May 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump revealed the White House budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 Friday, which requests cuts to foreign aid, education and health care but boosts to the military and border control.
Trump sent a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, presenting his budget, which would cut spending levels by $163 billion and shrink base nondefense discretionary budget authority by 22.6%.
Agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development and National Institutes of Health stand to lose billions of dollars each compared to fiscal 2025 levels. The budget also proposes a nearly $25 billion reduction for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with State Rental Assistance Block Grants on the chopping block.
The Department of Homeland Security, on the other hand, would get “a historic $175 billion investment to,” as Vought wrote, “at long last, fully secure our border.”
The Trump administration also seeks to increase defense spending by 13%, bringing that expenditure up to $1.01 trillion.
Vought wrote that the “recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of [Fiscal Year] 2025 spending,” which he claimed “was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans” and instead aimed at “funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”
Vought also wrote that they considered whether a governmental service provided could “be provided better by state or local governments, if provided at all.”
A total of $325 billion of the proposed increases would be assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed upon by Congress would be achieved through reconciliation, an accelerated process used to consider bills that would put policies represented in a Congressional budget resolution into motion.
Presidential budget requests are not guaranteed to be fulfilled, as congressional appropriators construct the ultimate appropriations bills that become law.
The increases and cuts are a definitive way to view the priorities of an administration, and with both houses under Republican control it would appear that the Trump administration is prepared to exploit that advantage, as Vought posted to X Friday that this budget ensures that “only Republican votes are needed by using reconciliation to secure those increases,” without the impositions of Democrats.