Elon Musk’s influence on President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint is anything but subtle.
Foreign aid programs that Musk has assailed, like those at the U.S. Agency for International Development, would see massive reductions in funding. A pro-democracy group he has attacked would lose its allocations. NASA’s budget for a manned Mars mission, as Musk has long advocated for, would see a billion-dollar boost, and the agency would scrap its government-funded moon rocket for private options like the one Musk’s SpaceX is developing. And federal spending on health care and education would see steep cuts.
The budget proposal — a wish list that won’t be enacted without Congress’ go-ahead — would be one of the largest cuts to federal spending since the 1980s, with $163 billion in reductions.
“We’re joined at the hip with DOGE. We have a very close partnership with them,” a senior White House budget official, who spoke to reporters about the plan Friday on the condition of anonymity, likening the budget to a “joint project.”
The official added, “We have been rooting them on, learning from what they have found, building those into the programs that we kind of always have viewed as wasteful and making sure that we have figured out, OK, if they find savings, what year is it counted towards?’”
It’s not all cuts: The blueprint would increase defense spending by 13% to $1.01 trillion annually, bump up Homeland Security spending by 65% and increase funding for charter schools. The Defense Budget also includes funding for a “down-payment on the development and deployment of a Golden Dome for America.”
But that funding amount isn’t enough to satiate all of Congress’ defense hawks. “This budget would decrease President Trump’s military options and his negotiating leverage,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker said in a statement Friday, casting the budget as “OMB’s intent to shred to the bone our military capabilities and our support to service members.”
Trump’s proposed changes to NASA’s funding are an undeniable win for Elon Musk, who has shaped the president’s spaceflight ambitions and whose company could stand to reap billions of dollars in future funding under the new budget.
The White House said it will urge Republicans to use their upcoming partisan budget-reconciliation package to pass the majority of the proposed additional defense spending — a significant change in how those funds typically pass, through annual appropriations measures negotiated between both parties.
“This is a paradigm shift in how we intend to get those increases,” said the senior budget official.
“#ParadigmShift,” Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote on X of the plan to use reconciliation for defense spending increases.
Congress holds the power of the purse, and lawmakers wrangle each year over how much to increase defense and nondefense spending, with Republicans consistently arguing for a larger defense budget and Democrats pushing for boosts to social safety net programs on the nondefense side. Using reconciliation would sidestep that debate — and Democrats — entirely, putting an end to the traditional appropriations process as members have known it for decades.
The official argued this is necessary to “not have the appropriations bogged down into either an omnibus bill that becomes something that no one wants to vote for, let alone sign, and/or devolve into a CR, which is not good for the Department of Defense either.”
Lawmakers from both parties have historically seen presidential budget requests as optional, more of a suggestion than a demand. Some of Trump’s proposed cuts — much like DOGE’s — are likely to get pushback from Republicans.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, for one, isn’t on board, saying she has “serious objections” to the proposal.
Regional concerns can outweigh partisan loyalties; with so many programs on the chopping block, members of Congress are likely to face pushback from constituents and organizations in their districts that would be affected if these budget cuts actually passed into law.
Some changes would be controversial in red states, like eliminating a program that purchases American agricultural products to send to impoverished countries as foreign assistance.
“USDA has numerous programs that support farmers in difficult times, but this program is neither necessary nor efficient as support for U.S. farmers,” the administration’s budget request reads. Several GOP lawmakers have already questioned DOGE’s moves to halt similar work, saying ending those programs hurts farmers.
Even so, Republicans may view this budget request more seriously than they did during Trump’s first presidency, given how intensely his officials have focused on cost-cutting efforts — and how little appetite most congressional Republicans have shown in wanting to rebuke Trump or deny his demands.
“Congress is supposed to do what DOGE does,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, told NOTUS of tracking and cutting spending this week. “So maybe my colleagues will be inspired.”
Trump’s budget proposes a $674 million annual cut to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, but claims it will “have no impact on providing benefits to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.” Instead, those hundreds of millions ostensibly would come from the termination of “wasteful, and woke” programs.
Hill Republicans are eyeing cuts to Medicaid, while Trumpworld privately warns lawmakers against steep cuts and Trump floats an increase in benefits.
The Department of Health and Human Services — the domestic agency that has far and away seen the largest DOGE-driven spending cuts — would lose tens of billions in year-over-year funding under this budget. Most of that money would be pulled from the National Institutes of Health, which would lose almost $18 billion as DOGE slashes HHS programs that the administration has assailed as “woke.”
$500 million, however, is allocated to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.
It also targets several programs for complete termination or a merger with other agencies, including AmeriCorps, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
On the nondefense side, Trump’s budget reiterates his desire to restrict spending and hobble some government agencies and functions. It would cut billions each from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean and Drinking Water loan funds and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Non-disaster Federal Emergency Management Agency programs would lose $646 million.
The budget would also slash over $26 billion from the federal government’s rental assistance program. $4.7 billion would be cut from the Department of Energy, with cuts to programs centered around renewable energy, climate change research and “removing carbon dioxide from the air.” (It maintains, however, the agency’s spending on artificial intelligence.)
Throughout, the budget plan assails “radical, leftist priorities, including climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and LGBTQ activities.”
“We are not going to be funding Sesame Street in Iraq,” said the senior White House budget official, railing against foreign aid which the administration has attacked since January. “We’re not going to be funding LGBT activism in Africa. This is going to be targeted dollars.”
—
Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Jasmine Wright and Haley Byrd Wilt are reporters at NOTUS. NOTUS reporter Taylor Giorno contributed reporting.