Low level staffers first to be released.
Via Free Beacon:
Donald Trump’s budget calls for a 21 percent cut to the Department of Labor in order to free up tax dollars for military spending.
The budget blueprint released by the White House on Thursday indicated that the administration intends to scale back the agency’s operations and refocus enforcement efforts. The blueprint acknowledges that the department is key to “safeguarding their working conditions, benefits, and wages,” but says that cuts are necessary to offset increases to defense spending.
“With the need to rebuild the Nation’s military without increasing the deficit, this Budget focuses the Department of Labor on its highest priority functions and disinvests in activities that are duplicative, unnecessary, unproven, or ineffective,” the brief section on labor says.
The proposed budget would allocate $9.6 billion to the department, a $2.5 billion decrease from the $13.1 billion level called for in the 2017 continuing resolution. The department will shoulder about 4.6 percent of the total reductions that Trump is seeking in order to raise military spending by $54 billion.
“These cuts are sensible and rational. Every agency and department will be driven to achieve greater efficiency and to eliminate wasteful spending in carrying out their honorable service to the American people,” Trump said in a letter attached to the blueprint.
Labor unions criticized the steep cuts, saying that they would reduce job training programs, as well as safety enforcement training. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union with 13 million members, called the cuts to the department and other services “dangerous and destructive.”