Donald Trump is downsizing the federal government.
Even before officially taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,
the President-elect has begun cleaning house in various government
agencies, according to a report Thursday.
Trump transition staffers say they’ve earmarked ways to reduce federal
spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years — and cutting jobs is a big
part of the plan, The Hill reported.
Under the Trump plan, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized.
The National Endowment for the Humanities will be cut entirely, The Hill said.
Funding to the Departments of Commerce and Energy would be drastically
reduced and many of the programs under their jurisdiction eliminated or
moved to another agency, the website reported.
Trump’s team closely followed a blueprint made public last year by the
Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close ties to the
new administration.
According to The Hill, two Trump transition staffers are charged with
presenting the possible cuts to the White House Budget Office.
They are Russ Vought, a former aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence,
and John Gray, who previously worked for Pence, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House Budget
Committee, The Hill said.
They’re pitching the so-called “skinny budget” to lawmakers now — but
the roughly 200-page document is expected to be made public within 45
days of Trump’s inauguration.
Many of the proposed cuts are likely to face stiff opposition from
agency heads and even some of Trump’s cabinet picks — who will have to
run departments on his reduced budgets.
The “skinny budget” would eliminate the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services
Corporation at the Department of Justice, The Hill said.
It would cut funding for DOJ’s Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
At the Department of Energy, funding for nuclear physics and advanced
scientific computing research would revert to 2008 levels.
The “skinny budget” would also do away with Office of Electricity and
the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, as well as scrap
the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions, The Hill said.
Funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris
Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change is also in jeopardy, the website said.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting in a statement said the plan to
privatize would have a “devastating effect on its media service."
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