WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Friday proposed a $163 billion cut to the federal budget that would sharply reduce spending on education, housing and medical research next year, while increasing outlays for defense and border security.
The administration said the proposed budget would raise homeland security spending by nearly 65% from 2025 enacted levels, as Trump cracks down on illegal immigration.
Non-defense discretionary spending, which excludes the massive Social Security and Medicare programs and rising interest payments on the nation's debt, would be cut by 23% to the lowest level since 2017, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
The proposal would cleave more than $2 billion from the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and would slice the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by more than 40%.
Trump's first budget since reclaiming office seeks to make good on his promises to boost spending on border security while slashing the federal bureaucracy. Congressional Democrats blasted the domestic spending cuts as too severe, and some Republicans called for boosting spending on defense and other areas.
