Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

Trump’s Son-in-Law to Head new WH Office

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Really, at issue for smoother government operations is upgrading computer software across all agencies. Some parts of government is operating on Microsoft products no longer supported while others in fact still use DOS. It was never a lack of appropriations by Congress but rather using those funds for other expenditures and in some cases paying bonuses or for travel to classes, seminars or training.

Rather than have the White House launch this initiative, an outside advisory group should be mobilized to introduce and demonstrate innovation as the private sector is the cutting edge. Each agency lead or cabinet secretary should submit a ‘wants and needs’ wish list such that outside agencies can address those potential solutions, otherwise we end up with the fraud and collusion endured with the launch of the front-end, back-end and website for Obamacare. Anyone remember that disaster?

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Anyway, the Obama administration did an innovation summit and solutions showcase at the White House. Has the Trump administration been through those files? Google visited the Obama White House at least once a week. This may be a good mission for government in the end, as Google is in fact offering some assistance to some issues the Trump White House is considering.

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Trump Pledges New Office to Bring Business Innovation to Government Operations

The Trump administration is launching a new office to spur innovation in government operations, the White House announced Monday, promising to give business acumen a more prominent role in federal activities.

President Trump tapped Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, to lead the new White House Office of American Innovation. The administration is billing the initiative — first reported by The Washington Post — as a SWAT team of former business executives. The goal, the White House said, is to shake up the status quo of the federal bureaucracy by infusing new ideas that allow private enterprises to succeed.

The administration billed the office as non-partisan, looking for any new ideas from both inside and outside government. It will aim to make improvements at every federal agency, including through technology overhauls, projects stemming from Trump’s promised infrastructure investment and procurement reform. A particular area of focus will be improving the Veterans Affairs Department. The White House said the innovation office will function as a service organization offering its assistance to agencies.

Trump formally created the office through a presidential memorandum issued Monday, in which he vowed the office would “solve today’s most intractable problems.” It will consist of about a dozen existing White House staff and consult with the directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. After hearing from private sector leaders and government officials, the office will make policy recommendations to the president and “coordinate implementation of any resulting plans.”

When an agency is struggling with certain projects, the office and its team of White House advisers and business leaders will come in to offer creative and cost-efficient solutions. The team will look to ensure agencies keep pace with the latest innovations in the private sector.

The office will “apply the president’s ahead-of-schedule and under budget mentality to a variety of government operations and services, enhancing the quality of life for all Americans,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. He conceded that “government is not business,” as there are certain things that “business would never do” and government must pick up the slack. Business leaders, he explained, can “help us deliver a better product, a better service to the American people.”

The business leaders participating in the project are “looking to give back in some way, shape or form,” Spicer said.

The new office is the latest in a series of moves from Trump aiming to streamline government operations. Earlier this month, he issued an order calling for a “comprehensive plan for reorganizing the executive branch,” which will require a “thorough examination” of every agency to identify “where money can be saved and services improved.” Another order has sent task forces to every agency to identify regulations for elimination or modification.

It also follows initiatives by several recent presidential administrations to modernize and streamline the way agencies do their work. On the technology side, a key focus of the new innovation office, President Obama launched the U.S. Digital Service in 2014 as a White House office to offer a “SWAT team” in troubleshooting high-priority information technology projects, as well as the General Services Administration’s 18F to provide consultant services to agencies looking to build up new technology-based offerings. Still, Spicer said some functions of government are so “outdated and unmodernized” that agencies are no longer serving their constituencies.

Through his Grace Commission, President Reagan tapped business executives to help identify waste and inefficiencies in government.

“What we need from you and your expertise and your associates is to literally come in to the various departments and agencies of government and look at them as if you were considering a merger or a takeover, and to see how modern business practices could be put to work to make government more efficient and more effective,” Reagan told his group in 1982. The commission eventually identified $424 billion in cuts. “There are a million things that you think of and take for granted every day in your business that you’ll find they don’t take it for granted in Washington, and it isn’t done that way, and that’s what it’s all about,” Reagan said.

