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The White House has unveiled a $4.1tr (£3.1tr) budget that would take the axe to the social safety net for the poor.

The plan would sharply slash food stamps, healthcare for low-income patients and disability benefits, and eliminate student loan subsidies.

The budget also features an Ivanka Trump plan for paid parental leave.

The US military would receive a 10% boost while $1.6bn would be allocated for a wall on the border with Mexico.

President Trump, who is travelling overseas, missed the unveiling of his first full budget, titled A New Foundation for American Greatness.

Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, told reporters on Tuesday the proposal is "simply the president's priorities put on paper".

Is the president's budget law?

No. A US president's annual budget is a policy wish list that stands little chance of being enacted.

The Senate and House of Representatives will pass their own versions, which will then go to congressional committees before the final spending plan is cemented.

The Trump budget might have expected a sympathetic reading in the Republican-controlled Congress.

But even fiscally hawkish conservatives are baulking at some of the $3.6tr in cuts.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How US defence spending plan compares to allies and rivals.

What about these cuts?

Critics say the plan would hurt some of Mr Trump's supporters hardest.

Its proposed $190bn reduction in food stamps surpasses previous cuts put forward by Republicans to a programme that serves about 42 million people

Representatives from agricultural states are objecting to a plan to limit farm subsidies

Mr Trump promised on the campaign trail not to cut Medicaid, the healthcare programme for the poor, but his budget would cut the scheme by $800bn

Republicans are also squeamish about proposed cuts to Meals on Wheels, which provides food to the homebound elderly, disabled and veterans

But the funding cut to family-planning groups that offer abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, is likely to be welcomed by conservatives

The White House budget director said: "Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving federal funds, but you also have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Protesters at a Republican congressman's town hall meeting laid out gravestones for Meal on Wheels and popular public broadcasting programmes

What's the Ivanka plan?

The US is the only developed country that does not grant new mothers or fathers a single day of paid time off.

But the US first daughter, who also acts as assistant to the president, has championed a policy to change all that.

Ivanka Trump's $19bn plan to offer six weeks of paid leave to mothers and fathers makes this the first Republican administration to put forth such a proposal.

But congressional Republicans are unlikely to rubber-stamp a new government mandate.

And even Democrats, who have long cried out for such a benefit, may be reluctant to lend their support to this president.

Ivanka Trump: US first daughter

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ivanlka Trump (L) and her husband, Jared Kushner, are on an overseas trip with the president

So far to the right: Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC Washington

This proposed budget should be seen as a presidential statement of principles - and those principles often run counter to the ones Mr Trump campaigned on last year.

The defence spending boost is there, yes, but funds allocated for a border wall aren't nearly enough to realise Mr Trump's dream. Infrastructure spending is below the massive investment Mr Trump promised.

Candidate Trump also pledged to protect entitlement spending, but his budget makes massive cuts in the Medicaid healthcare programme for the poor.

There was always going to be some conflict between Mr Trump's campaign guarantees and reality, but this budget more closely resembles the agenda of the most aggressive Republican fiscal hawks.

The budget will have some support in Congress from hardliners, but it would have been difficult to imagine during the heat of the campaign that President Trump would start so far to the right.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Senate Budget Committee Chairman Eric Ueland hands out the budget proposal to colleagues

Is the plan economically viable?

This budget projects the US government will eliminate its deficit and be running a surplus by 2027 - for the first time since the 1990s.

The plan promises to cut tax rates, relying largely on hoped-for economic growth of 3% to avoid adding to the deficit.

But that forecast is well beyond the independent Congressional Budget Office assumptions of 1.9% growth.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan policy body, said the Trump budget is based on "rosy assumptions" and "does not add up".

The White House budget director said on Tuesday 3% growth "will be the new normal for this country", but conceded that without it, the "budget will never balance".

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Protest's against President Trump's budget began weeks ago

What's the reaction?

Democrats are predictably outraged.

Hillary Clinton said the Trump budget shows an "unimaginable level of cruelty" for millions of Americans and children.

Yet even conservatives are voicing anxiety about the magnitude of the cuts.

Mark Walker, chairman of the spending hawks in the Republican Study Committee, told the Washington Post: "There will be some concern if we go too deep in some of these areas."

Mark Meadows, chairman of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, told the New York Times: "Meals on Wheels, even for some of us who are considered to be fiscal hawks, may be a bridge too far."

