Trump seeks to slash $3.6 trillion of spending in austere budget

U.S. President Donald Trump wants lawmakers to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over the next decade, taking aim in an austere budget unveiled on Tuesday at healthcare and food assistance programs for the poor while boosting the military.

Republicans who control the U.S. Congress - and the federal purse strings - will decide whether to make politically sensitive cuts, and the proposal is very unlikely to be approved in its current form.

Although it is not expected to survive on Capitol Hill, the proposal puts numbers on Trump's vision of the role of government: a budget with radical cuts to government assistance to lower-income Americans.

The biggest savings would come from cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor made as part of a Republican healthcare bill passed by the House of Representatives.

Trump wants lawmakers to cut more than $800 billion from Medicaid, and more than $192 billion from food stamps over a decade. He seeks to balance the budget by the end of the decade, according to the plan.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan public policy organization, said the plan relied on "rosy assumptions," gimmicks and unrealistic cuts.

The budget is based on forecasts for economic growth of 3 percent a year by the end of Trump's first term - well beyond Congressional Budget Office assumptions of 1.9 percent growth. - Read, Reuters
Trump seeks to slash $3.6 trillion of spending in austere budget

Trump budget plan slashes food stamps, healthcare for poor