President Clinton’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government promised to remake the federal government. Its National Performance Review proposed 1,200 changes to “serve customers better,” similar to Kushner’s promise to “achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

Sanctuary Cities Don’t Comply Face Loss of Federal Dollars/Clawback

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AG: Sanctuary Cities Face Ineligibility for Future Federal Funds, ‘Clawback’ of Funds Already Awarded

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that states and localities that refuse to comply with federal immigration laws will be deemed ineligible for federal grants.

“Today, I’m urging  states and local jurisdictions to comply with these federal laws, including 8 U.S.C. Section 1373. Moreover, the Department of Justice will require that jurisdictions seeking or applying for Department of Justice grants to certify compliance with 1373 as a condition of receiving those awards,” he said, adding that the policy “is entirely consistent with the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Program’s guidance that was issued just last summer under the previous administration.

“This guidance requires state and local jurisdictions to comply and certify compliance with Section 1373 in order to be eligible for OJP grants. It also made clear that failure to remedy violations could result in withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,” Sessions added.

“The Department of Justice will also take all lawful steps to clawback any funds awarded to a jurisdiction that willfully violates 1373. In the current fiscal year, the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Program and Community Oriented Policing services anticipates awarding more than $4.1 billion in grants,” he said.

The attorney general said that in one week alone, “there were more than 200 instances of jurisdictions refusing to honor ICE detainer requests with respect to individuals charged or convicted of a serious crime,” according to a report released recently by the Department of Homeland Security.

“The charges and convictions against these aliens included drug-trafficking, hit-and-run, rape, sex offenses against a child, and even murder. Such policies cannot continue. They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on the streets,” Sessions said.

He pointed to the murder of 32-year-old Kate Steinle who was killed two years ago in San Francisco as an example.

“The shooter, Francisco Sanchez, was an illegal immigrant who had already been deported five times and had seven felony convictions,” Sessions pointed out.

“Just 11 weeks before the shooting, San Francisco had released Sanchez from its custody, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had filed a detainer requesting that he be held in custody until immigration authorities could pick him up for removal. Even worse, Sanchez admitted the only reason he came to San Francisco was because it was a sanctuary city,” the attorney general said.

“A similar story unfolded just last week, when Ever Valles, an illegal immigrant and a Mexican national was charged with murder and robbery of a man at a light rail station. Valles was released from a Denver jail in late December, despite the fact that ICE has lodged a detainer for his removal,” he said.

“The American people are not happy with these results. They know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe. Failure to deport aliens who are convicted of criminal offenses puts whole communities at risk, especially immigrant communities in the very sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to protect the perpetrators,” Sessions said.

Sessions said recent polling shows that 80 percent of Americans “believe that cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crime should be required to turn them over to immigration authorities.”

“DUIs, assaults, burglaries, drug crimes, gang rapes, crimes against children, and murderers — countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended. Not only do these policies endanger lives of every American — just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these policies also violate federal law,” he said.

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Nine Bipartisan Homeland Security-Related Bills Passed by House

What the House Committee on Homeland security described as an “unprecedented number of bipartisan [bills] aimed at keeping Americans safe,” were passed this last week by the House which deal with a variety of aspects of homeland Security.

The nine pieces of legislation, the committee said, are designed “to … also save taxpayer dollars by improving the acquisition process at the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] and make important reforms to the operations of the Transportation Security Administration [TSA].”

“It is critical that we continue to re-examine our strategy, technology and the infrastructure we currently have in place to strengthen the Department of Homeland Security and stop terrorists from reaching our shores,” said committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX). “The evolving threats we face demand action to address vulnerabilities in our defenses. I commend the work of my Committee—particularly the bipartisan nature in which these bills were advanced—to make our country safer.”

The nine bills out the Homeland Security Committee passed by the House included a key counterterrorism bill, the Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act of 2017 (HR 1302), which expands on the work of last Congress.

The other key pieces of legislation passed this past week include the:

DHS Multiyear Acquisition Strategy Act of 2017 (HR 1249), introduced by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require a multiyear acquisition strategy of DHS.

DHS Acquisition Authorities Act of 2017 (HR 1252), introduced by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for certain acquisition authorities for the Under Secretary of Management of DHS.