John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican in the Senate, said the plan was "dead on arrival".</s>President Trump’s first proposed budget shows respect for the people who pay the bills. The administration’s proposal reverses the damaging trends from previous administrations by putting our nation’s budget back into balance and reducing our debt through fiscally conservative principles, all the while delivering on President Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Social Security retirement or Medicare. The budget’s combination of regulatory, tax, and welfare reforms will provide opportunities for economic growth and creation. Get the facts about President Trump’s budget.

Unlike any budget proposed by the previous administration, the Fiscal Year 2018 Budget achieves balance within the 10-year budget window and begins to reduce the national debt within that same window.

The policies in this Budget will drive down spending and grow the economy. By 2027, when the budget reaches balance, publicly held debt will be reduced to less than 60 percent of GDP, the lowest level since 2010.

The President’s Budget does not cut core Social Security benefits. And the President is fulfilling his presidential campaign promise not to cut Medicare benefits.

President Trump’s budget saves the American people billions of dollars through welfare, tax, and regulatory reform.

The President is requesting $54 billion, or 10 percent, more than the defense level President Obama signed into law for both the 2017 CR and the 2018 budget cap. This increase balances the need to rebuild the military with the need for disciplined, strategy-driven, executable growth.

The Budget includes over $2.6 billion in new infrastructure and technology investments in 2018 to give CBP frontline law enforcement officers the tools and technologies they need to deter, deny, identify, track, and resolve illegal activity along the border.

President Trump’s budget provides national paid family leave for the first time in the history of this country.

Find out more information about President Trump’s Taxpayer First Budget at WhiteHouse.gov/taxpayers-first.</s>President Donald Trump’s Administration plans to gut funding to healthcare and medical research, according to a 2018 budget published online and rapidly withdrawn on Monday.

Despite a campaign pledge not to touch Medicaid, which provides healthcare cover for millions of Americans on low incomes or with disability, Trump’s budget includes a $610 billion cut to the programme over 10 years. That’s on top of the more than $800 billion in cuts included in the American Health Care Act passed by the US House of Representatives.

Food stamps are also on the chopping block. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps people on low incomes to buy food, is slated for a $193 billion funding cut over the next decade.

Medical research could take a hit, too. The budget calls for slashing $5.8 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health and cutting $1 billion from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country’s health protection agency.

It also includes deep cuts to programmes that aim to prevent substance abuse, while the US is in the midst of an opioid epidemic.

If enacted, the proposed budget would withhold all federal funds from facilities that provide abortions.

Other scientific organisations stand to lose out on funding, to varying degrees. The Department of Energy is facing a 16.6 per cent cut to the Office of Science, which oversees 10 national laboratories that investigate clean energy. The department’s advanced green energy programme ARPA-E is slated for termination.

NASA is set to lose out on $200 million – just under 1 per cent of the organisation’s current budget.

“The budget is really hostile to scientific innovation and technological innovation,” says Rob Cowin, the director of government affairs for the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Environmental Protection Agency is facing a suggested 31.4 per cent reduction in government funding. This will hit hardest for minority groups and people on low incomes, because these people tend to live in areas most affected by a lack of public health regulations, says Cowin.

“I honestly believe that it’s going to be hard to get a lot of members of congress to support the kind of cuts that the president is proposing in most agencies, but especially in the EPA,” Cowin says.

Brian Schatz, Hawaii state senator and Democrat, described the cuts as “cruel”. Early responses from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress suggest this budget is unlikely to pass in its current form, says Cowin. “It’s going to be hard for the president to get what he wants,” he says. “Certainly nothing this extreme will pass.”

Read more: Obamacare’s replacement a giant step backwards for US healthcare; US healthcare still lags far behind other developed nations; What Trump’s US Supreme Court pick means for women’s health</s>Donald Trump is going to balance the federal budget in the next 10 years and everything’s on the chopping block.

Well, not everything.

While safety net programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance would be slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars under the president’s budget proposal to Congress—which was unveiled Tuesday—Trump himself has quietly requested steady or increased funding for the programs he personally uses, including for his own security, operations at the White House, and the vice president’s residence.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, unveiled the proposal Tuesday from the White House, with a stark warning about previous administrations’ big spending habits, which Mulvaney blamed for the ballooning federal debt.

“If I take money from you and I have no intention of ever giving it back, that is not debt,” Mulvaney told reporters at the White House. “That is theft.”

The cuts to some parts of the federal budget would be severe under Trump’s proposal. The Department of Labor’s budget would drop 19.8 percent. The Department of the Interior would get cut by 10.9 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency loses more than 30 percent of its entire budget in the Trump document—all in the name of fiscal discipline and balancing the federal budget within the next 10 years.

