President Donald Trump's White House has reportedly proposed cutting $1.7 trillion from entitlement programs in the federal budget. The move comes after Republicans passed a tax cut law that is expected to strip $1.5 billion from federal coffers.
Bloomberg editor Alex Wayne reported on Monday that his publication had received confirmation that "Trump's fiscal 2019 budget proposes $1.7 trillion in entitlement cuts over a decade."
Wayne noted that $237 billion in Medicare cuts are included in the plan.
The proposed budget comes just months after President Donald Trump signed a Republican-backed tax cut law that experts say will cost the country $1.5 trillion in revenue.
"The bill is heavily weighted toward business, which would receive about $1 trillion in net cuts, or two-thirds of the total, according to calculations by the Joint Committee on Taxation," The New York Times said of the tax bill last year. "At its center is a proposal to permanently cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent — a change that is estimated to reduce federal revenues by $1.5 trillion over the next decade alone."
For its part, the Trump administration has disputed the cost of the tax cut law by insisting that lost revenue would be made up by growth in the economy.