Reducing DHS Acquisition Cost Growth Act (HR 1294), introduced by Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for congressional notification regarding major acquisition program breaches.

TSA Administrator Modernization Act of 2017 (HR 1309), introduced by Rep. John Katko (R-NY), streamlines the office and term of the administrator of TSA.

Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Technical Corrections Act of 2017 (HR 1297), introduced by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make technical corrections to the requirement that the Secretary of Homeland Security submit quadrennial homeland security reviews.

Transparency in Technological Acquisitions Act of 2017 (HR 1353), introduced by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require certain additional information to be submitted to Congress regarding the strategic 5-year technology investment plan of the TSA.

Read Homeland Security Today’s report on the bill here.

Securing our Agriculture and Food Act (HR 1238), introduced by Rep. David Young (R-IA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Health Affairs responsible for coordinating the efforts of DHS related to food, agriculture and veterinary defense against terrorism.

Read Homeland Security Today’s report on the legislation here.

Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act of 2017 (HR 1302), introduced by Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), requires an exercise related to terrorist and foreign fighter travel, and for other purposes.

Department of Homeland Security Acquisition Innovation Act (HR 1365), introduced by Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require certain acquisition innovation.

Visa Overstays are a Bigger Issue then the Border Wall

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Primer: If you overstay your visa for 180 days or more (but less than one year), when you depart the U.S. you will be barred from reentering the U.S. for three years. If you overstay your visa for one year or more, when you depart the U.S. you will be barred from reentering the U.S. for ten years.

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Related reading: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), reports on 30 countries that refuse to take back their criminals. He appeared on CSpan and Full Measure explaining the issue. The Washington Times reports under federal law, the U.S. government can refuse to issue visas to nationals of countries that refuse to take back their citizens who have been ordered deported from the United States. But according to Cuellar, the government is not enforcing the law.
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TruthRevolt reports in part: The Center for Migration Studies reports that “two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, but were admitted (after screening) on non-immigrant (temporary) visas, and then overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their visas.” This is a trend, far above illegal crossings, which is anticipated to continue climbing from now on.

“That’s because, incredibly, the U.S. doesn’t have an adequate system to assure the foreigners leave when they’re supposed to,” Judical Watch reports. “This has been a serious problem for years and in fact some of the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visa to plan the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. More than a decade and a half later little has changed. Securing the famously porous southern border is essential to national security but so is a reliable system that cracks down on visa overstays.”

According to the CMS study, there have been 600,000 more overstays than illegal border crossings since 2007. Mexico leads in both overstays and EWIs, or entries without inspection. Here are the breakdowns:

  • California has the largest number of overstays (890,000), followed by New York (520,000), Texas (475,000), and Florida (435,000).
  • Two states had 47 percent of the 6.4 million EWIs in 2014: California (1.7 million) and Texas (1.3 million).
  • The percentage of overstays varies widely by state: more than two-thirds of the undocumented who live in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are overstays. By contrast, the undocumented population in Kansas, Arkansas, and New Mexico consists of fewer than 25 percent overstays. More here.

*** So who is responsible for control of this? ICE holds all accountability, which reports to the Department of Homeland Security. What about Congress you ask?

Check this out…

Well, there was a bill introduced in 2013, 2015 and again in January of 2017. Yup. The current bill was only introduced and has a 1% chance of passing. It is only a 2 page bill to amend current law noted as H.R. 643. This bill would make it a crime for visa overstays with defined penalties. It is the U.S. State Department, Bureau of Consular Affairs that is responsible for issuing visas and waivers in the case of denials. If you can stand reading the steps and caveats to this process, go here.

Related reading: DHS Releases Entry/Exit Overstay Report For Fiscal Year 2015

For context on how DHS under Secretary Jeh Johnson at the time packaged the report, here is a sample:

DHS conducts the overstay identification process by examining arrival, departure and immigration status information, which is consolidated to generate a complete picture of an individual’s travel to the United States.  The Department identifies two types of overstays – those individuals for whom no departure has been recorded (Suspected In-Country Overstay) and those individuals whose departure was recorded after their lawful admission period expired (Out-of-Country Overstay).

