Steven Mufson

President Donald Trump unveiled a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad. Trump’s first budget proposal, which he named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies.

While there are major cuts in President Donald Trump's "America first" budget, including a 16% cut in funds for the Department of Commerce, the document says the White House will continue to support the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), at least as far as "representing the United States interest at multi-stakeholder forums on internet governance and digital commerce." The budget also says it "supports the commercial sector’s development of next generation wireless services by funding NTIA’s mission of evaluating and ensuring the efficient use of spectrum by Government users." The budget did not break out cuts for the Federal Communications Commission, but they are part of a category that averages close to a 10% hit.

The budget would propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney outlined the President's budget in a conference call with reporters. Asked whether CPB's funding [$421 million] would be eliminated, Mulvaney shot back "yes" immediately, then finessed his answer a bit, but essentially only on a technicality. "No, I'm, sorry, I was too quick with that," he added. "We propose ending funding, but technically what you will see is it's elimination, but you'll see an amount of money in the budget necessary for us to unwind our involvement in CPB, but it will see a zero next to it; the policy is we're ending federal involvement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

President Trump signed an order Jan 30 aimed at cutting regulations on businesses, saying that agencies should eliminate two regulations for each new one. The White House later released the text of the order, which added that the cost of any new regulation should be offset by eliminating regulations with the same costs to businesses. It excluded regulations regarding the military.

The impact of the order was difficult to judge based on the president’s remarks. It could be difficult to implement under current law and would concentrate greater power in the Office of Management and Budget, which already reviews federal regulations. And it would add a new time-consuming requirement for any new congressional legislation on topics as varied as banking, health care, environment, labor conditions and more. President Trump said, “If you have a regulation you want, number one we’re not going to approve it because it’s already been approved probably in 17 different forms. But if we do, the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation. So if there’s a new regulation, they have to knock out two. But it goes way beyond that.” But experts on government policy said Trump’s formulation made little sense. “There’s no logic to this,” William Gale, a tax and fiscal policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said before seeing the executive order. “The number of regulations is not the key. It’s how onerous regulations are. This seems like a totally nonsensical constraint to me.”

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to create an infrastructure “task force” that will help carry out the ambitious federal spending program he intends to undertake upon taking office, according to several individuals briefed on his plans.

Key members of Trump’s team — including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon, senior adviser Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, whom Trump has tapped to head the National Economic Council — are all involved in the discussions. The task force head is “not Cabinet level,” but would play a critical role in coordinating among federal, state and local officials as well as private investors as the new administration prepares to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into projects across the country. The task force would also have to help identify what qualifies as infrastructure, a word that has been used to describe everything from roads to broadband, from bike trails to electric transmission lines.

Gone are the days when federal infrastructure spending was measured in highways, bridges and ports. As President-elect Donald Trump considers a massive new spending plan on public works, policy experts, lawmakers and companies are racing to make the case that infrastructure could include projects such as fast Internet networks, electric-vehicle charging stations, power transmission lines and drinking water systems.

During a conference on infrastructure, Mrinalini Ingram, vice president of smart communities at Verizon Communications, had her own candidates for infrastructure spending: Verizon networking technology embedded in LED street lights and blue-light kiosks where pedestrians in danger can call police. At the same event, Richard Lukas, director of federal grants and program development at the Trust for Public Land, was worrying about the fate of federal grants used to fund a riverside park in Newark, NJ, a three-mile park along an abandoned rail line in Chicago, and a trail and bike system in Cleveland. "Infrastructure doesn't just mean roads and bridges. Infrastructure means a lot of different things to a lot of different people," said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. "We have to be confident that we're investing in things with common benefits, not like digging holes. The outcomes have to be consistent with our national priorities."

Gone are the days when federal infrastructure spending was measured in highways, bridges and ports. As President-elect Donald Trump considers a massive new spending plan on public works, policy experts, lawmakers and companies are racing to make the case that infrastructure could include anything from fast Internet networks to electric vehicle charging stations, from power transmission lines to drinking water systems.

During a Bloomberg News conference on infrastructure in Washington this week, Mrinalini Ingram, vice president of smart communities at Verizon, had her own candidates for infrastructure spending: Verizon networking technology embedded in LED street lights and blue-light kiosks where pedestrians in danger can call police.