IT'S A START: Trump Seeks 5% Budget Cuts From Cabinet Agencies

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President Trump on Wednesday asked his cabinet members to find ways to cut their department budgets by 5% next year, targeting government spending after an official tally showed Republicans’ tax cuts drove the federal budget deficit to its widest level in six years.

“Get rid of the fat. Get rid of the waste,” Mr. Trump said in a cabinet meeting. “It’ll have a huge impact.”

In his comments ahead of a cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump didn’t address the impact of the tax cuts he signed on the deficit. He also didn’t touch on spending for entitlement programs, such as Social Security, that other Republicans have eyed for reductions but that he campaigned on protecting.

Mr. Trump told reporters he had agreed to the two-year budget deal setting discretionary defense spending at $700 billion in fiscal 2018 and $716 billion in fiscal 2019 because the military had been “depleted.” But he said Democrats had forced him to increase domestic spending as a condition of such bumps in military spending.

“I call it waste money—things that I never would have approved, but we had to do that in order to get the votes because we don’t have enough Republican votes to do this without them,” Mr. Trump complained. Mr. Trump only reluctantly signed the spending bill after threatening to veto it.

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