MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL

Trump’s Budget Hikes Defense Funding by $54B

Blueprint also cuts some foreign aid and domestic initiatives.

President Donald Trump unveiled a budget blueprint on Monday which hikes the country’s defense budget by $54 billion and cuts funds from other domestic areas and foreign aid. The budget guidance, set to be delivered to federal agencies later Monday, amounts to a 10 percent increase in funding for the Pentagon. “This budget expects the rest of the world to step up in some of the programs this country has been so generous in funding in the past,” an Office of Management and Budget official told reporters Monday morning. That sentiment is in line with the Trump administration’s belief that, when it comes to international bodies like NATO, other nations need to pull their weight. “This budget follows through on my promise of keeping America safe, keeping out terrorists, keeping out criminals and putting violent offenders behind bars or removing them from our country altogether,” Trump said Monday morning in an address to the nation’s governors, vowing a “substantial” increase in funding to local, state and federal law enforcement to fight crime.