By Kate Davidson, Louise Radnofsky and Kristina Peterson
WASHINGTON—President Trump plans to seek $8.6 billion for additional barriers along the southern U.S. border as part of his budget proposal to be released Monday, a potential prelude to another fight over funding the president’s long-promised border wall.
The White House budget document will propose $2.7 trillion in cuts to nondefense discretionary spending over the next decade, in part by reducing such spending by 5% next year below current federal spending caps, the president’s top budget official said Sunday. The administration didn’t offer specific details of the spending cuts, while also proposing increases on certain military matters and on veterans health care.
Congress is unlikely to approve anything that closely resembles the White House budget, as Democrats control the House and spending bills in the GOP-led Senate need bipartisan support. Instead, the blueprint serves to lay out a presidential administration’s priorities each year and represents the opening bid in negotiations over new spending bills for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The president’s proposed amount for wall funding drew immediate criticism from Democrats, and some Senate GOP aides said they were wary Sunday of Mr. Trump’s request, given the recent government shutdown over the issue.
While Republican aides said Mr. Trump’s budget request for the wall was unrealistic, they said his approach of going through the normal budget process was preferable to the shutdown clash and his decision last month to declare a national emergency to try to secure more funds for a wall.
The $8.6 billion request for barrier funding—$5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $3.6 billion for Defense Department military construction—would enable the Trump administration to complete its plans for new or replacement barriers for 722 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, an administration official said. Of that, 122 miles of barriers are complete or under construction, the official said. The southern border is about 1,991 miles in length overall.
Separately, the proposal would also restore $3.6 billion in funding for military construction that the president tapped as part of his emergency declaration, the administration official said.
Unhappy that Congress wouldn’t allocate $5.7 billion in wall funding for the current fiscal year, Mr. Trump late last year withdrew support for a bipartisan Senate deal extending funding levels until February, which triggered the shutdown. Mr. Trump ended the shutdown in January by signing a three-week spending bill that contained no wall funding.
Last month, just before declaring the national emergency, Mr. Trump signed a spending bill that allocated $1.38 billion for barrier funding the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. In declaring his emergency, Mr. Trump designated other funds that he said would enable him to pull together $6.7 billion from the military and other sources for new barrier construction.
Democrats on Sunday blasted the latest funding request. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said the money would be better spent on education or work-force development. They also warned Mr. Trump against setting up another spending fight over border security.
“Congress refused to fund his wall and he was forced to admit defeat and reopen the government,” they said. “The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again. We hope he learned his lesson.”
Lawrence Kudlow, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, said on Fox News that the White House isn’t backing down from its push to build a border wall. Asked if there would be another spending fight over wall funding, Mr. Kudlow said, “Well, I suppose there will be.”
The GOP president’s blueprint would provide additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection, and it proposes policy changes to end so-called sanctuary cities, according to details released by the Office of Management and Budget on Sunday.
It would increase spending on national defense, such as artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons and provide more than $80 billion for veterans health, a nearly 10% increase from fiscal 2019, according to OMB.
The White House is seeking to get around limits placed on both defense and nondefense spending by boosting military money through an emergency war fund that is not subject to those caps, called the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, or OCO. Both Democrats and Republicans have decried that strategy as a budget gimmick.
The budget assumes much stronger economic growth over the next decade than many independent forecasters, who see the economy slowing this year as fiscal-stimulus measures that boosted growth in 2018 start to wane.
The White House forecasts the economy will grow about 3% annually over the next decade, though it expects a bigger near-term boost, with output rising 3.2% this year before declining to 3.1% in 2020, 3.0% in 2021 and 2.8% in 2026, according to projections viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Russell Vought, the acting director of OMB, said the proposed spending cuts would enable the budget to balance by 2034.
“This budget shows that we can return to fiscal sanity without halting our economic resurgence while continuing to invest in critical priorities,” Mr. Vought said.
Building a wall along the southern border was Mr. Trump’s signature campaign promise and a core issue for his supporters, but securing the necessary funding has proved difficult, even when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress.
Congress provided $341 million in fiscal year 2017 for barrier borders, and an additional $1.2 billion in 2018.
Republican lawmakers, for their part, said they would treat the budget request as a wish list, not as something they need to follow faithfully. Lawmakers must reach a budget agreement by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30, to avoid automatic spending cuts.
“No president gets exdactly what they want in the budget,” Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said Sunday on the Fox Business Network. “The budget is a recommendation.”
“No president gets exactly what they want in the budget,” Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said Sunday on Fox News Channel. “The budget is a recommendation.”
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