Eric Ueland, Republican Staff Director for the Senate Budget Committee, hands out copies of President Donald Trump's fiscal 2018 Budget in the Dirksen Building on May 23, 2017. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

The ambitious fiscal blueprint now heads to a bitterly divided Congress, which has the authority to adopt or reject the White House spending plans. Trump’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, will visit the Capitol this week to try to sell the $4.1 trillion outline to top budget writers in the House and Senate.

Those hearings will officially kick off the fiscal 2018 budget and appropriations cycle in Congress, a process that has been on hold for months as lawmakers waited for Trump’s full budget proposal and as they finished up last year’s spending work.

At a White House news briefing Tuesday, Mulvaney framed the proposal as a “taxpayer first” budget that would trim needless federal spending and reinvigorate the economy with massive tax cuts and deregulation.

“We looked at this budget through the eyes of the people who were actually paying the bills,” he said.

But large portions of the White House budget are unlikely to gain traction in Congress. Democrats on Tuesday slammed Trump’s plans to bulldoze domestic discretionary spending and cut social safety net programs like food stamps and health care for kids.

Republicans largely praised Trump’s efforts to balance the budget and bolster economic growth, but many GOP members have been quick to point out that the power of the purse ultimately lies with them, not the administration.

“I hope that people don’t panic over the president’s — any president’s — budget,” Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., said last week. “They’re just suggestions.”

Enzi echoed those remarks in a statement Tuesday, while praising Trump for writing a budget that would trim government spending and balance within 10 years.

House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., didn’t comment on Trump’s budget proposal in a statement Tuesday, instead laying out how Congress will analyze the request and “put forward our own plan to fund the federal government.”

Mulvaney acknowledged the tradition of Congress ignoring presidents’ budgets, but he said the document still sends a message about what Trump wants to do with the budget and the economy in the big picture.

“If Congress has a different way to get to that end point, God bless ‘em,” he told reporters at a budget briefing on Monday.</s>When the White House officially unveiled its 2018 budget Tuesday, President Donald Trump's budget director took pains to insist that the blueprint represents campaign promises kept.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said that the president is making good on his vow to save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, among other things, and said that they are not kicking anyone off who needs the programs.

Yet deep cuts to many aspects of the American safety net indicate otherwise.

Here's where the president's proposal breaks his promises — and at times his own self-proposed contract — to voters.

Trump's budget would cut Medicaid by a lot, despite the president telling the Daily Signal days before launching his White House bid, "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid."

The administration proposes reducing spending on Medicaid programs by more than $600 billion over the next decade, a massive cut that appears to go on top of $839 billion in Medicaid cuts included in the House health care bill Trump is supporting.

Mulvaney insists that the proposed reduction in spending isn't a cut — it's simply growing less than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects the needs of the program to be.

"There are no Medicaid cuts in terms of what normal human beings would call cuts, we are not spending less money than we did the year before," Mulvaney said.

Trump's budget proposes slashing the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), a $31.4 billion change to the program that pays monthly benefits to over 10 million disabled individuals under the retirement age.

Mulvaney argued that SSDI isn't "what most people would consider to be Social Security" and said he would "hope" less people receive the program once they remove individuals who "should not" be getting it. It's unclear how the administration determined there is that much fraud in the system.

The president promised to fully fund a border wall, with plans to make Mexico pay for it later, in his "Contract With the American Voter." The president's budget would allocate $2.6 billion for planning, designing, and constructing the border wall and its surrounding securities, but Republican leaders estimate the wall could cost as much as $15 billion.

"While we did not get as much money as we wanted for 2017 omnibus we did get a lot," Mulvaney said. "We are going to continue to press on."

Broken Promise #4: Trump promised to cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities

This is another contract promise. Trump's administration has tried to restrict funding to so-called "sanctuary" cities — jurisdiction that don't enforce federal immigration priorities and cooperate fully with federal authorities — but their efforts were halted by the courts.

This budget doesn't include any kind of limit on federal funding, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions narrowed the scope of Trump's executive order on the issue in a memo Monday.

Broken Promise #5: Trump said he would increase funding for treatment of PTSD

Trump's budget would increase funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the budget proposal doesn't appear to focus money on PTSD or mental health issues.

It would, however, slash $3.2 billion from the "individual unemployability" benefit, which the budget says will be "modernized." The program allows the VA to more fully compensate disabled veterans, including those with PTSD, whose disability renders them unemployable.