This report focuses on foreign nationals who entered the United States as nonimmigrant visitors for business (i.e., B1 and WB visas) or pleasure (i.e., B2 and WT visas) through an air or sea port of entry, which represents the vast majority of annual nonimmigrant admissions.  In FY 2015, of the nearly 45 million nonimmigrant visitor admissions through air or sea ports of entry that were expected to depart in FY 2015, DHS determined that 527,127 individuals overstayed their admission, for a total overstay rate of 1.17 percent.  In other words, 98.83 percent had left the United States on time and abided by the terms of their admission.

The report breaks the overstay rates down further to provide a better picture of those overstays that remain in the United States beyond their period of admission and for whom CBP has no evidence of a departure or transition to another  immigration status. At the end of FY 2015, the overall Suspected In-Country Overstay number was 482,781 individuals, or 1.07 percent.

Due to further continuing departures by individuals in this population, by January 4, 2016, the number of Suspected In-Country overstays for FY 2015 had dropped to 416,500, rendering the Suspected In-Country Overstay rate as 0.9 percent.  In other words, as of January 4, DHS was able to confirm the departures of over 99 percent of nonimmigrant visitors scheduled to depart in FY 2015 via air and sea POEs, and that number continues to grow.

This report separates Visa Waiver Program (VWP) country overstay numbers from non-VWP country numbers.  For VWP countries, the FY 2015 Suspected In-Country overstay rate is 0.65 percent of the 20,974,390 expected departures. For non-VWP countries, the FY 2015 Suspected In-Country Overstay rate is 1.60 percent of the 13,182,807 expected departures. DHS is in the process of evaluating whether and to what extent the data presented in this report will be used to make decisions on the VWP country designations.

Overall, CBP has improved the collection of data on all admissions to the United States by foreign nationals, biometric data on most foreign travelers to the United States, and processes to check data against criminal and terrorist watchlists.  CBP has also made tremendous progress in accurately reporting data on overstays to better centralize the overall mission in identifying overstays.  CBP will continue to roll out additional pilot programs during FY 2016 that will further improve the ability of CBP to accurately report this data.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit (CTCEU) is the program dedicated to the enforcement of nonimmigrant visa violations.  Each year, ICE analyzes records of hundreds of thousands of potential status violators from various investigative databases and DHS entry/exit registration systems. The goal is to identify, locate, prosecute when appropriate, and remove overstays consistent with DHS’s immigration enforcement priorities, which prioritize those who pose a risk to national security or public safety.

Read more here.

The Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit prevents terrorists and other criminals from exploiting the nation’s immigration system. Really? Yup, that is what the website reads. In a hearing from 2012, you may be interested in reading the testimony on the matter of visa overstays delivered by DHS Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator John Cohen and ICE Homeland Security Investigations Deputy Executive Associate Director Peter Edge.

Obama Hid Climate Change Money in all Agencies

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Primer: Even the Pentagon and General Mattis are part of the Climate Change supporters.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has asserted that climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere, a position that appears at odds with the views of the president who appointed him and many in the administration in which he serves.

In unpublished written testimony provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis said it was incumbent on the U.S. military to consider how changes like open-water routes in the thawing Arctic and drought in global trouble spots can pose challenges for troops and defense planners. He also stressed this is a real-time issue, not some distant what-if.  

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis said in written answers to questions posed after the public hearing by Democratic members of the committee. “It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.” More here from ProPublica.

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*** Obama’s Climate Change policy is here.

In November 2014, President Obama announced the United States’ intention to contribute $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to reduce carbon pollution and strengthen resilience in developing countries. The U.S. contribution builds on a bipartisan history of U.S. leadership to support climate action and will leverage public and private finance to avoid some of the most catastrophic risks of climate change. The strong U.S. pledge helped increase the number and ambition of other countries’ contributions and our leadership helped propel initial capitalization of the fund to over $10 billion, a threshold seen by stakeholders as demonstrating serious donor commitment.

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To Protect Climate Money, Obama Stashed It Where It’s Hard to Find

Bloomberg: President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.

