Washington: The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has proposed gutting the State Department’s budget by almost 50 per cent, closing a number of overseas diplomatic missions, slashing the number of diplomatic staff, and eliminating funding for nearly all international organizations, including the United Nations, many of its agencies and for NATO headquarters, officials said.
The proposal, which was presented to the State Department last week and is still in a highly preliminary phase, is not expected to pass muster with either the department’s leadership or Congress, which will ultimately be asked to vote on the entire federal budget in the coming months.
Officials familiar with the proposal say it must still go through several rounds of review before it even gets to lawmakers, who in the past have amended and even rejected White House budget requests. Though the proposal is preliminary, it gives an indication of the Trump administration’s priorities and coincides with massive job and funding cuts across the federal government, from Health and Human Services and the Education Department to the US Agency for International Development.
Notes from an internal meeting about the proposal have been circulated in online chat groups among foreign service officers since the weekend, but exploded Monday when the State Department was due to present a separate, unrelated reorganization plan to the OMB.
One senior US official familiar with the OMB proposal called it “aggressive” in terms of cost-cutting, but also stressed that it was an early outline that mirrored what OMB chief Russell Vought sought to do in President Donald Trump’s first administration when he served in the same job. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
So did two people familiar with the matter who confirmed the proposal, one of whom also said it originated from OMB.
OMB spokesperson Alexandra McCandless said that “no final funding decisions have been made.”
OMB’s efforts to severely reduce the State Department’s budget during Trump’s first term were met with fierce resistance on Capitol Hill and largely failed.
However, Trump’s second administration has moved swiftly to scale back the federal government, slashing jobs and funding across agencies. It’s already dismantled USAID and moved to defund so-called other “soft power” institutions of foreign policy importance like the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia and Radio/TV Marti, which broadcasts to Cuba.
Thus, State Department officials and others have expressed increasing concern about the possibility that the proposed drastic cuts could actually be implemented.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said she was “deeply troubled” by the reported proposed cuts.
“When America First becomes America Alone, our economy, security, and prosperity will suffer as adversaries fill the void the Trump Administration leaves behind,” Shaheen said in a statement. “Investments in diplomatic programs that promote peace and stability, and advance American national security interests are commonsense priorities that should be reflected in the State Department’s budget request.
AP
