Trump budget cuts leave Israel aid intact

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that President Donald Trump's proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year would not reduce U.S. aid to Israel but that assistance levels to other nations, including Egypt and Jordan, were still being evaluated.

"Our assistance to Israel is ... guaranteed and that reflects, obviously, our strong commitment to one of our strongest partners and allies," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"With respect to other assistance levels, foreign military assistance levels, those are still being evaluated and decisions are going to be made going forward," Toner added, noting that treaty obligations would be a factor. The United States provides assistance to Jordan and Egypt as part of their peace treaties with Israel.

Trump's proposed 28% budget cut for U.S. diplomacy and foreign aid next year would preserve $3.1 billion in security aid to Israel but reduce funding for the United Nations, climate change and cultural exchange programs.

The budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1 is a first shot in a battle with Congress -- which controls the government purse strings -- that will play out over months and may yield spending far beyond Trump's requests.

Congress, controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans, may reject some or many of the proposed cuts to the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development budgets for maintaining America's diplomatic corps, fighting poverty, promoting human rights and improving health abroad.

The White House is proposing a combined $25.6 billion budget for the State Department and USAID, a 28% reduction from current spending, according to documents the White House provided on Thursday.

"This is a 'hard-power' budget. It is not a 'soft-power' budget," Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, told reporters, referring to the president's desire to prioritize military power over the influence that can flow from development aid.

In Tokyo, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended the cuts as a necessary correction to a "historically high" budget for the State Department that had grown to address conflicts abroad in which the United States was engaged as well as disaster aid. Tillerson said there would be a "comprehensive examination" of how the State Department's programs are executed and how the department is structured.

Trump's budget proposes spending $54 billion more on military spending and sinking more money into deporting illegal immigrants.

Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was deeply disappointed and dismayed at Trump’s proposal to slash foreign affairs spending.

David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said the roughly one-third cut in foreign aid endangered U.S. values and interests abroad.

"What’s more, the U.S. foreign assistance budget makes up a mere 1% of the federal budget -- a tiny category of discretionary spending which saves lives and spreads goodwill around the world," he said.

More than 120 retired U.S. generals and admirals urged Congress in a letter last month to fully fund diplomacy and foreign aid, arguing the functions were "critical to keeping America safe."

The budget also requests $12 billion in "Overseas Contingency Operations," or OCO, funding for extraordinary costs, chiefly in war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. No comparison was provided for the current year's OCO spending.

The budget would "maintain current commitments and all current patient levels on HIV/AIDS treatment" under PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the world's largest provider of AIDS-fighting medicine. The program has been credited with saving millions of lives and enjoys bipartisan support.

The budget would also meet U.S. commitments to the Global Fund for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the documents said.

The White House did not provide many details in its "skinny" budget proposal, a precursor to a more detailed budget submission the White House has said it will produce in May.

Meanwhile, Trump attacked the U.S. justice system Wednesday night, after a federal judge in Hawaii froze the implementation of his new entry ban.

The ruling stated that the immigration ban was too far-reaching and that it discriminates on the basis of religion. His initial ban, issued in January, was also frozen on similar grounds. Trump called the ruling "unprecedented judicial overreach," and argued that he had reworded and altered the ban to fit the judges' requests following their criticism of the initial ban.

At the same time, in an interview with Fox News broadcast Thursday, Trump promised that he "will be submitting things" to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence "very soon" with regard to his accusations that former U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap at Trump Tower during last year's presidential campaign.

Trump also told Fox News that his definition of wiretapping "covers a lot of different things," but did not offer details.

Still, the Senate Intelligence Committee, tasking with investigating the matter, released a joint statement Thursday, saying, "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."

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