But Trump’s budget does not include any cuts for the executive office of the president, including the roughly 450 people on the White House staff, nor for the multimillion dollar operating budgets at the White House residence or at the Naval Observatory, where Vice President Mike Pence lives.

Trump also chose to fully fund or increase funding for the eight advisory councils that report to him through the Executive Office of the President, including the Council of Economic Advisers, the National Security Council, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Council on Environmental Quality.

Mulvaney’s agency, the Office of Management and Budget, even gets a 7.7 percent increase in the White House budget request. The extra $8 million would mostly go to pay for an additional 30 full-time staff positions, which would put the total number of staff at OMB at 495. Neither the White House nor the OMB responded to inquiries about why the extra personnel would be necessary, but a senior House staffer familiar with the OMB request confirmed that the agency has asked for more money and additional staff.

Elsewhere in the budget, Trump also requests $60 million, in part to hire more Secret Service agents, who guard him and his family, as well as the multiple Trump residences outside of Washington that have to be secured at all times. The Washington Post reported that the Secret Service had asked for the extra money in March.

Like all presidents’ budget proposals, this one is likely to get put on shelves and shoved in desks all over Washington and never looked at again, since it’s Congress that will ultimately decide what gets spent and where. But the message from Trump’s budget is clear—slash federal spending, just not in my backyard.</s>WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump will unveil a proposed budget this week that would drive millions of people off food stamps and cut Medicaid, targeting the social safety-net programs for the poor in a new wave of spending cuts.

Trump’s blueprint for the 2018 budget year comes out Tuesday. It includes reductions to benefit programs such as Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poorest and many disabled Americans; federal employee pensions, welfare benefits and farm subsidies. Even before its release, it was widely panned by Republicans and Democrats.

All told, according to people familiar with the plan, Trump’s budget includes $1.7 trillion over 10 years in cuts from such so-called mandatory programs. That includes cuts to pensions for federal workers and higher contributions toward those pension benefits, as well as cuts to refundable tax credits paid to the working poor. People familiar with the plan were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cuts include a whopping $193 billion from food stamps over the coming decade — a cut of more than 25 percent — implemented by cutting back eligibility and imposing additional work requirements, according to talking points circulated by the White House. The program presently serves about 42 million people.

The food stamp cuts are several times larger than those attempted by House Republicans a few years back and comprise the bulk of a 10-year, $274 billion proposal that’s labeled as welfare reform.

The fleshed-out proposal follows up on an unpopular partial release in March that targeted the budgets of domestic agencies and foreign aid for cuts averaging 10 percent — and made lawmakers in both parties recoil.

The new cuts are unpopular as well.

“We think it’s wrongheaded,” said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, when asked about looming cuts to farm programs. “Production agriculture is in the worst slump since the depression — 50 percent drop in the net income for producers. They need this safety net.”

Trump’s budget plan promises to balance the federal ledger by the end of a 10-year window, even while exempting Social Security and Medicare retirement benefits from cuts. To achieve balance, the plan by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney relies on optimistic estimates of economic growth, and the surge in revenues that would result, while abandoning Trump’s promise of a “massive tax cut.”

Instead, the Trump tax plan promises an overhaul that would cut tax rates but rely on erasing tax breaks and economic growth to end up as “revenue neutral.” It would create three tax brackets — 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent — instead of the current seven.

Trump is also targeting the Medicaid health program that provides care to the poor and disabled, and nursing home care to millions of older people who could not otherwise afford it.

The House had a bitter debate on health care before a razor-thin 217-213 passage in early May of a GOP health bill that included more than $800 billion in Medicaid cuts over the coming decade. Key Republicans are not interested in another round of cuts to the program.

“I would think that the health care bill is our best policy statement on Medicaid going forward,” said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program.

A full budget submission by the administration to Congress is months overdue and follows the release two months ago of an outline for the discretionary portion of the budget, covering defense, education, foreign aid, housing and environmental programs, among others. Their budgets pass each year through annual appropriations bills.

An earlier blueprint from Trump proposed a $54 billion, 10 percent increase for the military above an existing cap on Pentagon spending, financed by an equal cut to nondefense programs. Those cuts rang alarm bells for many Republicans, who were particularly upset about proposals to eliminate community development block grants, slash medical research and eviscerate foreign aid.

Trump’s GOP allies rejected such cuts when wrapping up long-overdue legislation for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30. There’s little sign they will have a change of heart now, especially with Trump’s administration in turmoil and his poll ratings at historic lows.

