Trump budget faces GOP resistance

Congressional Republicans on Monday panned Donald Trump’s call to finance a military buildup by slashing domestic agencies and ignoring entitlement programs — undermining the president’s budget even before it’s been finalized.
The consternation spanned the party’s ranks just one day before Trump addresses Congress for his first time Tuesday evening: House GOP fiscal hawks said it was ludicrous to think they’d pass a budget that did not address ballooning costs in Medicare and Social Security, the main drivers of the national debt. Pragmatic-minded GOP appropriators scratched their heads over where Trump would siphon off $54 billion in domestic cuts. And GOP defense hawks said the Pentagon budget boost doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Republican sources in leadership and on the Budget and Appropriations committees, meanwhile, quietly assured reporters that this was just an opening bid and that Congress, ultimately, has the power of the purse.
Make no mistake, they say: They’ll be writing their own budget plans.
“The president will propose and the Congress will dispose,” said House appropriator Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) “We’ll look at his budget, but at the end of the day we in Congress write the appropriations bills, and I am not one who thinks you can pay for an increase in [military] spending on the backs of domestic discretionary programs, which constitute 13 or 14 percent of all federal spending.”