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White House officials instead intend to say that their budget proposal would close the deficit by 2035, the Post reported, setting up a timeline that would miss President Donald Trump’s repeated vow to eliminate the federal deficit after eight years in office.
News of the proposed budget comes after the US budget deficit ballooned past $1 trillion in 2019, marking the first time the country has crossed that threshold in a calendar year since 2012.
And the deficit has continued to grow due in part to tax cuts and a two-year budget deal that has boosted federal spending under Trump. It’s swelled to $984 billion at the end of the last fiscal year, up from $665 billion during his first year in office in 2017. Usually, big budget deficits typically widen during economic downturns — but the US economy is expanding and unemployment is at a 50-year low.
According to the newspaper, the budget proposal, which is expected to be released publicly on Monday, will request $2 billion in homeland security funds for the US Southern border wall — billions less than Congress had previously agreed to. The plan also calls for roughly $2 trillion in cuts to “non-defense discretionary programs,” which does not include Medicare or Social Security, the Post said.
The plan is also expected to propose 5% net cuts to domestic discretionary spending which is anticipated to include budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A person briefed on the budget also told the Post that the Education Department budget will be cut by $6 billion.
The debt began to level off at the beginning of Trump’s term, but bounced up again as the tax cuts passed at the end of 2017 took effect and the dramatically lower corporate tax rate lowered Treasury revenues.
As a candidate, Trump promised to “get rid of” the national debt, telling the Post in 2016 that he could make the US debt-free “over a period of eight years.”
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