“The budget’s a starting point. We’ll go to work from there,” said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Republicans controlling Congress have delayed action on their companion budget measure, waiting for Trump to go first. This year’s budget debate, Republicans hope, would grease the way for a major overhaul of the loophole-cluttered tax system. But House conservatives also want to embark on a round of cuts to benefit programs and are open to Trump’s suggestions for cuts to mandatory programs such as federal employee pensions.

Presidential budgets are mere suggestions, and the White House has discretion to assume higher economic growth rates of up to 3 percent or so under Trump’s agenda of tax changes, loosened regulations and infrastructure spending.</s>The White House on Tuesday will ask Republicans who control the U.S. Congress - and federal purse strings - to slash spending on healthcare and food assistance programs for the poor as they push ahead on plans to cut taxes and trim the deficit.

President Donald Trump is set to propose a raft of politically sensitive cuts in his first full budget, for the fiscal year that starts in October, a proposal that some analysts expected would be put aside by lawmakers as they craft their own budget and spending plans.

Trump, who is traveling overseas and will miss the unveiling of his plan, wants lawmakers to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over 10 years, balancing the budget by the end of the decade, according to a preview given to reporters on Monday.

More than $800 billion would be cut from the Medicaid program for the poor and more than $192 billion from food stamps.

Republicans are under pressure to deliver on promised tax cuts, the cornerstone of the Trump administration’s pro-business economic agenda, which would cut the business tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and reduce the number of personal tax brackets to three from seven.

But their policy agenda has stalled as the White House grapples with the political fallout from Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Comey had been leading a probe of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Trump’s biggest savings would come from cuts to the Medicaid program made as part of a Republican healthcare bill passed by the House of Representatives.

The bill aims to gut the Obama administration’s signature 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, that expanded insurance coverage and the government-run Medicaid program for the poor. But it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, which is writing its own law.

The White House proposed changes that would require more childless people receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, to work.

The plan would slash supports for farmers, impose user fees for meat inspection and sell off half the nation’s emergency oil stockpile. Another politically fraught item is a proposal for cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, a goal that has long eluded lawmakers and administrations from both political parties.

The first look at the plan came in a “skinny budget” released in March - a document that received a tepid response from Congress.

Most departments would see steep cuts, particularly the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is some new spending. The Pentagon would get a boost, and there would be a down payment to begin building a wall on the southern border with Mexico, which was a central promise of Trump’s presidential campaign.

The budget includes $25 billion for a plan to give parents six weeks of paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, and $200 billion to encourage state and local governments to boost spending on roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure programs.

The plan drew immediate fire from lobby groups, including from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which said it relied on “rosy assumptions,” gimmicks and unrealistic cuts.

“While we appreciate the administration’s focus on reducing the debt, when using more realistic assumptions, the president’s budget does not add up,” Maya MacGuineas, the group’s president, said in a statement.

Trump’s plan relies on forecasts for economic growth of 3 percent a year by the end of his first term - well beyond Congressional Budget Office assumptions of 1.9 percent growth.

“That assumes a pessimism about America, about the economy, about its people, about its culture, that we’re simply refusing to accept,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Monday.</s>President Donald Trump's proposal to cut federal spending by more than $3.6 trillion over the next decade - including deep reductions for programs that help the poor - faced harsh criticism in Congress on Tuesday, where even many Republicans said the White House had gone too far.

While some fiscally conservative lawmakers, particularly in the House, found a lot to praise in Trump's plan to balance the budget within 10 years, most Republicans flatly rejected the White House proposal. The divide sets up a clash between House conservatives and a growing number of Senate Republicans who would rather work with Democrats on a spending deal than entertain Trump's deep cuts.

"This is kind of the game," said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. "We know that the president's budget won't pass as proposed."

Instead, Cornyn said he believes conversations are already underway about how Republicans can negotiate with Democrats to avoid across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect in October. Those talks could include broad spending increases for domestic and military programs that break from Trump's plan for deep cuts in education, housing, research and health care.

"I think that's the only way," Cornyn said of working with Democrats on spending. "It would be good to get that done so we can get the Appropriations Committee to get to work."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said such spending talks would be inevitable.

"We'll have to negotiate the top line with Senate Democrats, we know that," McConnell told reporters Tuesday. "They will not be irrelevant in the process and at some point, here in the near future, those discussions will begin."