Trump promised resources for training in his voter contract, as well. This budget aims to increase funding for more border agents and immigration judges, increased immigrant detentions, and fighting the opioid crisis, but it does not earmark additional funds for training police.

Broken Promise #7: Trump promised to bring down the debt "fairly quickly"

Barring the kind of hyperbolic growth Trump has promised and economists have disputed, Trump's budget would do little to combat the national debt. Rather, it would potentially increase it.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.</s>President Donald Trump's first budget is truly remarkable in its unseriousness. To see why, try for a moment to take it seriously.

The plan purports to be fiscally responsible, saying that the national debt will fall from 77 per cent now to 60 per cent in 2027. A worthy goal, to be sure.

At the same time, it calls for tax cuts but no changes in spending on the two main entitlement programs, Medicare and (non-disability) Social Security.

To square these ambitious pledges, the budget then needs either a close-to-impossible acceleration in economic growth, or an implausibly severe squeeze on most other kinds of spending.

With characteristically Trumpian disdain for reality, the budget proposes both.

The Trump administration has until now said its planned tax cuts would pay for themselves by pushing economic growth to 3 per cent a year -- a claim already seen as outlandish by every serious analyst, liberal and conservative alike.

The budget appears to go one better: It says this boost in growth will be sufficient not just to maintain revenue (despite the cut in rates) but will actually raise revenue by $US2 trillion ($2.7 trillion) over 10 years compared with current policy. Perhaps somebody just made a dumb mistake, counting the revenue from faster growth twice over. With this administration, it's wise not to rule it out.

There's more. The administration's magical tax reform is "in its very early stages," as Budget Director Mick Mulvaney generously put it on Monday. Yet to have even the faintest hope of being revenue-neutral, let alone revenue-enhancing, the reform would have to revive the idea of "border adjustment" -- in effect, a tax on imports.

The idea has aroused strong opposition from US businesses, the White House has blown hot and cold, and few in Congress think it will be implemented.

Turning to the spending side of the budget, things get no better. The plan includes cuts in America's Medicaid health coverage system and other welfare programs so severe that many conservative Republicans are wincing.

In all it looks for policy savings of more than $US3 trillion over 10 years, without troubling to say how they'll be achieved. Of this total, $US1.4 trillion is projected to come from the administration's "two-penny plan," which isn't a plan at all, just a declaration that eligible discretionary spending will henceforth be cut by 2 per cent a year.

Trump's budget has been almost universally called dead on arrival. That may be an understatement. This plan, if you can call it that, was never capable of life.

White House budgets are often set aside, yet still can guide deliberations in Congress, where tax and spending decisions actually get made.

This budget serves no such purpose. It is simply an extended tweet, and a waste of everybody's time.</s>(CNN) President Donald Trump is in the middle of his 9-day foreign trip. But the big news here in Washington on Tuesday was the release of his budget blueprint -- the administration's wish list heading into the next fiscal year. It landed with a thud -- as Republicans largely avoided even talking about it and Democrats threw it in the trash. Literally . For some perspective on what's in the budget, what's not and whether it all matters, I reached out to the man who knows more about the budget than anyone: Quorvis' Stan Collender. (Doubt me? Stan's Twitter handle is @thebudgetguy . I rest my case.) Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: How seriously should we take Trump's budget? As in, is anything close to this likely to be the outline of how the government is funded?

Collender : This is not serious at all; it's just a Trump campaign document pretending to be a president's budget. Submitting a budget that is likely ... or even possibly ... going to be adopted and implemented by Congress apparently wasn't the administration's primary goal. Communicating to the ultra-hard right wing of the Republican Party -- the Trump base -- seems to be its only real purpose.

Every president's budget to some extent is part political statement. But the just-released Trump budget takes this to a new and previously unprecedented level with ideology completely overwhelming governing.

The best way to think of it is as a Trump campaign rally on paper.

Cillizza: The early readout is that the budget is a win for the wealthy and a loss for the poor. Oversimplification? Why or why not?

Collender: Not an oversimplification at all. Big tax cuts for the wealthy combined with deep spending cuts for the poor and the middle class are the perfect way to describe this budget.

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney used different terms, of course, when talking about his opus, but there is no doubt what he was saying. If he and President Trump get their way, taxpayers (i.e. the wealthy and relatively wealthy) are no longer going to pay for things for non-taxpayers (i.e. the poor and working poor).

By the end of this week, Mulvaney will be the only Republican talking about this budget favorably. Other than the members of the House Freedom Caucus, House and Senate GOP'ers will either be criticizing or ignoring what Trump proposed.

