White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said: "We’re going to show how you can run the government without spending all of it," in regard to the soon-to-be-released 2019 budget. | Pete Marovich/Getty Images Mulvaney: Trump's 2018 budget plan will reflect new spending levels

Budget director Mick Mulvaney on Sunday said President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, scheduled for release Monday, will provide guidance to Congress on how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending authorized by the budget deal signed into law this past week.

The Office of Management and Budget has been working since September on an update to its budget wish lists for 2018 and 2019, based on previous caps on spending. The budget office has had to scramble to adapt to the new spending levels, Mulvaney told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”


“It’s been a very busy week at OMB,” he said.

“These are spending caps. They are not spending floors," Mulvaney said. "We’re going to show how you can run the government without spending all of it. That will be our 2019 budget.”

“But if you are going to spend it — which is exactly what we think Congress is going to do — here’s how you should spend it,” he added. “That will be our 2018 budget.”

The president’s budget will recommend that Congress move money to areas like infrastructure and relief for the opioid crisis, “so if it does get spent, at least it gets spent in the right places.”

It will still propose reductions in funding for the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.

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The proposal will also ask for additional funding for a border wall and assumes there will be agreement on how to handle the legal status of young undocumented immigrants covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, he added.

“We’re assuming in our 2018 proposal that a DACA deal is done, and the border wall is funded,” Mulvaney said, which the budget assumes would cost $25 billion. Half of that funding would be allocated this year and half next year, he said.