As Senate Republicans were discussing a bipartisan spending agreement, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney stood across town pitching Trump's proposal to dramatically alter the role of government in society, shrinking the federal workforce, scaling back anti-poverty programs and cutting spending on things like disease research and job training. The $4.094 trillion proposal for fiscal year 2018 includes $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years to anti-poverty programs including Medicaid, food assistance and health insurance for low-income children.

It would slightly increase spending on the military, immigration control and border security and provide an additional $200 billion for infrastructure projects over 10 years. It would also allocate $1.6 billion for the creation of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Budget experts questioned many of the economic assumptions that the White House put into its plan, saying it was preposterous to claim that massive tax cuts and spending reductions will lead to a surge in economic growth. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for example, said that using normal economic projections, the White House's proposal would not eliminate the deficit and would allow U.S. debt to continue growing into the next decade.

"Rather than making unrealistic assumptions, the president must make the hard tax and spending choices needed to truly bring the national debt under control," it said.

The White House proposals represent a defiant blueprint for a government realignment that closely follows proposals made in recent years by some of the most conservative members of the House, a group that once included Mulvaney himself. Trump has alleged that safety net programs create a welfare state that pull people out of the workforce, and his budget would cull these programs back.

Mulvaney pointed specifically to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the modern version of food stamps. The White House plans to propose forcing states to pay a portion of the benefits in the program, which reached more than 44 million beneficiaries in 2016.

"We are not kicking anybody off of any program who really needs it," Mulvaney said. "We have plenty of money in this country to take care of the people who need help. . . . We don't have enough money to take care of . . . everybody who doesn't need help."

Mulvaney, who served in the House from 2011 until earlier this year, is a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus. Many of the provisions in Trump's first budget reflect long-standing priorities of the Republican Party's far right in cutting back federal spending to get the nation's long-term fiscal picture under control - largely by cutting entitlement programs that mainly benefit the poor.

Republicans are keenly interested in passing a budget this year because they hope to use that legislation to lay the groundwork for a GOP-friendly rewrite of the tax code. Many GOP members hope to attach the tax reform to the budget process in order to advantage of special Senate rules that would allow both the budget and tax rewrite to pass with 51 votes, rather than the 60 that are needed to pass most other legislation. That special treatment could be critical to the success of the GOP tax effort in the Senate, where Republicans control a slim 52-to-48 majority.

White House officials knew their budget proposal would be jarring and launch a political fight, but they think it is a necessary debate given a wing of the Republican Party that wants the government to shrink.

But the cuts were met with intense criticism even among the majority of GOP members who hailed Trump's desire to pare back spending, including many who worried about the size of some of the proposed cuts.</s>The White House on Tuesday will release its budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Titled "A New Foundation for American Greatness," the budget calls for $3.6 trillion in spending reductions to balance the budget by 2027 and lift annual economic growth to 3%.

"This is the first time in a long time an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people actually paying the taxes," Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Monday during a briefing.

Of course, this doesn't mean the budget the White House proposes automatically becomes law — far from it. The budget committees in each chamber of Congress still have to write their own blueprints, which Congress will have to approve. And the budget that Congress passes is a resolution , not a law — it is the framework under which Congress will work to pass legislation, and doesn't require the President's signature.

Here are six things to know about the new version of the White House budget, which members of the Trump Administration will take to Capitol Hill to promote this week.

The budget calls for six weeks of paid family leave

The budget proposes six weeks of paid family leave for new mothers and fathers, including adoptive parents, and suggests states establish their own parental leave policies "most appropriate for their workforce and economy."

The measure was orchestrated by First Daughter Ivanka Trump , according to the White House, who created an interagency working group for a variety of issues, including this one. The proposal is likely to face stiff opposition in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Mandated paid family leave rarely garners support among Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats are already arguing the plan is insufficient.

"The Administration’s plan does not address the issue in the comprehensive way that is needed for hard working Americans," Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro said. “We need a policy that includes paid time off to care for a seriously ill or injured family member, which includes parents and children, as well as for workers who themselves have a serious health issue and for military families — not just for the birth or adoption of a child."

Its rosy deficit projections assume Obamacare will be repealed and tax reform will pass

Mulvaney said the biggest factor in decreasing the deficit will be the repeal of former President Barack Obama's health care reform law. But the Republican repeal law, the American Health Care Act, has only passed narrowly the House, it remains hugely unpopular, and Senate Republicans have been in no rush to bring it to a vote in the upper chamber, content to go through their own legislative process.

