The request, part of a budget offer that focuses on broad spending cuts, sparks new shutdown fears.
President Donald Trump will ask Congress for another $8.6 billion to complete a 722-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Sunday, part of a cost-cutting opening budget offer that will dismiss hopes for a grand budget deal and likely stoke fresh fears of another government shutdown.
Trump will put on paper what the White House has already prepared lawmakers to receive — an audacious plan for sucking 5 percent from the budgets of nonmilitary arms of the federal government, while using an accounting trick to bust beyond set spending limits for defense programs. The 5 percent would be below the fiscal 2019 budget limits for domestic agencies.
The budget office also said the request would seek funding for more Border Patrol agents, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. The blueprint will call for holding colleges and universities “accountable,” by requiring them to share some of the financial burden of student loans. And Trump will request more than $80 billion, a 10 percent increase over fiscal 2019 levels, for veterans health care, according to the OMB.
Although the request is merely a messaging document, the president’s posture will contribute to apprehension about a government shutdown, some seven months before federal funding runs out again on Sept. 30.
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