Third time a charm? Trump tries again to slash State Department funding by 25 percent

Washington Examiner ^ | March 11, 2019 07:25 PM | Joel Gehrke

[E. Pluribus Unum]

President Trump’s administration is proposing a sharp cut in diplomatic funding for the third year in a row, even though Congress repudiated his last two State Department budgets and gave the branch billions more than he requested.

“This is a back and forth with Congress,” Doug Pitkin, director of State's bureau of budget and planning, told reporters Monday. “Just because Congress has not taken up some of the reductions that were proposed over the last three years does not change the administration's position.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touted the $40 billion request for fiscal 2020, a steep decline from the $54 billion Congress provided the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, as “the strategic, efficient use of taxpayer dollars." The plan drew immediate criticism from Capitol Hill, where lawmakers accused Trump of devaluing diplomacy when they rejected his $41.8 billion request last year.

“For the third year in a row, the President’s foreign affairs budget request is dead on arrival,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said. "Even though the Administration doesn’t seem to get the message, it bears repeating: at a time when the United States is facing crises across the globe, investing in diplomacy and development advances American interests, values, and security.”

The requested budget reduction reflects Trump’s goal of decreasing nondefense discretionary spending by 5 percent. State would shoulder a disproportionate share of the cuts, though, with spending slashed nearly 25 percent.

The White House has given up on trying to cut funding for the diplomatic workforce, slotting it into the budget at the same level Congress set last year. But the administration again called for cuts to international programs and organizations appropriators spiked in previous years.

[pacificus]

Seems like you understand it pretty well.

Trump wants them to feel the pain, so they have to cut staff.

Department lawyers are probably fighting to spend every penny Congress provides.

This place is infested with leftists soaking up those federal government paychex!

[Article10]

Correct .. its the Uniparty..

I wish Trump would call for and demand repeal of the 17th Amendment.. thus ending the Uniparty and Fedzilla.

[DoodleDawg]

A line item veto would solve this problem, something congress will never agree to.

Congress did once. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

[DoodleDawg]

My personal solution, which I wish the President would do, but won’t, is the veto every spending bill until we have a balanced budget. It won’t work because there would be too much pain for Congress to accept and they would eventually override the veto.

He could begin by submitting a balanced budget.

[Lakewood]

Yep