The 10% Pentagon boost is financed by $54bn in cuts to foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been protected by Barack Obama. “This is a hard power budget, not a soft power budget,” said the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney. Lawmakers will have the final say on Trump’s proposal in the arduous budget process, and many of the cuts will be deemed dead on arrival. “The administration’s budget isn’t going to be the budget,” said Senator Marco Rubio. Trump’s proposal covers only roughly one-fourth of the approximately $4tn federal budget, the discretionary portion that Congress passes each year.

Source: The Guardian March 16, 2017 05:15 UTC