Amber Athey and Saagar Enjeti of the Daily Caller report on the Trump administration’s budget strategy.
The White House will submit a fiscal year 2020 budget to Congress in coming weeks which seeks to force the Democratic party’s hand on accepting spending cuts.
Acting Office and Management Budget Director Russ Vought wrote in a Monday morning op-ed that the Trump administration’s forthcoming budget will adhere to existing spending caps already put into place by Congress. In order to continue making investments in defense spending, The White House will tap into Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds, which are special war funds not subject to spending caps.
The White House’s plan may rankle some conservatives, particularly given that Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Vought have been vocally against such funding tactics. …
… Paul Winfree, the director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation and a former Trump White House official, agreed with the administration’s decision to try a new approach to cutting spending.
“Congress has proven that is unserious about getting spending under control. In the past, Democrats and Republicans agreed to increase spending today while paying for it tomorrow,” Winfree told the Caller. “The White House generally sees this as unacceptable and they’re trying something different. And they’re right. The status quo is unacceptable.”
The budget will significantly target government spending across the board with Vought noting in his op-ed that “the president’s 2020 budget will meet the target of a five percent reduction to non-defense discretionary spending, by means of one of the largest spending reductions in history.”