I'm not sure everything Trump proposed will be acceptable to the Freedom Caucus either.

Cillizza: Name the best things for Republicans to sell to the public? Are there things in the budget that Democrats will -- or should -- like?

Collender: Republicans will cling to the proposed increase in the Pentagon budget like a scared child walking with him mother or father in a crowded shopping mall. They'll also applaud the budget showing a surplus at the end of 10 years even if that estimate is based on political and economic science fiction.

Democrats will like that they now have a handful of new issues with which to attack Trump and congressional Republicans in 2018.

Collender: "Twilight Zone" (Yes, I know that's really two words). The Trump 2018 budget is based on such unreal scenarios of how the US economy will perform and what Congress will accept that the White House must be in an alternative universe where up is down, black is white and 2+2=7.</s>(CNN) President Donald Trump's team released its first full budget proposal on Tuesday, and while lawmakers are likely to dismiss most of it -- as they traditionally do with most White House wishlists -- the document provides fresh insight into the administration's priorities.

While the overall proposed spending is about on par with last year, at $4.1 trillion for 2018, the budget is notable for the knife it takes to domestic programs focused on science and research, the arts and, most notably, social welfare programs.

On the flip side, defense spending would be upped by about 10% and more than half of the increase in border security funds would be directed toward the construction of a "new and replacement" border wall.

Here is a rundown of the most eye-popping numbers to come out of Trump's first budget:</s>May 23, 2017, Fairfax, Va.-Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump and the White House Office of Management and Budget for offering a budget that relies primarily on spending cuts to achieve balance: "President Trump's budget is based on a sober assessment of economic growth and achieves balance not through Washingtonian gimmickry but through $4.5 trillion of real cuts to baseline spending over 10 years. This breaks the cycle of perpetual spending increases being baked into the system, and repeals and replaces Obamacare.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Get Liberty.</s>Donald Trump, whose populist message and promises to help American workers propelled him to the White House, is set to issue a budget proposal on Tuesday that instead takes aim at the social safety net on which many of his supporters rely.

Rather than breaking with Washington precedent, Trump’s spending blueprint follows established conservative orthodoxy, cutting taxes on the wealthy, boosting defense spending and taking a hatchet to programs for the poor and disabled – potentially hurting many of the rural and low-income Americans that voted him into office.

The budget proposal underscores the wide gulf between campaigning and governing, even for a president who promised to rewrite the presidential rule book.

The president’s budget plan calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts to a wide range of social programs with millions of beneficiaries, from farm subsidies to federal student aid. That includes a $600 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, despite Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail not to cut the program. The budget also takes an ax to the federal food stamp program and Social Security Disability Insurance.

Trump also proposes some of the deepest cuts to agriculture subsidies since Ronald Reagan, squeezing out nearly $50 billion over 10 years.

Trump’s budget would drastically cut domestic programs controlled by Congress, slashing $1.7 trillion over 10 years. At the end of the decade, the U.S. would spend nearly twice as much on defense as on other domestic programs. Domestic discretionary spending would be capped at $429 billion per year, below 2004 levels, while military spending soars to $722 billion.

The annual budget proposal – which has no chance of becoming law as proposed even though Republicans control Congress because GOP lawmakers write their own budget – serves as a starting point for negotiations and as a messaging document for the president and his party.

“There’s a certain philosophy wrapped up in the budget and that is — we are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, one of the budget’s chief architects, told reporters on Monday. “We’re not going to measure our success by how much money we spend, but by how many people we actually help.”

Mulvaney rejected accusations that Trump’s budget unfairly targets the poor, arguing instead that it amounts to a broad rethink of the country’s welfare system.

“We need folks to work. We need people to go to work. 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, we need you to work,” he added. “There’s a dignity to work, and there’s a necessity to work.”

Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman and founding member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, has long sought dramatic cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

Mulvaney said the budget does not touch “mainline” or “core” Social Security, but it does cut Social Security’s disability insurance. The White House is also leaning on anti-fraud programs to save billions of dollars in Medicare.

The White House plans to heavily promote its commitment to Social Security and Medicare, though its attempt to eliminate the federal deficit while largely preserving those entitlement programs — which together make up the bulk of federal spending — will leave behind a path of destruction for other safety net programs.

Trump’s budget would tighten the belt on programs for low-income families ranging from cash assistance to the child tax credit. Nearly $200 billion in cuts will come directly from the federal food stamp program, which helps feed 44 million people each year.

