President Donald Trump has proposed to Congress a $1.1 trillion budget for fiscal year 2018 and requested $30 billion in supplemental military funds for FY 2017, Defense News reported Thursday.
Joe Gould writes the White House’s FY 2018 budget plan would provide the Defense Department with $639 billion, which includes $574 billion for DoD’s base requirements and $65 billion for overseas contingency operations.
The request also proposed a 28 percent cut to the budget of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The FY 2017 supplemental funding request for the military seeks to authorize $5 billion in OCO budget and $24.9 billion in funds for DoD’s base budget initiatives that include F-35s, F/A-18 Super Hornets, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, Army helicopters, DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and tactical missiles.
The departments of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security will respectively see a funding increase of 6 percent and 7 percent under Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposal, according to a report by Kim Soffen and Denise Lu for The Washington Post.
VA would receive $78.9 billion in funds to update the agency’s benefits claims system and expand medical services, while DHS would get $44.1 billion in budget for border protection and immigration enforcement programs that include the construction of a border wall and recruitment of 500 new border patrol employees.
The administration’s budget request only covers discretionary spending for FY 2018 and includes funding cuts to several agencies in addition to the State Department.
Those agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture Department and the Labor Department, the report added.
