US: Trump to slash one third of State Dept. budget

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The State Department will lose nearly a third of its financing under President Donald Trump's "budget blueprint", his budget director said.

Mick Mulvaney's comments were made Wednesday, but journalists were not allowed to make them public until midnight on Thursday Washington time under White House rules.

"You have an America first candidate. You have an America first budget,” he told reporters, referring to his boss' campaign.

The State Department, like all departments who are going to be facing funding reductions under the budget outline, will have to decide how best to implement the cuts.

But the biggest blows will affect the department's foreign aid programs, said Mulvaney, stressing that the administration believes "we have protected the core diplomatic functions" of the State Department.

Mulvaney insisted that the "fairly dramatic reduction" of 28 percent to the department's funding "is not a commentary on the president’s policies towards the State Department.

"The foreign aid line items, many of them, just happen to fall within the State Department functions,” he said.

The cuts to the State Department and other affected agencies will be used to fund a $54 billion increase in defense spending, and separate lesser bumps to border security, law enforcement and bolstering what the administration calls school choice.

"Since the president wanted to do that without adding to the already projected $480 billion deficit in fiscal year 2018 there were reductions elsewhere to off-set dollar for dollar all of those increases,” Mulvaney said.

Still, the budget outline will not be balanced; it will simply avoid adding any to the deficit while rebalancing to military, or "hard power".

“There’s no question this is a hard power budget. It is not a soft power budget," said Mulvaney. "And that was done intentionally. The president very clearly wants to send a message to our allies and our potential adversaries that this is a strong power administration. So you’ve seen money move from soft power programs, such as foreign aid, into more hard power programs. That’s what our allies can expect."

A separate supplemental request for fiscal year 2017 will request $1.5 billion for Trump's long-promised wall along the U.S.' southern border with Mexico, according to Mulvaney. Another request to fund the wall will be made in the 2018 version of the budget, he said.

The full budget outline will be made public on Thursday morning at 7 a.m. Washington time (1100 GMT).