Administration officials say that President Trump is intending to order a new budget which will see a “sharp increase” in military spending, coupled with significant cuts to the EPA and State Department, along with substantial cuts to other domestic spending.
Details on what exactly this budget is going to look like are, of course, still a matter of a lot of speculation, but officials say that Trump’s intention is to find about $54 billion in increased spending for the military without touching either Social Security or Medicare spending, in keeping with campaign promises.
Since the election, President Trump has been talking up some very expensive military plans, including increases in the number of troops, ships, and warplanes the US has available, and has talked up more nuclear weapons recently, arguing the US needs to be unrivaled.
The expectation is that the EPA and State Department will be asked to shave tens of billions off their budgets. Trump insists the US needs to have more money to “win wars again,” saying that when he was younger people used to say the US “never lost a war.”