There is no single list of those programs or their cost, because President Barack Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did. The goal was to get all agencies to take climate into account, and also make those programs hard to disentangle, according to former members of the administration. In some cases, the idea was to make climate programs hard for Republicans in Congress to even find.

“Much of the effort in the Obama administration was to mainstream climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, who worked on climate issues with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and now teaches at Harvard University. He said all federal agencies were required to incorporate climate-change plans into their operations.

The Obama administration’s approach will be tested by Trump’s first budget request to Congress, an outline of which is due to be released Thursday. Trump has called climate change a hoax; last November he promised to save $100 billion over eight years by cutting all federal climate spending. His budget will offer an early indication of the seriousness of that pledge — and whether his administration is able to identify programs that may have intentionally been called anything but climate-related.

Read more: Trump Said to Drop Climate Change From Environmental Reviews

The last time the Congressional Research Service estimated total federal spending on climate was in 2013. It concluded 18 agencies had climate-related activities, and calculated $77 billion in spending from fiscal 2008 through 2013 alone.

But that figure could well be too low. The Obama administration didn’t always include “climate” in program names, said Alice Hill, director for resilience policy on Obama’s National Security Council.

“Given the relationship that existed with Congress on the issue of climate change, you will not readily find many programs that are entitled ‘climate change,’” Hill, who is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said in an interview. At the Department of Defense, for example, anything with the word climate would have been “a target in the budget process,” she said.

The range of climate programs is vast, stretching across the entire government.

The Department of Agriculture created “climate hubs” to help farmers and ranchers cope with extreme weather. The Department of Health and Human Services began analyzing the effects of climate change on occupational safety. The Bureau of Reclamation started a program called “West-Wide Climate Risk Assessments,” measuring changes to water supply and demand. The Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Tribal Climate Resilience Program. The Agency for International Development created a program to help “glacier-dependent mountain areas” deal with the risk of those glaciers melting.

In other cases, agencies expanded existing programs to account for global warming. In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration made climate-adaptation projects eligible for federal aid. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $1 billion through its Community Development Block Grant program to projects protecting against climate change-related natural disasters.

Meanwhile, a handful of lesser-known offices saw their funding increase while Obama was in office. The budget for NASA’s Earth Science program increased 50 percent, to $1.8 billion. Funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which is mandated by Congress to report every four years on the state of climate change, rose 45 percent to $2.6 billion. At the National Science Foundation, the geosciences program almost doubled to $1.3 billion.

Republican Demands

Republicans noticed, and tried to force the administration to offer a tally of climate funding. Last December, senior House Republicans sent a letter to Obama’s budget director, demanding that his office report how much federal money had gone toward climate programs in fiscal years 2015 and 2016.

Any cuts may face opposition in Congress, as Democrats and some Republicans support the spending, especially that to help communities withstand floods, hurricanes or droughts associated with climate change. Wednesday, a group of 17 Republicans announced their support for climate science — and policy measures to address it.

“Budget cuts to programs — or elimination of entire agencies — designed to help stem the costs of climate change will only hurt ranchers, agriculture producers, and coastal communities already experiencing the impacts of this global challenge,” Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the Council on Environmental Quality in Obama’s White House, said by email.

‘Gravy Train’

Some in Trump’s party now urge him to use his authority to find those programs, and take them apart.

“The Trump Administration needs to defund the entire apparatus of the climate change federal funding gravy train,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staffer for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “In order to dismantle the climate establishment, agencies and programs throughout the federal government need to be targeted.”

“The climate funding has spread to almost every aspect of the federal government with sometimes wacky results,” said Morano, who doubts global warming and runs the website climatedepot.com. He cited one example of a Department of Transportation query about the link between climate change and fatal car crashes.

Others argue that the spread of climate programs throughout the federal government simply reflects the evolving nature of the risk.

“It is irresponsible not to examine the possibilities and understand our sensitivity to them,” said Ed Link, a former director of research and development for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who led the forensic analysis of Hurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans. If federal agencies stop doing that work, he said by email, “shame on them.”

America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again

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Read the proposed budget here from the White House.

