Lawmakers have indicated they are prepared to reject President Donald Trump's calls to gut programs they deem important. | AP Photo Trump pushes Congress to cut domestic programs this year

President Donald Trump doesn't want to wait until next year to slash government spending on everything from education to mental health programs.

The White House is asking Congress to cut $18 billion from discretionary spending bills for the current fiscal year that have been long settled — a move that could threaten a major showdown just a month ahead of the deadline to keep the government funded.


In an extensive document shared with House and Senate appropriations committees on Friday, and obtained by POLITICO, the Trump administration is offering its most detailed instructions to date on how Congress should shape the trillion-dollar spending legislation Congress must enact by April 28 to prevent a government shutdown.

GOP leaders decided to punt last fall’s government spending bill deadline to this year, in part because Trump had asked to play a role in the package. But GOP appropriators have said they didn't receive fiscal 2017 feedback until the White House turned over a draft outline for fiscal 2018 this month.

The department-by-department breakdown shows Trump is targeting domestic programs including education, health care and housing, as well as international food aid — cuts that are in line with the administration's "skinny budget" for next year.

The $17.94 billion cut would help pay for Trump’s military supplemental request, which was sent to Congress earlier this month. About $2 billion would also go towards Trump’s proposed wall along the Mexican border.

But the latest request for cuts — which would be absorbed over the five months left in the fiscal year — could prove to be too little, too late from the White House. Lawmakers have indicated they are prepared to reject Trump's calls to gut programs they deem important.

After the Trump administration asked Congress earlier this month to strip 3 percent of discretionary spending in fiscal 2017, several top House appropriators said the White House weighed in too late in the process to affect the outcome of the spending legislation for the current fiscal year.

In the document sent to Capitol Hill on Friday, the Senate’s Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee, which oversees the largest individual spending bill, would see the steepest cut. Its budget would drop by $7.26 billion, largely by slashing grant funding — ranging from the NIH to mental health programs — and by eliminating programs like Americorps. NIH alone would see a $1.23 billion cut.

The State and Foreign Operations subcommittee would see the next-largest cut, to the tune of $2.88 billion. The White House wants to cut about equally from the State Department's core functions, like peacekeeping, and its foreign aid programs at USAID.

Other programs on the chopping block include HUD, with a $1.68 billion cutback, and the EPA with a $247 million cut.

The proposal calls for a more than $1 billion cut to the Department of Agriculture. And much like Trump's blueprint for 2018, the plan would eliminate the McGovern-Dole International food program, a bipartisan initiative that feeds millions of vulnerable schoolchildren abroad, and make deep cuts to the Food for Peace program.

Any administration typically provides a list of proposed offsets for supplemental spending requests when it wants to avoid adding to the deficit. But this year, that request is coming with just a handful of weeks left in session for either chamber.

Earlier this month, budget chief Mick Mulvaney proposed cutting about $18 billion from FY18 discretionary spending to pay for the supplemental military spending. He suggested paying for an additional $30 billion defense package by raising the 2011 budget spending caps and through the emergency overseas contingency fund.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed reporting.