Trump would also slash $72 billion by tightening the rules for programs for people with disabilities — programs that Trump’s advisers have described as riddled with fraud and abuse. A federal watchdog, however, found last year that 17 anti-fraud programs already exist.

In an administration document outlining budget talking points, the White House pitched its proposal as a way to replace “dependency with dignity of work.” The internal guidance, which POLITICO obtained early Monday, highlights an estimated $193 billion in savings by further limiting who can receive food stamps. The administration estimates $40 billion in savings over 10 years by preventing illegal immigrants from claiming the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, which provides a break to households making up to about $53,000 per year, depending on family size and filing status.

“If I had sort of a subtitle for this budget, it would be the ‘Taxpayer First’ budget,” Mulvaney said Monday. “This is, I think, the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes. So often in Washington I think we look only on the recipient side — how does the budget affect those who either receive or don’t receive benefits?”

Democrats, who have opposed cuts announced in drafts released earlier this year, reiterated their objections ahead of the budget’s release.

“Candidate Trump campaigned as a populist, said he wanted to help the working people, but since he has taken office he has governed like a hard-right conservative — pushing policies that help the uber wealthy at the expense of the middle class,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Sunday night.

“It’s a complete about-face,” said Seth Hanlon, a former economic adviser to Barack Obama. “It’s a betrayal of a lot of people who put their faith in him.”

But even some Republicans — both inside and outside Congress — say they’re worried about the sheer magnitude of the proposed cuts.

“I’m deeply concerned about the severity of the domestic cuts,” Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), a long-time member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO on Friday.

Rogers has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s proposed cuts to programs that benefit rural regions like his home state, like the Appalachian Regional Commission.

“I think we do need healthcare reform. I think we do need welfare reform. But the kinds of reductions that he’s talking about go exactly against the states that brought [Trump] to the dance, so to speak,” said G. William Hoagland, a former long-time Republican Senate budget aide.

He added, “The argument can be made that there are certainly programs that are not achieving their goals. That doesn’t mean we should take the money away and forget about it.”

The White House says it expected a “mixed” reaction from Hill Republicans, according to a senior administration official. The defense hikes and tax cuts are sure to be popular, but many of the cuts could make more moderate Republicans skittish. “It’s more than a messaging document and it begins the negotiations,” the official said.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are expected to deliver their rebuttal to the White House’s budget proposal in mid-June, about two months behind schedule.

While the congressional document is also in many ways a wish list, it serves to set the spending levels that lawmakers must abide by the ensuing year. The delay of that document means appropriators will face a time crunch ahead of the September deadline to fund the government or avert a shutdown.

The Trump administration is relying on more than aggressive cuts to mandatory programs to achieve its goal of eliminating the deficit within 10 years – a gold standard of budget writing.

The White House is also making a rosy assumption of 3 percent economic growth – nearly double the 1.9 percent rate estimated by Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper – to help offset its ambitious spending plans. That includes $200 billion for new infrastructure projects as well as $19 billion for paid family leave.

The budget blueprint also assumes that Trump’s tax reform plan, which is still in the early stages of being written, will go into effect. Officials said that plan is expected to deliver a boost to the economy without adding to its bottom line, but produced no details beyond a one-page document released in April.

Trump’s proposed budgets for federal departments and agencies next year are mostly unchanged from the so-called skinny budget the administration released earlier this year, despite the public outcry from some disgruntled Cabinet members

A half-dozen agencies got slight boosts in their budgets, however, including those in the departments of Agriculture, Interior and Labor. The State Department, which faced some of the harshest cuts in Trump’s first budget draft, is slated for a $2.6 billion bump compared with the March numbers.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday sent Congress a $4.1 trillion federal spending plan that promises faster economic growth and steep cuts to programs for the poor in a bid to balance the government’s books over the next decade.

The proposed 2018 budget immediately came under attack by Democrats, and even some GOP allies deemed it a non-starter. The proposal is laced with $3.6 trillion in cuts to domestic agencies, food stamps, Medicaid, highway funding, crop insurance and medical research, among others.

At the same time, the blueprint boosts spending on the military by tens of billions and calls for $1.6 billion for a border wall with Mexico that Trump repeatedly promised voters the U.S. neighbor would finance. Mexico emphatically rejects that notion.

Budget experts, Democrats and Republicans challenged the economic assumptions of the White House and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.

