President Donald Trump’s new push to trim the proposed budgets of all federal agencies next year could prove more draconian than it sounds, amounting to a 25 percent cut for all nondefense programs compared to the current year.

Technically, the request is for 5 percent cuts across the Cabinet departments, as Trump laid out at a White House event Wednesday: “We’re going to ask every [Cabinet] secretary to cut 5 percent for next year,” Trump told reporters, presumably referring to fiscal 2020, beginning next October.

An across-the-board cut of 5 percent from all discretionary spending likely to be enacted in fiscal 2019 would amount to about $62 billion, not counting money for war-related operations and natural disasters. However politically unpalatable that may be, such cuts could actually understate the depths of reductions the administration may be envisioning.

That’s because if recent history is any guide, the reductions may not come from current spending, but from already depressed fiscal 2020 levels previously laid out in the February budget request. The Obama administration Office of Management and Budget asked agencies to cut their proposed budgets by 5 percent in that fashion on at least four occasions.

If that’s the case with the Trump OMB this time, it would mean fiscal 2020 nondefense discretionary budget authority in his request due next February would be roughly $445 billion — a whopping $152 billion, or 25 percent, cut from the fiscal 2019 cap signed into law by Trump in February. That would also be nearly $100 billion below the austere fiscal 2020 nondefense funding required under the 2011 deficit reduction law — already reviled by lawmakers from both parties — which snaps back into place upon expiration of the February deal after fiscal 2019.