Washington, D.C. — Today, President Donald Trump released his fiscal year 2026 budget. In response, Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, released the following statement.
Trump’s budget request puts a sledgehammer to the programs that millions of Americans rely on. It would cut nondefense discretionary spending by $174 billion, leaving it at the lowest level as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) on record. The proposed cuts are extreme by any standard, but they’re extreme even by Trump’s own standards. For comparison, in his skinny budget in 2017, Trump called to cut this category of funding by $54 billion. The cuts in this budget are especially egregious when you consider that Trump is also trying to push the largest Medicaid and food assistance cuts in American history through Congress over the next few months.
If it goes into effect, Trump’s budget proposal would make it much harder for Americans to cover basic needs such as child care and education—harming American households and leaving vulnerable families even worse off. Specifically, his budget request calls for enormous cuts to K-12 education and rental assistance as well as for the elimination of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps poor households heat their homes in the winter. Americans are not going to be better off by any means. Trump’s budget proposal will come at the expense of the American people.
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