During the campaign, Trump attacked the weak economic growth of the Barack Obama years, and pledged that his economic program would boost growth from the lackluster 2 percent rates seen since the recovery began in mid-2009. Trump’s new budget is based on sustained growth above 3 percent, sharply higher than the expectations of most private economists. Without more than $2 trillion in such “economic feedback” over the coming decade, the budget would never reach balance and would run a deficit of almost $500 billion.

“Three percent, I’m not seeing how you get there mathematically,” said Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. “I think realism in the way we forecast numbers is part and parcel to a constructive budget process.”

The proposal projects that this year’s federal deficit will rise to $603 billion, up from the actual deficit of $585 billion last year. But the document says if Trump’s initiatives are adopted the deficit will start declining and actually reach a small surplus of $16 billion in 2027. However, that goal depends not only on the growth projections that most economists view as overly optimistic but also a variety of accounting gimmicks, including an almost $600 billion peace dividend from winding down overseas military operations.

The government hasn’t run a surplus since 2001, and deficits spiked during former President Barack Obama’s first term in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

“Through streamlined government, we will drive an economic boom that raises incomes and expands job opportunities for all Americans,” Trump said in his budget message. His budget is titled, “The New Foundation for American Greatness.”

“In the America of President Trump’s budget, children, working families, seniors and people with disabilities will be ‘fined,’ while the wealthiest Americans will get a ‘bonus.’ What’s so ‘great’ about that America?” asked Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Food stamp cuts would drive millions from the program, while a wave of Medicaid cuts could deny nursing home care to millions of elderly poor people.

“Isn’t it reasonable to at least ask the question, ‘Are there people on that program who shouldn’t be on there?'” Mulvaney asked.

The budget does feature a handful of domestic initiatives, including a six-week paid parental leave program championed by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. Some $200 billion in federal infrastructure investments are promised to leverage another $800 billion in private investment.

Trump would keep campaign pledges to leave core Medicare and Social Security benefits for the elderly alone, but that would translate into even deeper cuts in programs for the poor such as Medicaid and food stamps.

Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and many disabled Americans, would be cut by more than $600 billion over 10 years by capping payments to states and giving governors more flexibility to manage their rosters of Medicaid recipients. Those cuts go on top of the repeal of Obamacare’s expansion of the program to 14 million people and amount to, by decade’s end, an almost 25 percent cut from present projections.

Likewise, a 10-year, $191 billion reduction in food stamps — almost 30 percent — far exceeds prior proposals by Capitol Hill Republicans. The food stamp program serves about 42 million people.

“These cuts that are being proposed are draconian,” said veteran GOP Rep. Harold Rogers, who represents a poor district in eastern Kentucky. “They’re not mere shavings, they’re deep, deep cuts.”

Other cuts in Trump’s budget include reductions in pension benefits for federal workers, in part by requiring employees to make higher contributions. In agriculture, the proposed budget would limit subsidies to farmers, including for purchasing crop insurance, a move already attacked by farm state lawmakers.

On taxes, Trump promises an overhaul that would cut tax rates but rely on economic growth and erasing tax breaks to avoid adding to the deficit. There would be three tax brackets — 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent — instead of the current seven, and there’s a promise to lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent.

But the budget has virtually no detail to prove it would deliver on Trump’s promise for “massive” tax cuts.</s>President Donald Trump on Tuesday will propose cutting federal spending by $3.6 trillion over 10 years, a historic budget contraction that would severely ratchet back spending across dozens of programs and could completely reshape government assistance to the poor.

The White House's $4.094 trillion budget request for fiscal 2018 calls for cuts that hit Medicaid, food assistance and other anti-poverty programs. It would cut funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides benefits to the poor, by roughly 20 percent next year.

All told, the budget would reduce spending on safety-net programs by more than $1 trillion over 10 years.

Details of the budget circulating in Washington on Monday drew outrage from Democrats and a mix of anxiety and praise from Republicans, illustrating the political minefield that policymakers face as they debate whether to turn the proposals into law.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the spending plan, titled "A New Foundation for American Greatness," is focused on protecting taxpayer money and cutting spending on programs that are ineffective or encourage people not to work.

He singled out the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the modern version of food stamps, which grew rapidly after the financial crisis and had 44 million beneficiaries in 2016.

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

Democrats and anti-poverty advocates decried the changes, saying that Trump is seeking to strip support for the most vulnerable Americans while cutting taxes for the wealthiest.

"This would pull the rug out from so many Americans who need help: those suffering from opioid and heroin addiction, people in nursing homes and their families who care for them, the elderly, the disabled and children," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

The proposed budget refocuses decades of U.S. spending - both foreign and domestic - to reflect Trump's belief that too much taxpayer money is simply given away.

