President Donald Trump's budget will enact the largest cuts to federal spending since the end of World War II, The Washington Post reported.
Trump's budget, if passed, would cut a large number of federal programs and personnel in favor of the military and homeland security, including environmental programs, housing, public broadcasting, foreign assistance and research.
"These are not the kind of cuts that you can accommodate by tightening the belt one notch, by shaving a little bit off of a program, or by downsizing a few staff here or there," Robert Reischauer, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Post. "These are cuts that would require a wholesale triage of a vast array of federal activities."
Democrats have already pledged to oppose Trump's budget, but Republicans are largely waiting until discussions are over to announce their decisions.
"Unfortunately, we have no alternative but to reinvest in our military and make ourselves a military power once again," Gary Cohn, Director of the National Economic Council, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"If you're doing that in an area where you have to balance the budget and you cannot create a further deficit, you have to make cuts. It's no different than every other family in America that has to make the tough decisions when they need to spend money somewhere, they have to cut it from somewhere else," Cohn said.
Trump's budget proposal is expected to cost $4.091 trillion next year, with about two-thirds spent on healthcare programs, Social Security, poverty assistance and debt interest payments.
The president's changes are mostly contained to discretionary spending, with half of that money going to the military, an increase of $54 billion, with the rest distributed amongst various domestic agencies such as education, law enforcement and housing.
"Imagine his plan got enacted," Matthew Slaughter, formerly of President George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, told the Post. "It wouldn't trigger some crisis, but what's subtle is relative to what America could be in the next several years in terms of making more substantial investments in infrastructure, science research, and public investments that we have historically made."
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