Image result for trump proposed budget CrayNews

Reuters: President Donald Trump will ask the U.S. Congress for dramatic cuts to many federal programs as he seeks to bulk up defense spending, start building a wall on the border with Mexico and spend more money deporting illegal immigrants.

In a federal budget proposal with many losers, the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department stand out as targets for the biggest spending reductions. Funding would disappear altogether for 19 independent bodies that count on federal money for public broadcasting, the arts and regional issues from Alaska to Appalachia.

Image result for trump proposed budget BusinessInsider

Trump’s budget outline is a bare-bones plan covering just “discretionary” spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. It is the first volley in what is expected to be an intense battle over spending in coming months in Congress, which holds the federal purse strings and seldom approves presidents’ budget plans.

Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, may reject some or many of his proposed cuts. Some of the proposed changes, which Democrats will broadly oppose, have been targeted for decades by conservative Republicans.

In addition to the fiscal year 2018 request, a copy of a supplemental budget for fiscal year 2017 obtained by Reuters shows the administration plans to ask for $30 billion for the Department of Defense and $3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.

The funds would be allocated this year to cover procurement of military technology such as F-35 fighter aircraft and drone systems, begin construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall and increase detention space for migrants. Congress likely will consider the supplemental request by April 28, when the current regular funding expires.

Moderate Republicans already have expressed unease with potential cuts to popular domestic programs such as home-heating subsidies, clean-water projects and job training.

OPEN FOR DISCUSSION

Trump is willing to discuss priorities, said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who made a name for himself as a spending hawk before Trump plucked him for his Cabinet.

“The president wants to spend more money on defense, more money securing the border, more money enforcing the laws, and more money on school choice, without adding to the deficit,” Mulvaney told a small group of reporters during a preview on Wednesday.

“If they have a different way to accomplish that, we are more than interested in talking to them,” Mulvaney said.

Democrats criticized the proposal as lacking in detail and said it would be devastating to American families.

“President Trump is not making anyone more secure with a budget that hollows out our economy and endangers working families,” said House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. “Throwing billions at defense while ransacking America’s investments in jobs, education, clean energy and lifesaving medical research will leave our nation weakened.”

Trump wants to spend $54 billion more on defense, put a down payment on his border wall, and breathe life into a few other campaign promises. His initial budget outline does not incorporate his promise to pour $1 trillion into roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects. The White House has said the infrastructure plan is still to come.

The defense increases are matched by cuts to other programs so as to not increase the $488 billion federal deficit. Mulvaney acknowledged the proposal would likely result in significant cuts to the federal workforce.

“You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said.

The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants.

WALL MONEY

Trump wants Congress to shell out $1.5 billion for the border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year – enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it – and a further $2.6 billion in fiscal 2018, Mulvaney said.

The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years.

Trump has vowed Mexico will pay for the border wall, which the Mexican government has flatly said it will not do. The White House has said recently that funding would be kick-started in the United States.

The voluminous budget document will include economic forecasts and Trump’s views on “mandatory entitlements” – big-ticket programs like Social Security and Medicare, which Trump vowed to protect on the campaign trail.

Trump asked Congress to slash the EPA by $2.6 billion or more than 31 percent, and the State Department by more than 28 percent or $10.9 billion.

Mulvaney said the “core functions” of those agencies would be preserved. Hit hard would be foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies like the World Bank and climate change programs at the United Nations.

Trump wants to get rid of more than 50 EPA programs, end funding for former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and cut renewable energy research programs at the Energy Department.

Regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would be sent to the chopping block.

Community development grants at the Housing Department – around since 1974 – were cut in Trump’s budget, along with more than 20 Education Department programs, including some funding program for before- and after- school programs.

Anti-poverty grants and a program that helps poor people pay their energy bills would be slashed, as well as a Labor Department program that helps low-income seniors find work.

Trump’s rural base did not escape cuts. The White House proposed a 21 percent reduction to the Agriculture Department, cutting loans and grants for wastewater, reducing staff in county offices and ending a popular program that helps U.S. farmers donate crops for overseas food aid.