The Congressional Budget Office has not even released its projections for the impact that the House-passed version of the AHCA would have — it is slated to do so on Wednesday. So the projections for deficit reduction could change based on how the health care debate unfolds, and whether or not Obamacare actually gets repealed.

Mulvaney also said a deficit-neutral tax reform was factored in. But even as Trump Administration officials and Republican leaders in Congress have identified tax reform as a key legislative priority, little progress has been made amid chaos in Washington over Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey and its aftermath.

Medicaid could be in for some big cuts

Under the White House budget, states would assume control for the provision of Medicaid through block grants they could distribute as they see fit. This is aligned with the current version of the American Healthcare Act, which the CBO estimates will ultimately cut Medicaid by $880 billion.

The budget also prohibits any funding for groups that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood. Mulvaney said the budget defunds Planned Parenthood on the assumption that the American Healthcare Act — which has a provision to defund the organization — will become law.

But the proposal does not include any cuts to core Social Security benefits and Medicare.

Restrictions on welfare programs like food stamps could get tighter

The budget will recommend tightening restrictions on eligibility for assistance programs — like food stamps — in an effort to increase the number of people in the workforce and grow the economy. The SNAP program better known as food stamps is up for a $193 billion cut.

"We need people to go to work," Mulvaney said. "If you're on food stamps and you're able bodied we need you to go to work. If you're on disability insurance and you're not supposed to be — you're not truly disabled — we need you to go to work. We need everybody pulling in the same direction.

The budget has more money for border security

The White House budget would allocate $44.1 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, $2.6 billion of which would go toward border infrastructure and technology, including the border wall Trump repeatedly promised to build during the campaign.

This will likely be one of the more contentious parts of the budget hashed out in Congress. Legislation signed authorizing spending through the rest of the 2017 fiscal year excluded funding for a border wall after the measure encountered opposition on both sides of the aisle.

And more money for the military

Trump is requesting $54 billion for defense spending in his 2018 budget, $52 billion of which would go toward the Department of Defense. The spending would go toward growing military ranks by 56,400 service members, and investing in fighter planes and ships.</s>FILE PHOTO: White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney speaks about of U.S. President Donald Trump's budget in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney asserted on Tuesday that President Donald Trump had produced the first federal budget that provides “compassion” for taxpayers.

During a briefing at the White House, Mulvaney defended Trump’s drastic cuts to entitlement programs to pay for increased military spending, a border wall and sizable tax reductions that would benefit the wealthy.

According to Mulvaney, the proposal looks “at the budget through the eyes of the taxpayer” instead of those who receive benefits from federal programs.

“If I can look you in the eye and say I’m going to take this money from you so I can help this injured vet, I can do that in good conscience,” he said. “I am a lot less comfortable to the point of not wanting to look you in the eye and say, ‘Look, I need to take this money from you to give to this person over here who really isn’t disabled but is getting a disabled benefit or this person over here who is supposed to use the money to go to school but isn’t actually going.”

Mulvaney said that the government would “no longer measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off of those programs.”

“That is the part of the budget that deals with American greatness,” he insisted.

Mulvaney went on to say “you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for folks who are paying it.”

The budget offered by the Trump administration aims to cut Medicaid by $800 billion, nutritional assistance by $192 billion, and $272 billion from welfare programs overall. Critics have pointed out that the plan is unworkable because it’s paid for by a “$2 trillion is a double-counting error”</s>Updated at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday with Mulvaney comments.



Updated at 7:30 p.m. Monday with White House budget office comment and more detail regarding the $4.1 billion target set two months ago by the budget director. 



WASHINGTON — The White House has drastically scaled back demands for funds to construct a border wall, seeking $1.6 billion in the budget submitted to Congress on Tuesday — $2.5 billion less than announced just two months ago.



And there is still no plan to force Mexico to pay for the project as the president vowed throughout the campaign.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that "we are absolutely dead serious about the wall" and insisted that the administration hasn't scaled back funding targets.

But in mid-March he explicitly called for $4.1 billion toward wall construction by the end of 2018. He and aides reject that there is any discrepancy, however.

The Trump budget blueprint rolled out in mid-March called for $2.6 billion toward wall construction by the end of 2018.

The stopgap budget that runs through Sept. 30 includes $1.5 billion for border security -- including $341 million for upgrades to about 40 miles of existing fence. But none of that is allowed to go for construction of new barriers along the Southwest border. In cutting the deal with Congress, President Donald Trump dropped a demand to such funds.
The White House releases a proposed budget that includes an increase in spending for the military but a decrease in healthcare and welfare.