For example, the president will propose changing foreign aid programs in a way that no longer delivers much of the money as grants and instead extends loans to foreign governments that must be repaid, Mulvaney said. Special exemptions would be made for Israel and Egypt.

The budget would also impose a 2 percent cut to all spending that must be approved by Congress each year for the next decade, excluding military programs. Spending for these programs tends to increase each year under Democrats and Republicans. Separately, the budget would eliminate all federal support for Planned Parenthood, the health-care provider that conservatives often attack.

In writing the budget, White House officials were forced to walk a tightrope.

Trump insisted that they could not cut retirement benefits for Social Security or health benefits for Medicare, two of the most expensive parts of the federal budget. White House officials also were committed to protecting military spending.

To preserve those items and eliminate the budget deficit over 10 years, officials had to deliver major cuts across the rest of the budget. The budget also relies heavily on assumptions that economic growth will soar under tax cuts and regulatory reductions that Trump has promised to deliver.

"You have to understand that for Trump, growth is populism, so he doesn't see this as a budget of cuts but a budget for growth," said Sam Nunberg, a longtime Trump associate who worked on his campaign in 2015. "What he's trying to do is work with Congress, where a lot of these ideas started, and put something together."

The budget, in its deeply conservative framework, risks alarming some of the president's supporters.

"I'm not sure the White House understands who their base is," Patrick H. Caddell, a veteran strategist who works with Breitbart News, said. He cited Democrats and working-class independents as key parts of Trump's political coalition. "Where's the outreach to them?" he asked.

But a White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Trump saw the shrinking of the "welfare state" as a necessary component of his nationalist, working-class appeal and part of his pledge to "drain the swamp."

Meanwhile, Trump's critics in the GOP shrugged at the president's overture to the budget-cutting wing of the party.

"I don't take it as a sign he's more ideological," said Peter Wehner, a veteran Republican policy hand. "He's like a needle spinning around a broken compass, and we're not sure where he'll land. This week he's more ideological, next week he could be less ideological."

One of the biggest surprises in the budget is that defense spending remains relatively flat, after months of promises from Trump that he would completely rebuild the military.

The plan proposes a $43 billion increase in defense spending next year, but in subsequent years the budget is almost identical to what it would be without any changes. A White House official said that is because the military is still planning spending priorities for those years and that the budget would eventually change.

For anti-poverty programs, the White House proposes shifting some of the financial costs to states, giving them a financial stake in deciding whether to permit people to receive benefits.

On Medicaid, Trump wants states to choose between agreeing to a cap based on how many people are enrolled or a "block grant" structure that delivers funds to states and gives them more flexibility in how it is spent.

A number of key Republicans have expressed concern about the approach.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, R, a key Trump supporter during the campaign, said his state is a "state that has a lot of people who utilize Medicaid." Medicaid cuts of the scale Trump was proposing had him "concerned," Christie said.

For SNAP, the White House is proposing changes that would force states to pay a portion of the benefits, which could put more pressure on them to prevent people from enrolling.

On CHIP, the White House would propose eliminating a 23 percentage point increase in federal contributions and would cap other assistance to the program, something the White House argues would make sure it helps only the neediest children.

"We are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs," Mulvaney said. "We are going to measure compassion and success by the number of people we help get off of those programs and get back in charge of their own lives."</s>President Donald Trump's first budget proposal included a 2.1 percent pay increase for military troops in fiscal 2018 -- the same as was recently approved by Congress for the current year.

The pay request topped the proposal by the administration of President Barack Obama for a military pay hike of 1.6 percent for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Even so, Trump's overall spending plan appeared to fall far short of his campaign pledge to fund a "historic" rebuilding of the military.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said the Defense Department baseline budget proposal of $603 billion for fiscal 2018 unveiled on Tuesday by the White House Office of Management and Budget didn't offer significantly more than Obama had initially proposed for the same period and would face a major overhaul in the House and Senate.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex) told reporters that presidential budget proposals were often "dead on arrival" in Congress and "I think (Trump's) may find a similar fate."

The 2.1 pay raise proposal would translate into about $50 more per month for enlisted troops with four years of service and about $115 a month for officers with six years," according to Stars & Stripes.

-- Editor's note: This story will be updated.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
President Donald Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2018, titled "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again," has a $2 trillion accounting error over 10 years because it uses the same money twice for two different purposes.