion,” though migrant arrivals to the U.S. are at all-time lows.
House Speaker Mike Johnson welcomed the proposal as “a bold blueprint that reflects the values of hardworking Americans and the commitment to American strength and prosperity.”
Budgets do not become law but serve as a touchstone for the coming fiscal year debates. Often considered a statement of values, this first budget since Trump’s return to the White House carries the added weight of defining the Republican president’s second-term pursuits, alongside his party in Congress.
It comes as Trump has unilaterally imposed what could be hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases in the form of tariffs, setting off a trade war that has consumers, CEOs and foreign leaders worried about a possible economic downturn.
Democrats assailed the budget as a devastating foreshadowing of Trump’s vision for the country.
“President Trump has made his priorities clear as day: He wants to outright defund programs that help working Americans,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. This, she said, “while he shovels massive tax breaks at billionaires like himself and raises taxes on middle-class Americans with his reckless tariffs.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, provided contours of a so-called skinny version of top-line numbers only.
It covers only the federal government’s discretionary spending, now about $1.83 trillion a year on defense and nondefense accounts. Trump’s team drops that spending by $163 billion, to $1.69 trillion, a portion of the nation’s nearly $7 trillion budget that includes far more programs and services.
Federal budgets have been climbing steadily, as have annual deficits that are fast approaching $2 trillion with annual interest payments on the debt almost $1 trillion. That’s thanks mostly to the spike in emergency COVID-19 pandemic spending, changes in the tax code that reduced revenues and the climbing costs of Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, largely to cover health needs as people age.
The nation’s debt load, at $36 trillion, is ballooning.
“We need a budget that tells the full story, and it should control spending, reduce borrowing, bring deficits down,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog group.
Among some of the White House’s proposed highlights:
Vought is expected on Capitol Hill in the weeks ahead as the Trump administration presses its case.